[asimpletune]

tl;dr hacking is allowed, abusing gov't authority to compel is cheating.

I don't think it's really the same as "what they were asking for" at all.

a.) they didn't compel a company to secretly do it for them

b.) the back door is targeted, I.e. not mass surveillance

As far as I understand, they did the work themselves (modified android OS), and their methods were targeted. A "bad guy" could only get this special, hacked phone, from other "bad guys". This wasn't the same thing as, sending a mole to get work at Cisco and install an undetectable zero-day in all communication infrastructure switches world-wide. And it's definitely a far cry from forcing apple to make a modified iOS on their behalf.

No, they pretty much did what hackers do, and as far as I'm concerned, that's fair game.