Apple fights FBI's iPhone demand as 'oppressive'

Apple on Thursday asked a court to quash a judicial order that would force the company to help the Justice Department unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, arguing that the order imposed an "unprecedented and oppressive" burden on the tech company.

The motion to vacate was the latest step in a high-stakes legal battle that could stretch out for months and possibly wind up at the Supreme Court.

The filing comes as Apple and the U.S. government are engaging in a public back-and-forth that in the coming weeks will extend to an appearance before Congress and a court hearing. While the debate centers on a locked iPhone 5C, it has far-reaching consequences about the way a digital society balances privacy with law enforcement.

"This is not a case about one isolated iPhone," Apple wrote in its motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. "Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe."

The order last week from a magistrate judge in Riverside, Calif., did not ask Apple to break the phone's encryption but rather to disable the feature that deletes the data on the phone after 10 incorrect tries at entering a password. That way, the government can try to crack the password using "brute force" - attempting thousands or millions of combinations without risking the deletion of the data.

The FBI has insisted that it is not asking for a back door or a master key, and instead argues that its requests are narrow and limited to this case. Apple has publicly pushed back on that in recent days, with Tim Cook, the company's chief executive, saying it "would be bad for America" if the firm complied with the government.

"This is the hardest question I have seen in government," FBI Director James B. Comey said Thursday at a House intelligence committee hearing. No matter the court outcome, he said, the broader policy question is one that the people and Congress should decide.

Comey wrote in a public letter earlier this week that the iPhone in question could contain information about other terrorists. On Thursday, Apple said the government had offered "nothing more than speculation" about what the iPhone could produce.

Apple and its tech-industry supporters are casting the issue as sweeping, with "chilling" implications. The government is striving to paint the matter as narrowly as possible, stressing that authorities are asking for a software modification to apply to only one phone, which was used by one of the attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook.