[exw]

<<The FBI is the opposite in every way, mostly because of budget constraints and the subsequent lack of training. I hope that this is a good learning opportunity for them and a chance for them to increase their training budget in this area.>>

Besides the legal precedents and other associated drama, I think is one of Apple's major concerns, and one of the reasons they implemented the "we don't have the keys" approach to their encryption. If the FBI can always just call on Apple (or Google) to fix whatever mistakes they made, there is little motivation for training / getting better on this front, effectively making Apple the computer forensics arm of the government.

[qb45]

The request they submitted to Apple was clearly written by competent people. They knew exactly what and why they wanted to do, how Apple can help and why only Apple can help.

[jeffmould]

I think part of that is Apple is/was actively working with the FBI to find alternative solutions. I would bet that the engineers described what would need to happen, i.e. the new OS. As is often the case, the Apple engineers probably documented alternative solutions. The FBI took that "solution" and ran with what they described. It's the "well Apple told us this is the only way to do this, but they won't do it for us" scenario.

[nitrogen]

There is one thing the FBI is very good at, and that's writing a compelling narrative. It's possible that there are highly competently people who know everything, but it's also possible there are moderately but not dazzlingly competent people who are really good at writing a story that feels complete and keeps one from asking questions outside the narrative.

[walshemj]

I think like the police in UK once a FBI officer gets experienced in computer security the leave for the better paid private sector.

[cmurf]

Exactly. Yet another reason to fight the court order. We should expect FBI to be competent, embarrassed if they aren't, and fix the problem. It's not a good state of affairs when a company is more trusted to do forensics.

[wildmusings]

>I think is one of Apple's major concerns, and one of the reasons they implemented the "we don't have the keys" approach to their encryption.

They do have the keys. A 4-digit pin is useless if you have Apple's private key.

[djrogers]

Completely false, as has been endlessly detailed by nearly everyone at this point.