Apple: FBI seeks 'dangerous power' in fight over phone

WASHINGTON (AP) — In its first salvo in a court fight that pits digital privacy rights against national security, Apple Inc. asked a federal magistrate to reverse her order forcing the company to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone.

The Thursday filing — a day before its formal objection was due and as FBI Director James Comey defended the FBI stance on Capitol Hill — accused the federal government of seeking "dangerous power" through the courts and of trampling on the Cupertino-based company's constitutional rights.

The arguments by Apple attorneys, outlined a day before the company's annual shareholders meeting scheduled for Friday, built upon those voiced by the company's chief executive and supporters in the last week and set the stage for a prolonged fight with legal arguments that may take the issue as far as the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department is proposing an unprecedented and "boundless interpretation" of the law that, if left unchecked, could bring disastrous repercussions, the company warned in a memo submitted to Magistrate Sheri Pym in California that aggressively challenges policy justifications put forward by the Obama administration.

The court fight is set on new ground that could create meaningful precedent and establish new legal boundaries on how technology is dealt with in the national security context when encrypted devices increasingly proliferate and so many of the overarching laws governing their use are antiquated.

Apple compared forcing it to create software that doesn't exist to weaken the iPhone's locks to forcing a journalist to publish false information to arrest a fugitive or forcing another software company to implant a virus in a customer's computer so the government could eavesdrop.