emptywheel

Odd that Apple reached out first without knowing model of phone in question and whether it's an older model the company still has the ability to unlock. If it's a newer model Apple can't unlock, it's just opening itself up to criticism from FBI and the anti-crypto contingent.https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/928404699811930114 …

Odd that they'd want to get out ahead of criticism that they're not trying to help? They'll get the crypto criticism no matter what. Offering to help doesn't generate that out of nowhere.

All Apple was offering to do was expedite the legal request, but it's not clear if it could actually do anything to help beyond that if this is a newish phone and there were no backups to iCloud.

Yeah, so they can claim that they did all they can do. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me. Not doing this wouldn't have prevented any criticism.

I like @Riana_Crypto's point that this might have been about the iCloud backups and Apple trying to tell the FBI not to screw up this time by powering off the phone.

There was something in the court documents - I think it was Apple's initial response - where they said FBI agents had powered it off after their initial attempts to get in were unsuccessful.