Justice Department Wants to Force Apple to Unlock a Dozen More iPhones

Devlin Barrett:

The Justice Department is pursuing court orders to force Apple Inc. to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases around the country, in disputes similar to the current battle over a terrorist’s locked phone, according to people familiar with the matter.

The other phones are at issue in cases where prosecutors have sought, as in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror case, to use an 18th-century law called the All Writs Act to compel the company to help them bypass the passcode security feature of phones that may hold evidence, these people said.

The specifics of the roughly dozen cases haven’t been disclosed publicly, but they don’t involve terrorism charges, these people said.

This is going to get a whole of a lot uglier before it gets better. If it gets better.