U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by Johnny555 on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:34PM (#11377993)

I wish Apple would be able to recoup their legal costs from the DoJ -- the government shouldn't be allowed to force a company to spend money on defending their rights (using our "unlimited" tax dollars to do so), only to drop the case at the last minute making the entire case moot.

Apple should be able to recover their legal costs.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by GraemeLion on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:42PM (#11378048)

Somewhat agree, but Apple DID have a court order they were fighting. They did choose to fight this legally adjudicated and issued order. The owner of the phone and the law enforcement both wanted the phone decrypted.

FWIW, I agree that privacy is ignored and should be respected, but apple chose this fight. I'm glad they did, but they knew it would cost them.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by Johnny555 on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:48PM (#11378092)

And the DoJ stopped fighting.

If the DoJ ultimately won the case, then it's fair that Apple should have to pay their legal costs.

But since using a 200 year old law to force Apple to do work they don't want to do was a legal stretch, if the DoJ lost the case then again I'd say the DoJ should pay Apple's legal costs.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by teacup50 on Monday March 28, 2016 @07:22PM (#11378277)

The law in question was passed the same week that congress submitted the fourth amendment.

Please stop parroting "200 year old law".

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by Johnny555 on Monday March 28, 2016 @08:15PM (#11378586)

Oh, you mean in 1789, 227 years ago?

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by teacup50 on Monday March 28, 2016 @09:09PM (#11378841)

Yes. The same week that the fourth amendment -- which is what provides us with strong protection against unreasonable search and seizure -- was approved by Congress.

Or do you refer to that as a stale 200 year old law, too?

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by gherkin0 on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @09:47AM (#11381390)

> They did choose to fight this legally adjudicated and issued order.

IIRC, but wasn't the order issued with only one side present at court (i.e. without Apple's attorneys being present to raise issues before it was issued)?

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by eric_h on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:44PM (#11378066)

While I agree, the counterargument will likely be that all of Apple's lawyers are on salary and as such Apple's legal costs would be no different with or without the court proceedings.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by Johnny555 on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:50PM (#11378111)

That's kind of like saying that all of Apple's engineers are on salary, so even it it takes a team of 100 engineers 6 months to write the software the DoJ asked for, there's really no cost to Apple.

Businesses don't often pay employees to do nothing, that legal team would be doing other corporate legal work if they weren't working on this case, and I'm sure they paid outside consultants to help with the case.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by eric_h on Monday March 28, 2016 @06:53PM (#11378122)

That is a fair point. I will reiterate that I agreed with the original poster and was positing what the counterargument presented from the courts/3 letter agencies would be.

We'll never see that counterargument regarding the cost of engineering FBiOS, since the case was withdrawn.

[Edit: we'll never see it because I believe that the FBI will not likely go after Apple again, specifically because they put up a much more forceful fight against it than the FBI ever thought they would. Admittedly I'm speculating, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable]

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by niccaluim on Monday March 28, 2016 @07:31PM (#11378334)

No company on earth uses corporate counsel for this sort of thing. Apple hired two outside firms.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by eric_h on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @10:08AM (#11381555)

I know nothing about corporate law, thanks for the info.

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Re:U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing ... by discordance on Monday March 28, 2016 @07:06PM (#11378188)

I don't think this is a question particularly about Apple, but more so around the system. If it were another entity without the same financial backing how would they be able to handle it?

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