Apple has a large investment in that its products are secure. Breaking the security on even one phone will mean that it can be forced to do the same again.

The US government has a legitimate reason for getting the information, but if it gets legal authority Apple loses out big time. I believe that it would be in Apple's best interest to give them access and make it clear that it is a one off gesture.

This is a prime example of “for the greater good,” bear with me on this. I am opposed to the death penalty, that is, a governments legislated right to take the life of a citizen. Not because I value all life equally, but we rely on an unbiased judicial system to pass judgement. Nazi Germany had a judicial system but the courts were the implement of the government, detractors of government policy were sentenced to death, legally.

I view the Apple scenario in the same light. Governments cannot be trusted to use the power of surveillance for the sole purpose of protecting the wider society against anti social forces. Encryption will be used by the goodies and the baddies, but that is the price we pay in staving off totalitarianism.

As Abraham Lincoln said “those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security will ultimately lose both."

I would have thought that Apple would have a legal duty to assist the FBI in this case; it certainly has a moral duty. The chance of the FBI wanting to access the privacy of 99.9% of American Apple customers is nil. This case is about a rotten terrorist!

Apple's refusal to the FBI to unlock an Apple phone, phone having belonged to a terrorist, is an opportunity to show separation between share market traded corporations and government agencies. One more bit of quick judgment, media listeners who can't think to doubt, that the news story is propaganda.

Simple minds will believe anything that which reinforces prompted believed memories to what people want to believe. Entertainment is the reinforcement of believed childhood judgments of feeling smart for understanding similar ideas within stories.
Separation between: media organisations; law enforcement; government; church leaders, are believed because doubt creates fear of childhood judgments being incorrect.

Same idea that gets aged five years children to believe in a religion, children will believe in the religion for their entire lives.
Adults will believe in aged five years childhood judgments in fear of being incorrect, reinforced in primary school, fear of being seen by everyone in a classroom for answering teacher questions incorrectly.

Media's constant separation scandal stories prompting listeners to revisit memory judgments, felt to be correct, reinforces beliefs in an economic system that at some point in time, religion's end of time, will remove wealth from people's spending ability.

How could Apple have either a moral or a legal obligation to use something that doesn't exist?

Why doesn't the FBI invent the technology, or pay another company to do so?

1. In US law programme code is held to be speech. So the US government is demanding that Apple employees write particular speech. How far is that from demanding journalists write articles with a certain slant?...for the greater good, mind you.

2. If Apple writes this code, what are the chances of it not being made available, either by design or theft, for the use of other governments and agencies? Anyone who thinks there is the slightest chance this genie can be returned to the bottle is naive in the extreme. Who's in favour of the Chinese government being able to break into the phone records of one of its dissidents?

3. I'm just so heartily sick of all of us having to surrender liberties, freedoms and personal data to this or that group so that we can be held safe from terrorism. This is about the San Bernardino killers. These people were the very epitome of the radicalised mohammedan and yet the government weren't able to stop them. Governments are terrified of being seen to profile those most likely to kill in the name of jihad lest they be accused of racism or islamophobia. So the liberties of those who do the killing are protected religiously. But those who are targets are expected to give up rights left, right and centre. Well I want it to change. I want my liberties back and I want the jihadis and potential jihadis hounded to within an inch of their liberties - liberties that they will remove from everyone given the chance.

So governments should do their job and protect their people. Instead they want to appear to be doing their job by attacking their people. One third of the army's rations are halal. What a world these 'protectors of liberty' (/sarc) have created.