content: But again, go back to the warrant requirements.  The government is not asking Apple to universally compromise the security of its software so that they could decrypt and access the data whenever they wanted.  They are simply asking Apple to make a software that they can keep to themselves and use to bypass the security measures of the specific phone that the FBI wants access to and can access after the proper warrant requirements are met.  There will be no OS modifications that threaten the security of everyone's iPhones, especially when you consider the fact that the phone wasn't running the latest version of the operating system anyway.  Now again, if it turns out that this request is impossible--because I don't have t  3e2f  he tech smarts to validate whether or not it is possible--then this is all moot and the government's out of luck. Now, regarding your proposed solution of cloning the phone and its data into a virtual machine, that sounds like a viable alternative.  Once again, I plead guilty to not understanding the technology well enough, but if the government is able to do that sort of thing, then they have no reason to make this request to Apple.  Do you know of instances where people did something along these lines with others' phones when they couldn't get into it?  It would certainly be suspicious if it were really that easy. Lastly, in a very refined sense, the government not having anyone else to turn to is a valid legal argument, but only in very specific circumstances.  Namely, the request must be necessary for the investigation to continue, it must be agreeable to the usages and principles of law, the company must be reasonably unburdened by compliance, and a judge must write up the court order.  All of these conditions are being met; this doesn't seem like the type of court order that's unreasonable or oversteps the bounds of authority.  And again, I'm saying this as someone who has very little trust in government.