[Hugin]

What they have been asked to do appears pretty easy from a software point of view.

No it's not. Putting a backdoor in new software would be. But that's not what the government is asking for here. Apple built software encryption that was to the best of their ability uncrackable. It destroys the data after too many unsuccessful attempts. The government now want's them to create software that will crack software that they designed not to be crackable. That's a whole other ballgame. If it can be done, then Apple didn't do it right in the first place. If it was easy the government wouldn't need Apple's help.

[CutePuppy]

Apple built software encryption that was to the best of their ability uncrackable.

The government now want's them to create software that will crack software that they designed not to be crackable.

Not even close, but that's what Apple's hysterical propaganda claims want you to think...

1. Apple didn't "build" software encryption — they are using standard military-grade AES-256 encryption engine, like most everyone else.

2. Government / FBI has not asked Apple to crack the software or decrypt the phone.

3. Apple is deliberately defying a court order having to do with national security, to appear to care about their users' "privacy."

Here's what they are actually asked to do — it has nothing to do with encryption / decryption or wide-ranging "backdoors" or some such nonsense and it should not take more than 10 minutes for any software engineer at Apple who has the firmware's source code to create it — in fact, they woud not be able to test their phones' firmware without this "pseudo-hack":