quarantine 'em

Am I crazy or is it highly obvious that they haven't unlocked the phone at all?

Think about it. You're going to lose the case, so you need a way to back out which leaves you the option to try again

You can't admit that you're giving up on this phone, or that it's worthless/irrelevant to what you're really trying to do

So you claim you cracked it (under no obligation to prove it, or demonstrate how), but also the crack mysteriously only works once

So eight months from now, once they find/engineer a much more urgent/critical iPhone (ticking time bomb), this resumes where it left off

I feel like there's a hole in this reasoning, let me know if you work out what it is. :-/

@qntm why do they need to ask Apple to backdoor any new phones if they've already got their mysterious method?

@xiakha But it they say it's a one-time thing! It won't work for other phones. They covered it perfectly