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The United States Justice Department said on Friday that it has withdrawn a request compelling Apple Inc to cooperate in unlocking an iPhone related to a drug case in New York following a third-party providing a passcode to the authorities to access the handset.
The Justice Department dropped the request to Apple after prosecutors filed a letter in the federal court at Brooklyn, New York, stating that investigators successfully used the passcode on Thursday to access the concerned iPhone, and hence, they did not require any assistance from the Cupertino tech titan in this regard, CNBC reported.
A statement issues by the Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce read as they earlier said, such cases "have never been about setting a court precedent." Instead, these cases are about the ability and requirement of the law enforcement to obtain evidence on devices following lawful court orders as well as search warrants.
When contacted, a spokesman from Apple Inc refused to comment on the issue.
Incidentally, the letter from the prosecutors caused the sudden death of a case that was being closely watched. Currently, the Justice Department was hearing an appeal by a federal magistrate judge who held that he could not compel Apple to help the authorities.
Earlier, another federal court dropped a similar request that compelled Apple to help authorities access an iPhone 5c used by one of the shooters in San Bernadino killings on Dec. 2 after a third party provided the FBI with a technique to hack the device successfully.
It may be recalled that prosecutors have been confronting a ruling issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein on Feb. 29 wherein stating that he was not authorized to force Apple to unlock the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug probe, the Daily Mail reported.
The case paved the way for the government's effort to force Apple help authorities in accessing the iPhone of Rizwan Farook, one of the two accused in the San Bernardino massacre that claimed 14 lives and injured 22 others.
Although the Justice Department dropped its order to Apple after a third party provided a technique to unlock the San Bernardino phone, prosecutors continued appealing against Orenstein's ruling.
Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey recently said that the technique used to unlock the San Bernardino iPhone 5c would not be effective for other iPhone models, including the iPhone 5s which was seized from one Jun Feng in the Brooklyn drug case. Different from the iPhone used in the San Bernardino case, Feng's handset operated on iOS 7, an older system, and their encryption technologies were different.
Watch the video on "Apple vs. FBI - Is brute forcing iOS 9 passcode possible?" below:
