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It stinks that the case ended like this — without setting a sensible precedent — but I think there is still some upside:

FBI director Comey's "Going Dark" narrative no longer holds water with anyone who's paying attention. He cried wolf so loud he's been heard on every continent. If and when he tries this again, he'll get a ton more blowback.

Similarly, Obama's jibes about security "absolutism" now appear ridiculous. As are his criticism of impenetrable black boxes protecting child molesters. What he really wants is for the Emmental-like extensions of our brains to have even more holes. That's an obviously un-winnable argument.

Also, the bar for proving you've tried all possible alternatives for gaining access just got a lot higher in applying the All Writs Act. It took three months plus a month of major international news stories specifically about this court case to gain entry — something that might really be impossible to achieve next time. But now everyone knows when they swore under oath many times in multiple public venues that they couldn't gain access, what they really meant was "not yet" and not "it's impossible".

Finally, Apple should now be motivated to remove themselves as the weak link in their security ecosystem. System updates shouldn't be possible without first wiping the information needed to derive the encryption key or first supplying that key. I can also dream about them open sourcing their code to allow security researchers to bug hunt (an impossible dream). And maybe they'll change their minds on bug bounties. Whatever happens, it's now beyond doubt that foreign entities are exploiting vulnerabilities in the iPhone and we all expect Apple to beef up their security accordingly — regardless of how this may hinder law enforcement.