Apple lashed out against the government on Tuesday in its battle over the iPhone used by San Bernardino
In a brief filed in federal court, Apple said the government wants to "commandeer Apple to design, create, test, and validate a new operating system that does not exist" -- and whose creation would pose a dangerous threat to cybersecurity.
The FBI has asked a federal court to uphold an order issued last month that would force Apple to help break into Farook's iPhone. A court hearing is scheduled for March 22.
Apple hammered home its core legal arguments on Tuesday.
First, it said the FBI's request violates the First Amendment by demanding Apple employee engineers write code to help law enforcement.
"(W)riting code requires a choice of (1) language, (2) audience, and (3) syntax and vocabulary, as well as the creation of (4) data structures, (5) algorithms to manipulate and transform data, (6) detailed textual descriptions explaining what code is doing, and (7) methods of communicating information," Apple writes in explaining why it believes code is speech protected by the First Amendment.
Apple also argues that the government's demands would infringe Apple's constitutional right to due process of law.
Apple's argument: The government wants to force it to "send individual citizens into a super-secure facility to write code for several weeks on behalf of the government on a mission that is contrary to the values of the company and these individuals."
In a series of motions and rebuttals over the past several weeks, Apple's fight with the Justice Department has grown increasingly bitter.
