The US Justice Department is to seek a court order to force Apple Inc to help unlock an iPhone seized as part of a New York drugs case, signalling the battle between Washington and Silicon Valley over encryption is far from over.
Two weeks ago, the US government dropped its attempt to get Apple to crack an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the December attacks in San Bernardino, California, saying the FBI had unlocked the phone without Apple's help.
Some observers thought the government would back away from the New York case, since the defendant has already pleaded guilty.
But in a letter filed in a New York federal court, the Justice Department said: "The government continues to require Apple's assistance in accessing the data that it is authorised to search by warrant."
An Apple lawyer said the firm was disappointed but not surprised that the government would continue to fight in New York after giving up in California.
He said the appeal belied the FBI's claim that the San Bernardino case was about a single phone and the need to stop future terror acts.
Apple, with the strong support of most of the technology industry, argues that requiring it to circumvent the encryption in its own products would inevitability open the door for hackers and undermine security for everyone.
The company has said it is willing to take the issue to the Supreme Court.
Jill Bronfman, director of the Privacy and Technology Project at University of California Hastings College of the Law, questioned whether the facts involved in the New York case would make a strong test case over encryption.
While extracting data from the phone in the New York case would be an easier technical feat for Apple, the facts in the case are far less compelling, she said.
"If you want to do a balancing test and you've got terrorism on one side of the scale, that's a very heavy weight," she said.
"We'll see how the request is balanced when we have drugs on the other side."
Apple is scheduled to file papers in opposition of the Justice Department's appeal by 15 April.
In the New York case, prosecutors want to open an iPhone 5s owned by Jun Feng, 45, a methamphetamine dealer who claimed to have forgotten his passcode.
Mr Feng has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the case, but prosecutors say his phone could hold information leading to other suspects.
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