Breaking iPhones Under CALEA and the All Writs Act: Why the Government Was (Mostly) Right

During the investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, the government asked a district court to order Apple to draft code that would bypass the password protection system of the iPhone of one of the shooters. This request was preceded by the holding of a United States District Court in New York, which found that the All Writs Act (A WA) and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) prohibited the court from issuing the order. This finding was supported by Apple, amici in support of Apple in the San Bernardino investigation, and numerous experts. Although sympathetic to Apple, I argue in this Article that these entities misinterpreted CALEA, and that the government's interpretation of that statute was correct.

The New York court's ultimate ruling in favor of Apple, however, was the right one based on the discretionary factors governing the A WA's applicability, set forth by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. New York Telephone Co.