John Gruber, breaking down the most recent detail in the San Bernardino case:
The FBI screwed this up by directing the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health to reset Farook’s Apple ID password. They did not, and apparently could not, change anything on the phone itself. But once they reset the Apple ID password, the phone could not back up to iCloud, because the phone needed to be updated with the newly-reset Apple ID password — and they could not do that because they can’t unlock the phone.
And then this, which is what’s been rattling around in my head:
The only possible explanations for this are incompetence or dishonesty on the part of the FBI. Incompetence, if they didn’t realize that resetting the Apple ID password could prevent the iPhone from backing up to iCloud. Dishonesty, if they directed the county to do this knowing the repercussions, with the goal of setting up this fight to force Apple to create a back door for them in iOS. I’m not sure which to believe at this point. I’d like to know exactly when this directive to reset the Apple ID password was given — ”in the hours after the attack” leaves a lot of wiggle room.