Apple has won the first round in its decryption brawl with Brooklyn feds.
In a hotly anticipated decision, a Brooklyn magistrate judge ruled Monday that prosecutors can’t force the company to unlock a drug dealer’s phone.
Judge James Orenstein said the feds can’t rely on a 1789 law to validate hacking demands.
The Brooklyn case is playing out alongside a similar fight in California, where Apple rejected an order to bust into the phone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
Apple is currently fighting roughly 15 federal orders to bust into devices in federal courts across the country.
Prosecutors argue that their help is essential in fighting crime, while Apple counters that the requests are threatening personal privacy.
Apple had previously agreed to break into at least 70 phones in federal proceedings until they abruptly objected in the case of Jun Feng, a Queens drug dealer.
Until now, prosecutors successfully relied on the 1789 All Writs Act, a broad statute that allowed them access to private information in criminal cases.
But Apple now contends that the dusty law is no longer sufficient to justify federal decryption demands –and Orenstein agreed.
“Ultimately, the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come,” he wrote in his ruling.
Orenstein previously said he was uncomfortable with rubber-stamping the decryption order because of a lack of clarity on the issue from Congress.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors argued that the company had abruptly and inexplicably changed its position.
Law-enforcement officials – including NYPD brass – have blasted Apple for endangering critical investigations.
But Apple is digging in – and staunchly declined to comply with the California judge’s order to hack into the terrorist’s phone.
An Apple rep said the case is an affirmation of Apple’s arguments and “an important precedent that will come into play in the San Bernardino case.”