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The FBI has made attempts to persuade Apple to develop a software to push back encryption on the Apple iPhone from April, 2016. Response to the court order that succeeded these attempts the Cupertino Tech Giant took up a motion stay on the case with consent from majority of the panel members. However, the United States Justice department had been trying to force Apple to aid FBI in unlocking an iPhone that has been captured as an important evidence of the San Bernardino, New York Drug Dealing and Terrorist attack case.

The order was repelled by the US government after FBI reportedly said that it had unlocked the phone without the Apple's help. The FBI also reportedly acknowledged that in a most of the cases under FBI's investigation, the agency has been able to unlock and access user data.

Only in 13% of the cases the phones have not been unlocked

According to the agency's general counsel Jim Baker, "the FBI is also able to access data from devices of local and state police. In the year 2016, from over 80% of cases investigated, the bureau was able to unlock devices and obtain data."

In 2015, the forensic analysis team of the agency has come across 2,095 password/passcode protected smart devices out of 6,814 cases. The FBI reported on November 11, 2016 that it was not able to unlock only about 880 devices in the list which accounts to mere 13%. Jim Baker disclosed that however, the FBI has been successful in accessing the user data in 87% cases.

FBI's Fear on Potential threats Looks invalid

The revealations by FBI clearly indicate that its insistence on "going dark" without the push back on encryption may not be as imperative as it claimed. It is to be noted that FBI feared audiences that encryption can obstruct criminal investigations which may lead to potential threats.

The director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, Kevin Bankston, expressed "These numbers demonstrate that even with encryption turned on by default on all newer iPhones and some Android phones, it is posing a problem in a relatively lesser number of cases - while the same encryption is presumably preventing a wide range of crimes,"

However, a spokesperson from FBI neither confirmed nor denied on the numbers revealed by Baker at Washington D.C. He said that the 13% is "hardly an insignificant number"

Also, the surveillance expert and blogger Marcy Wheeler has stated that the 13% failure rate FBI claim is a "bogus" as the numbers do not prove the amount of dissatisfaction FBI has had on encryption.