There‘s a lot to unpack here, and one key question is whether „capabilities available to national security programs“ — that is, technologies used for FBI‘s counterintelligence programs — can and should be used in pursing criminal investigations and prosecutions. (If such technologies are used in criminal cases, the technologies may have to be revealed as part of court proceedings, which would bother the counterintelligence personnel in the FBI who don‘t want to publicize the tools they use.) But the case against Apple Inc. was based on a blanket assertion by FBI that neither its technical divisions nor the vendors the agency works with had access to any technical measures to break into Farook‘s company-issued iPhone. (Farook had destroyed his personal iPhones, and the FBI‘s eventually successful unlocking of his employer-issued phone apparently produced no evidence relating to the terrorist plot.)

Was the problem just bureaucratic miscommunication?