The iPhone saga: Apple hindering a criminal probe only it can assist

HARD battle lines are being drawn in the standoff between Apple Inc and the US government over the unlocking of an iPhone, with two types of security issues ostensibly at stake - data protection and customer privacy on the one hand, and public protection, or national security, on the other.

In rejecting a federal court order to accede to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) request for access to the data on the iPhone 5c used by one of the assailants in the recent San Bernardino massacre, Apple maintains that it is being asked to "build a backdoor to the iPhone", and that compliance with the court order would open a Pandora's box of privacy issues and set "a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone's civil liberties", with the "data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people" at stake.

The case is "about much more than a single phone or a single investigation", the tech giant insists - a stance that has drawn support from industry peers including Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as civil liberty groups. Microsoft's Bill Gates is a notable exception though - he sees the FBI request as a limited "one-time" demand that's "no different" from accessing bank and telephone records.