What's next in legal fight over San Bernardino killer's iPhone?
What's next for Apple CEO Tim Cook as he vows to fight a federal judge's order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino killers?
Apple has two choices, according to CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman, the wife of New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who has called on Apple to help law enforcement access cellphones.
"It either complies, which it has clearly said it will not, or it appeals," Klieman said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning." "So what you have is a magistrate who has issues this order. They can appeal to the district court. They appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and they eventually get to the United States Supreme Court. Both sides may want this decided by the Supreme Court."
In a message to customers, Cook described what is at stake, saying:
"The implications of the government's demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone's device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone's microphone or camera without your knowledge."
Asked whether this could be a watershed moment, Klieman said it depends "because this is a very narrow case."
"If you've got a narrow case like this - you have two dead people who were engaged in a terrorist act - to get into see where they were walking, where they were during the time where we don't know, to look into their records, to look in to see if ISIS was directing them, that's narrow," Klieman said. "It's about two people who were terrorists. It's not about all of us in the world."