"For the reasons discussed above, the FBI cannot itself modify the software on Farook's iPhone without access to the source code and Apple’s private electronic signature. The government did not seek to compel Apple to turn those over because it believed such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple programmers."
Currently, the best practices assume that such "keys to the kingdom" are, for example by Apple, only in some hardware devices, guarded, needing presence of more than one person to be used and that every signature made with them is permanently considered and logged. Even if FBI protects the keys, their use of the things they sign with them won't be able to be followed: these would be just plain easily copyable programs.
Where would it be ?
Now if that isnt the easiest way to start a civil war, I dont know what is.
This is just theatrics. This can all be done behind closed doors without public involvement. The terms of this debate were chosen by the executive branch to vilify companies and individual supporters of encryption.
What the government wants is to have this debate in the open and for a large enough portion of the public to accept the argument the government should be able to break into your phone with a warrant.
The "with a warrant" clause is good cop - bad cop. The FBI is making the high road argument that all this is legit and above board and to fight terrorism. On the other hand the NSA is doing the dirty work and then oh by the way now the data they have collected is available to the FBI... You know to fight terrorism.
Indeed. It's more than likely that the FBI could just ask the NSA to break the phone, but if they do so then they have just admitted that the NSA can already do this and will have publicly exposed that capability.
If the FBI is smart then the plan is likely to fight Apple to the end, lose, and then have terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and members of the woodwind sections of orchestras move to the iPhone because "it's so secure the FBI can't get in!" all while letting the NSA break any iPhone they need and bootstrap the found evidence through parallel construction.
I, and Apple too, claim that the terms were chosen to establish a precedent that would enable FBI to next time request from Apple to change their products all without going through the process of creating new laws. Because the current laws don't allow that demand, to "make such software" or "change hardware that way." The FBI cites the "All Writs Act" as what gives them that right (their current demand is already "write new software with a hole"), and that act absolutely doesn't contain anything more than "the courts can issue writs." (!) It sounds like a comedy but it's serious:
Is the software signing key used to sign the OS the Achilles Heel of the Secure Enclave? If so than does Apple resort to a un-updatable, pure-hardware implementation of the Enclave? Would that prevent the FBI from decrypting phone data even if they installed a modified OS?
It's theorized that Apple considered this option but chose not to go this route because it's a little riskier and a software bug might permanently brick 100 million phones. They may reconsider now.