Ruling: Apple Cannot Be Forced to Unlock iPhone

Apple scored a major legal victory when a judge in Brooklyn said the company cannot be forced to help the FBI unlock the iPhone in a narcotics case.

"Ultimately, the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come," wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein. "I conclude that it does not."

Apple will use that ruling in the much larger case they're fighting involving the iPhone of one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shooting.

The FBI says the data on the iPhone might help them find other terrorists here in the United States, but Apple maintains that writing a code to unlock that one iPhone would compromise the security of millions.

"The only way we know would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the software equivalent of cancer," said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Today Apple's lawyers are on Capitol Hill being questioned by the House Judiciary Committee.