content: You're partially correct, mostly wrong... and I don't mean that in a diminuitive sense.  The parts about the right to data and the warrant are correct.  The parts about the technical details about encryption are, sadly, incorrect... unlike what @BobOki would lead you to believe. You see, in an ELI5 way of putting things: Later iPhones have hardware-based encryption, unlike the software-based encryption the earlier models have.  This amounts to (essentially) a physical chip, in this iPhone, whose sole purpose is to encrypt/decrypt the contents of the phone.  This chip is also VERY unique to this phone, and this phone alone... much like your MAC address is unique to your wired/wireless networking card. This chip is "activated" when you put in a correct passphrase, and remains inactive at all other times.  This means that there is no realistic way of decrypting this device without the chip/passphrase combo... which wouldn't be so bad if you could just try all of the options... there's only 10000 different permutaitons, which would only take about two weeks to try them all... The REAL problem is that this hardware-based encryption is coupled with the "wipe device after 10 failed unlocks" setting (which we will call F10, for short).  In other words, the FBI and Apple ONLY get ten tries before all the data is lost... and I wouldn't be surprised if those idiots at the FBI tried 9 of them already.  But, since the data is hardware-encrypted, even Apple can't get the passphrase from the phone, and all they can do (at best) is guess. So, the FBI is faced with one of two options:   Physically crack open the phone, physically disassemble the chip, and find the "fingerprint" encoded on the chip which will decrypt the phone.  This is SUPER risky as there is a HIGH chance that they will corrupt some/all of the data in the process, and a LOW chance of actually recovering anything useful.  In other words, there is a high failure rate on this method of decryption.   Force Apple to create a new OS which either gets rid of the F10 setting, gets rid of the need to activate this chip with a passphrase at all, or both.  This is beneficial for the FBI because this new OS can be installed on virtually any iPhone, and they'll never need Apple's help ever again.  This compromised OS would posess what is commonly referred to as a "backdoor" in technical circles.   Now, Apple was ordered (by the courts) to do #2, but they refused.  Now, the FBI wants their source code, so they can modify the OS to their liking, in order to decrypt this phone through the chip.  Apple's stance: The reason that Apple doesn't want to do this is tenfold. As was stated, there are monetary/manpower issues with working "for" the FBI with this phone.  Also, it circumvents every single security policy Apple has implemented on the iPhone.  Then you have the potential that this new OS could get in the hands of one "bad guy" and subsequently leak to the entire world, making iOS the LEAST secure OS available. Also, you have to understand the marketing stance here... it's not a direct marketing ploy, but a trust issue.  Apple will lose customers based on the idea that they will just unlock any phone, at any time, for any reason.  The opposite will happen if they prove that they're invested in their user's security.  We're not talking about Apple watching you... that's a story for another day... we're talking about handing over your personal data to a third party. What if McDonald's wanted your photos from your iPhone?  If Apple is willing to unlock phones, why wouldn't they do it for their pals at McD's?  What about China... when they find an American spy, and they want the data from that American's phone?  When does the unlocking stop?  Well, Apple has taken a stance and said "Right here, right now" and they're refusing to create a backdoor, and I applaud them for that.  The FBI's stance: I'm not sure where the FBI is coming from here.  I thought the NSA's job was to decrypt encrypted messages of suspected terrorists.  And don't shoot me that line about "these were American citizens, and the NSA can't legally do that to American citizens" because they've been bulk collecting (and decrypting) the encrypted data of CONUS Americans for years... under the guise of off-shore data. You see, when you E-mail a photo of your puppy from your house (let's say you're in New York) to your Aunt (let's say she's in California), that photo isn't actually in New York or California on your respective computers.  It's on an E-mail server, maybe with Google and Yahoo.  Now, both companies like to "defragment" (again, ELI5) their servers, which means moving massive amounts of data off of one server, and slowly bringing it back in an ordered way... maybe you get lucky and your photo ends up going to a server in Oregon... or maybe you get unlucky and it goes to some server in Europe... Now your photograph is off-shore data coming into the US, and the NSA can collect it, decrypt it, and save it forever under the guise of national security.  Is your puppy dog a part of ISIS?  No.  Is your communication between you and your aunt a matter of national security?  No.  Will any of this permanent collection of data actually do any good?  No. But how is this any different to this specific iPhone?  Both the iPhone and your E-mail belong to US citizens, who are/were CONUS.  Both your E-mail and the iPhone were collected under the guise of national security. The only difference is that the NSA is miraculously not in the picture with this iPhone... for some reason... And, it's not like their job is to manufacture cars, and they only decrypt data on the weekends, so they might not have time for this.  And it's not like they are picky about the data they decrypt and collect (look up the NSA's past with "bulk" data collection).  And it's not like they don't have teams specifically for cracking certain devices, like the iPhone. So where are they?  Why are they not doing their jobs here?  Why do we HAVE to get Apple to create a backdoor in their OS, instead of getting the NSA to do it?