Today FBI has the resources to desolder the chip and put it into all sorts of controllers where they can prod and poke at the encrypted data.<p>What if this guy used a long passcode? They&#x27;re still going to try to get in, and the only difference is that they&#x27;ll move the heavy lifting off of the iPhone and try to crack it with beefy computer. And to do that, they&#x27;ll have to lift the chip off the SoC anyway.<p>My point is that when people say Apple will &quot;unlock&quot; the phone, it insinuates that the only thing standing between FBI and the data is Apple. And that isn&#x27;t true. Even if Apple complies, they&#x27;re they&#x27;re not guaranteed to get in. Furthermore, Apple could comply and they still might find themselves  pursuing an angle that they&#x27;re already capable of. FBI are going through all these court hearings and process all for the sake of trying 0000-9999.<p>In other words, this is obviously bullshit on the side of the FBI. The question is why they&#x27;re doing that. I suggest that it&#x27;s not about legal precedent, because newer iPhones can&#x27;t be undermined like this and the All Writs Act can&#x27;t compell Apple to stop producing such devices, it can only (arguably) compell them to undermine devices if it&#x27;s within their reach. (IANAL so please call me out if I&#x27;m wrong about that.)<p>I suspect it&#x27;s about PR, because when they lose they can throw their hands up and the news pundits will scream about terrorists winning in our courts. Washington will then push their backdoor legislation that they&#x27;ve been asking for over the past few months.<p>Legal precedent isn&#x27;t what they&#x27;re after, IMHO. The legal precedent that would be set wouldn&#x27;t be applicable to where things are headed. They&#x27;re looking for public appeal.