Apple asks court to reject govt request to hack iPhone

NEW YORK

Apple on Friday asked a judge to reject a Justice Department request for the company to hack into an iPhone in a New York drug case.

The California-based company insisted in court documents that the government has not exhausted all alternative methods to extract data from the iPhone believed to belong to Jun Feng, who pleaded guilty last October as part of a drug investigation.

The tech giant recently refused a judge’s order to assist the FBI to hack an iPhone belonging to one of the gunmen in the deadly San Bernardino, California, terror shooting.

The government later said that it had unlocked the device without Apple's help.

But the head of the FBI said last week that the method to unlock the iPhone in the San Bernardino case may not work for other iPhones in different cases.

Meanwhile, a judge ordered Apple in February to provide technical assistance to the FBI in a gang-related case in Boston, according to unsealed documents from a Massachusetts federal court last week.

A group of lawmakers announced last week that they are working on a bipartisan bill that would require smartphone manufacturers to decrypt their devices if law enforcement agencies request assistance.