Oh, I’m sorry. I did not realize that you were basing your claim of the FBI illegally obtaining the phone data on a wild assed conspiracy theory (without ANY evidence) that they had it before even going to court to legally ask for Apple’s assistance. All that wasted expense and time, only to get what they already had. If you had opened your comment #35 with your conspiracy theory claim, I would have just ignored it and scrolled down to the next comment… Sorry to bother you…
Ah. Look at post #22, I clearly said it was my opinion.
Besides, I do run the Nut-Job Conspiracy Theory ping list! Even I take half of what I say with a grain (or sometimes even a block) of salt.
It wasn't from the FBI's viewpoint wasted effort. They couldn't use the data in court unless they could 'splain where they got it. Without Apple cooperating (or a plausible alternate legal source) the data was utterly useless to them.
Besides, it's not like the money had to come out of their pockets!
I'm just glad you helped me clarify what I meant for other readers.
Have a good evening...
The Magistrate Judge in New York ruled the FBI, who got a All Writs Act order force Apple to do the same thing for an iPhone there, had no legal grounds for their order, and vacated the order he himself had issued, on both constitutional grounds—the order impermissibly put the Court in the position of legislating law that the Congress had already addressed, something the All Writs Act CANNOT address!—and the fact that it was an illegal order violating the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA), which specifically prohibited the action the which the FBI and its in-house legal counsel wanted the Court to order Apple to do and had written in their Order! The court cannot order the commission of a crime.
In other words, Synthesist, It is not a legal order. They were NOT legally asking. They were trying to use the court to do something illegal under Federal Law.