[ethbro]

The government is not capable of conducting the search on its own in the sense of "access the contents of this particular iPhone at this point in time." Unless you have read some very different material than I have or are using different definitions?

Richard Clark seems to think the NSA would have the capability, and they might, but the FBI apparently (and believably) doesn't.

Apple "assisting in a search" is a little overly summarizing in my opinion. I think there's a difference between "we received your warrant, here's the information we have" and "we received your warrant, we will dedicate engineers employed by our company to actively exploit the security we designed into our products."

Is there precedent for compelling lockmakers to provide technical expertise in defeating their own lock systems? I can't imagine that's never come up historically.