Over the weekend, James Comey, Director of the FBI, wrote an open letter from his perspective:
The particular legal issue is actually quite narrow. The relief we seek is limited and its value increasingly obsolete because the technology continues to evolve. We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorists passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. Thats it. We dont want to break anyones encryption or set a master key loose on the land. I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesnt. But we cant look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we dont follow this lead.