[tod222]

> With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75% are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact.

[Emphasis added.]

His team will bluff its way into the phone.

(Quoted from McAfee's original op-ed referenced by the original linked article: www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-ill-decrypt-san-bernardino-phone-for-free-2016-2)

[dogma1138]

The problem is that there is no one to bluff at this point, I'm still not sure what exactly happened but apparently some one "changed" the password, the reports conflict as to whom actually done it and very between LEO techs (mainly FBI) to the IT department of the county pretty much unlinking the device from the Apple ID used or initiating a password reset in which case the old password is no longer valid for the backups of the device.

I've tried to go over the documents that the FBI submitted to the court and I couldn't get a clear answer who owned the device, but it seemed that it was at least partially managed by the county.

The FBI had the original Apple ID password and could access the device in theory but it seems now that after it's been unlinked or some one has changed it to a completely random password (as it doesn't seem like some one did it intentionally to interfere with the investigation) so there is no one to really socially engineer.

[iSnow]

>The FBI had the original Apple ID password and could access the device in theory

That makes it pretty clear which institution switched the Apple-ID on the device, don't you think?