There's some, lets call them "technology gaps" in the new provided information.
On the 70 phones unlocked in the past, the actual number is up for debate, but not that they have done it, successfully. What's not understood, but implied above, is that these were old iPhones. The new iOS (the operating system in Apple products) doesn't work like that anymore. Apple simply can't get the data off this phone. Due to customer privacy demands recent iOS versions have more, tougher encryption, so best Apple MIGHT be able to do is grab encrypted files. Those are close to useless without the key. Now if Apple can get to the location the key is stored and read that, then bingo, but I according to the Apple techs, they can't do this any more.
The "wipe" feature is interesting. Typically when a file is deleted, it's not actually deleted. the operating system has essentially a table that says "file A is at location B", when you delete file "B" what normally happens is the table entry is removed and that piece of memory/disk is marked as "available". the data is still there until it is overwritten by something else. That is why "undelete" utilities work, they can piece it all back together.
If all the above is true, this particular phone is pretty much lost. They are not asking Apple to crack this phone, they are asking for a magical back door to bypass the unlock code protections, Given a 4 digit code, there's only 10,000 options, 6 digit code 1,000,000 options. If you disable the unlock protections, it's childs play to use brute force to try all options until you get in.
The issue is, in order to update the OS to do this, the Apple has to build this into the OS, then unlock the phone to upgrade it. See the problem now?
Additionally they want this as part of the OS, which means it's on every iPhone, iPad etc. Regardless of if you trust the government, do you trust the identity thiefs, the terrorist the hackers? Cause once out there, they all will try to crack it.
