[ceejayoz]

Warrants trump property rights here, and on top of that it was the county's phone, not the dead guy's.

http://gizmodo.com/the-san-bernardino-terrorists-icloud-pass...

> Technically, the iPhone in question (the one the FBI is demanding that Apple unlock) was purchased by the San Bernardino Department of Health. And as security researcher Christopher Soghoian has pointed out on Twitter, the Department tried to reset the phone’s iCloud password remotely in the hours after the attack. The department hoped to gain information from a possible back-up of the phone to iCloud. Instead, it rendered the account useless.

[avn2109]

My point is that a warrant allowing seizure of evidence does not transfer legal ownership to the the FBI. If the county owned the phone, then fine. It remained the county's, not the FBI's, regardless of any investigative warrants.