[takeda]

You while it makes things easier you don't need to have a source code to break protections.

Crackers broke copy protections for decades without having access to source code of protected games.

The only thing you would need is to have access to private key needed to sign the new code so that phone will accept it, but even that could be broken by hardware engineer.

Anyway the whole thing does not make much sense. Those shooters are already dead, they destroyed their private phones, this was a work phone, they already can access metadata (outgoing/incoming calls etc) from cell provider. FBI went public with this even though in their best interest would be to do it secretly. What does FBI expect in doing this publicly? Did they expect is to cheer for them and complain about evil Apple not helping to break evil terrorists' phone?

It doesn't make much sense... unless the real goal was to make people trust Apple more after Snowden's disclosures. Isn't interesting that Google, Facebook, Microsoft... every company which was previously involved in PRISM supporting Apple? Trusting them benefits both, the agencies and those corporations.

[SoftwareMaven]

> Did they expect us to cheer for them and complain about evil Apple not helping to break evil terrorists' phone?

I think that is exactly what they expected. Terrorists and pedophiles are the best way for federal TLAs to expand their powers.