The FBI was losing in the court of public opinion, but the case was still up to a judge, and Apple made it clear it was willing to take its fight all the way to the Supreme Court. But the week before I arrived in Miami, there was a twist. Without warning, the Justice Department dropped its case, informing the judge it had found another way to access Farook’s data. It no longer needed Apple’s help. Unnamed hackers had approached the FBI with an alternative way in, a hacking method that allowed the government to bypass Apple’s encryption to access Farook’s iPhone—a zero-day exploit. And perhaps
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