U.S. Opens Another iPhone, This Time With the Keycode

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/business/us-opens-another-iphone-this-time-with-the-pacode.html

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Friday night that it had gained access on its own to a locked iPhone used by a Brooklyn drug dealer, the second time in less than a month that it had unlocked such a device after initially insisting it could do so only with Apple’s help.

In a short letter to a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York, prosecutors said that an unidentified person had given the phone’s passcode to investigators. The Brooklyn phone had become the latest battleground in the fight between Apple and the Justice Department over issues of privacy and security.

Last month, in a higher-profile case that set off a national debate, prosecutors dropped their demand that Apple develop software to unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the San Bernardino, Calif., rampage in December. The F.B.I. unlocked that phone after paying an outside party to demonstrate how to do so.

In the Brooklyn case, the drug dealer’s phone was running an older operating system that lacks the encryption features of the San Bernardino phone, so unlocking that device would involve much less technical sophistication even without the passcode.

Apple had voluntarily helped prosecutors unlock phones in some 70 earlier cases involving phones with the older operating systems, but it changed its stance last fall and began challenging the Justice Department’s legal authority to use a 1789 statute called the All Writs Act to force its technical assistance in such cases.

Prosecutors had said for months that they needed Apple to provide what amounted to a technical passkey to the Brooklyn phone because the owner, a confessed methamphetamine dealer named Jun Feng, claimed to have forgotten the passcode.

That changed on Thursday evening, when someone gave the government the passcode, prosecutors said in the letter to the court. Officials would not say whether it was Mr. Feng or someone close to him who provided the passcode.

“Because we now have access to the data we sought, we notified the court of this recent development and have withdrawn our request for assistance,” said Emily Pierce, a Justice Department spokeswoman. “This is an ongoing investigation and therefore we are not revealing the identity of the individual.”

A judge sided with Apple in the Brooklyn fight in February, issuing a stinging 50-page ruling that said prosecutors had overstepped their legal authority. The Justice Department had been seeking to overturn that ruling and force Apple’s cooperation, but that now becomes a moot issue.

Apple, which declined to comment on Friday, has raised similar objections to unlocking iPhones in a Boston case and in at least several dozen others elsewhere, most of which are under court seal.

Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has supported Apple in the recent encryption fights, said that the latest development in Brooklyn was “very welcome news.”

“This is a debate that should be had in Congress before asking the courts to weigh in,” he said. “That will be better for everyone’s digital security.”

In the San Bernardino case, the F.B.I. was able to get into the phone after a fierce court fight that stretched for two months and drew international attention. The bureau’s director, James B. Comey, indicated this week that the group that demonstrated how to unlock the phone was paid at least $1.3 million.