The government had its point of view, and Apple had theirs.
The premise of the government’s request for the order was that the FBI could not access the terrorist’s iPhone without Apple complying with the requested order. Apple sought to vacate the order. The order became moot when the FBI accessed the phone without Apple’s help using technology developed by an existing vendor to the FBI.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report — on why the FBI said it could not crack the iPhone without Apple’s help, but in fact wound up doing just that — concluded that in essence within the FBI the criminal cyber security experts and the national security cyber security experts were not communicating with one another. The national security cyber security team had the ability, through a vendor-provided solution, to crack the iPhone without Apple’s help. And did so, once their help was enlisted. Here is the IG’s report:
https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/o1803.pdf
Here is a quote from it: “We believe all these disconnects resulted in a delay in seeking and obtaining vendor assistance that ultimately proved fruitful, and that as a result of the belatedly-obtained technical solution, the government was required to withdraw from its previously stated position that it could not access the iPhone in this critical case, and by implication in other cases, without first compelling cooperation from the manufacturer.”
The IG report came about because senior FBI officials grew worried that through their own lack of proper information about FBI capabilities, they had misinformed Congress.
