Quote Originally Posted by RblDiver View Post
...How is that not adding a back door? That's providing a way to skip the normal rules. Even if such a thing were created that would leave the data encrypted but make it so you can have unlimited tries to break the encryption, such a thing can and would get into the hands of bad actors, who would exploit it. Hence, backdoor.
You need to check the definition of a backdoor. Adding a global key that would give them entry would be a backdoor. This is creating a vulnerability they had fixed but that's not the same thing AND it's not being applied to every iPhone.

In this case, what they are asking for is a software update to a single phone. I have two problems with this, the first being compelling a private entity (person or corporation) to make something and the second being opening the door to other prosecutors and investigators wanting the same thing. OTOH, I don't buy the arguments coming from Apple either -- clearly they can produce a new software version and they would know exactly where in the code to stop it from auto-wiping after exceeding the built-in counter. Saying they can't do that is a whole lot of hooey. I'd be far more inclined to believe them if they said they were concerned the government would replicate the special software for illicit use on other iPhones or something else -- but that's NOT what they've said - and they could have proposed ways to ensure the special software load doesn't get out into the wild.