[btreecat]

> at its own expense.

I don't think that is true. My google-fu is failing me however.

I think I remember the party being compelled to comply is entitled to charge the Gov a fee for this work.

[blisterpeanuts]

I'm curious what Apple would charge for this "service". If I were CEO, I'd request ten billion dollars. A million or so for the time and manhours, and $9.999 billion for the damage to the company's reputation, stock price, etc., that this will cause -- breaking of a promise that "even Apple can't retrieve your data". Suppose Samsung, a non-American company, jumps on this and says, their phones are truly non-crackable and Samsung would not be able to do it, even if they installed a hacked OS to work around the login failure limit. Boom. Apple has just lost millions of sales. Our heavy handed government hard at work, damaging America's best companies.