NEW YORK—A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Justice Department cannot use a 227-year-old law to force Apple to provide the FBI with access to locked iPhone data, dealing a blow to the government in its battle with the company over privacy and public safety.
The ruling, by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, applied narrowly to one Brooklyn drug case, but it gives support to the company’s position in its fight against a California judge’s order that it create specialized software to help the FBI hack into an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation.
Both cases hinge partly on whether a law written long before the computer age, the 1789 All Writs Act, could be used to compel Apple to cooperate with efforts to retrieve data from encrypted phones.
“Ultimately, the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come,” Orenstein wrote. “I conclude that it does not.”
