Apple brings the Constitution to an iPhone fight - CNET

A judge will need to determine it the govement's request to Apple is reasonable, said Harvey Rishikof, a Washington D.C.-based attoey who chairs an American Bar Association's committee on law and national security.

In Apple's court filing Thursday, user privacy manager Erik Neuenschwander estimated that fulfilling a judge's order to create a "back door" into the iPhone would take six to 10 engineers and employees putting in "a very substantial portion of their time" over two to four weeks. "These individuals would otherwise performing engineering tasks related to Apple's products," he said.

"It may come down to a judge deciding if those steps are overly burdensome," Rishikof said.

No court has granted the govement the power to force people to weaken the protections on their computers, an Apple executive said on a conference call Thursday. In addition, the govement has been hesitant to force citizens to decrypt their devices. Apple's executives now argue that this issue should be decided by lawmakers.

The hearing next Tuesday, titled "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy," will also include testimony from FBI Director James Comey and District Attoey for New York County Cyrus Vance Jr. It will begin at 1 p.m. ET.

"As technology companies have made great strides to enhance the security of Americans' personal and private information, law enforcement agencies face new challenges when attempting to access encrypted information," Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) said in a joint statement.

"Americans have a right to strong privacy protections," said Goodlatte and Conyers, "and Congress should fully examine the issue to be sure those are in place while finding ways to help law enforcement fight crime and keep us safe."

Apple's Cook, meanwhile, has waged a public campaign against the court's order, saying it could endanger the privacy protections on hundreds of millions of its devices. The company wants Congress, not the courts, to be the ultimate decision makers.

"It should be done all in the open for people so their voices can be heard through their representatives in Congress," Cook said in an interview with ABC News that aired Wednesday. Cook also said he plans to speak with President Barack Obama, but he didn't say when.

An FBI spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The battle between the world's most valuable company and the world's most powerful govement has become a flash point in the debate over privacy in the Digital Age. Billions of devices have been connected to the Inteet over the past several years, including phones that power apps containing financial and medical information. Mobile phones have become the key way people access services ranging from news sites to social networks to bank accounts.

Several of the most powerful figures in the technology industry have spoken out in Apple's defense, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose Android mobile software is used on most of the world's phones. Microsoft has indicated that it plans to back Apple in a court filing. Tech heavyweights Facebook, Google and Twitter also plan to file an amicus brief in support of Apple.