FBI: Attacker's phone possibly accessible without Apple help

In a conference call with reporters, Apple attorneys said it's premature to declare victory in the case because authorities could come back in a few weeks and insist they still need the company's help.

Lawmakers, civil rights advocates and other tech companies have criticized the FBI for not doing more to try to crack the iPhone itself before seeking to force Apple's hand.

"To me, it suggests that either the FBI doesn't understand the technology or they weren't giving us the whole truth when they said there is no other possible way" of examining the phone without Apple's help, said Alex Abdo, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Prosecutors have argued that the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the Dec. 2 attack in which the county food inspector and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered 14 at a holiday luncheon attended by many of his work colleagues.

Apple has argued that the government was seeking "dangerous power" that exceeds the authority of the All Writs Act of 1789 it cited, and violates the company's constitutional rights, harms the Apple brand and threatens the trust of its customers to protect their privacy.

The most viable method involves making a copy of the iPhone's flash memory drive, said Jonathan Zdziarski, a computer expert who specializes in iPhone forensics.

Some experts have also suggested that investigators could use lasers and acid to deconstruct the phone's memory chip, in order to physically examine the encrypted data and the encryption algorithm, in hopes of cracking the code.