I am no lawyer.

While lower court decisions have gone both ways, according to wikipedia,

    in United States v. Doe, the United States Court of Appeals for the 
   Eleventh Circuit ruled on 24 February 2012 that forcing the decryption of 
   one's laptop violates the Fifth Amendment [1]

So there is hope.

Perhaps a more practical problem is even with a 5 digit pin, it's entirely possible to simply try all combinations. You probably need more than 8 digits before that becomes impossible.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_State...

> even with a 5 digit pin, it's entirely possible to simply try all combinations

Given a long time. Don't forget iOS slows your brute-force attempts down substantially. I'd be curious how long a brute-force attack would take given the current behavior of the OS.

Is there no way to duplicate the whole filesystem onto a computer and try decrypting that? I didn't think they would actually be thumbing in every password combination...

There is supposedly no way of duplicating the secure element which is what controls the encryption.

The US government forced Lavabit to install a back door that didn't exist before (or go out of business, which isn't really an option for Apple). I wonder what is to legally stop the government from forcing Apple to do the same? I guess one answer is that Apple has more resources to fight or lobby.

Lavabit wasn't forced to install a backdoor, the guy running it just kept refusing to comply with previous legal requests which were much narrower in scope. Since he didn't comply they took the nuclear option (which he could have easily prevented).

Whether or not he was in contempt, that's still a bullshit way to approach the problem.

Contempt of court? Fine and then jail him for non-compliance. Seize Lavabit's assets if required. I doubt he would have let it come to that.

But their solution was analogous to "won't give us back that alleged stolen $20 we told you about? We want your whole bank balance."

Aww hell naw.

None of this would have happened if he would have complied with the legal court order.

I guess he made his point, but he screwed over his customers twice in this case. First by dumbing down his crypto to be easier to use and allowing it to be broken as it did by the feds, and second screwing every customer over by not complying and shutting down his service.

Prevented by complying, ie. selling out his customers' privacy?

By not complying he 'sold out' every single one of his customers privacy instead of the sensible choice of complying with the legal order to turn over emails of just one customer.

> Now that the police can't go to Apple for your data, we'll start seeing more judges ordering users to unlock their phones to allow them to be searched

Is not that against 5th amendment?