All Writs Act

The California and New York cases both hinge on the government’s interpretation of the centuries-old All Writs Act. The new cases present another challenge for federal courts, which have to sort out how a law that is used to help government investigators squares with privacy and encryption in the digital age.

The government asserted in court papers Monday that Orenstein’s ruling in New York is “an unprecedented limitation on” judicial authority and that his legal “analysis goes far afield of the circumstances of this case.”

It also stated that the government “does not have any adequate alternatives” to obtaining Apple’s assistance because attempting to guess the passcode would trigger the phone’s auto-erase security feature.

Federal prosecutors cited several examples in which Apple has extracted data from a locked device under the law, including a child exploitation case in New York, a narcotics case in Florida and another exploitation case in Washington state.

Apple responded Monday: “Judge Orenstein ruled the FBI’s request would ‘ thoroughly undermine fundamental principles of the Constitution’ and we agree. We share the judge’s concern that misuse of the All Writs Act would start us down a slippery slope that threatens everyone’s safety and privacy.”

In October, Orenstein invited Apple to challenge the government’s use of the 1789 law that compelled the company to help the government obtain iPhone data in criminal cases.

Since then, lawyers say Apple has opposed requests to help extract information from over a dozen iPhones in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York.

In the California case, officials are looking for access to the phone used by Syed Farook but owned by San Bernardino County, where he was a health inspector. Federal investigators say the attack by Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, was at least partly inspired by the Islamic State group. The couple died later in a gun battle with police.