Scott Greenfield writes:
Near as I can tell, the first person to pick up on footnote 9 in the government’s response to Apple was Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel.
DOJ has submitted its response to Apple in the Syed Farook case. Amid invocations of a bunch of ominous precedents — including Dick Cheney’s successful effort to hide his energy task force, Alberto Gonzales effort to use kiddie porn as an excuse to get a subset of all of Google’s web searches, and Aaron Burr’s use of encryption — it included this footnote explaining why it hadn’t just asked for Apple’s source code.
That’s a reference to the Lavabit appeal, in which Ladar Levison was forced to turn over its encryption keys.
That it was a threat is beyond question. The snideness of “if apple would prefer” leaves no doubt. This refers to a court ordering Apple to turn over its code to the government, handing over the keys to the technological Kingdom.
Read more on Simple Justice.
And no, I’m not posting this to dump on Levison, but to point out the relationship to his case and why it isn’t precedent, as Scott explains.
Related: Cryptome has uploaded a number of filings from the Lavabit case, here.