More Apple for the day

The BBC has yet another article about the war between Apple and the government:

Apple has accused the US government of trying to "smear" it with "desperate" and "unsubstantiated" claims. It comes as the Department of Justice (DOJ) renewed its demand for access to data on the iPhone owned by San Bernardino, California gunman Rizwan Farook.
Apple is appealing a court order for it to unlock the iPhone, calling it unprecedented, but, in its latest court filing, the DOJ claims Apple helped China's government to access more than four thousand iPhones.
Farook and his wife killed fourteen people last December before police fatally shot them.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations (the FBI) wants Apple to create a so-called "back door" that would unlock Farook's iPhone. It says the phone may contain crucial evidence, but has been unable to break into it.
Apple has so far refused to comply with the court order, obtained last month. The company's chief executive, Tim Cook, has previously called the court order "dangerous", "chilling", and "unprecedented". It has argued the government is asking for a security hack that could be exploited by both governments and criminals.
The DoJ said Apple's stance was "corrosive" to institutions trying to protect "liberty and rights".
Apple's lawyer, Bruce Sewell, told reporters that the tone of the latest DOJ submission "reads like an indictment". He said: "Everybody should beware, because it seems like disagreeing with the Department of Justice means you must be evil and anti-American, but nothing could be further from the truth."
Prosecutors claim Apple's own data shows that China demanded information from Apple regarding more than four thousand iPhones in the first half of 2015, and Apple produced data 74% of the time.
But Sewell said the new filing relied on thinly-sourced news reports to inaccurately suggest that Apple had colluded with the Chinese government to undermine iPhone buyers' security.
The DoJ claimed in its court filing that Apple had attacked the FBI investigation as "shoddy" and tried to portray itself as a "guardian of Americans' privacy". This "rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government", the DoJ said.
Apple has appealed against the original court order, arguing that it violates the company's constitutional rights.
The UN human rights chief has backed Apple; read the BBC article here.
"This case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld," Apple said.
The iPhone maker has received support for other tech giants, including Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
The FBI says Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were inspired by Islamist militants when they killed fourteen people at a party on 2 December 2015. The couple later died in a shootout with police, and the FBI said it wants to read the data on Farook's work phone to investigate any links with militant groups.
A hearing into the case is scheduled for 22 March 2016 in a California Federal court. Apple's president has said he is willing to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Rico says this is far from over...