Originally Posted By: slolerner
I'm still not completely getting it. I thought that if you could prove you were the owner of the phone and did not set it to erase Apple could already get into it for you, just like if you lost your password for an iPad.

Update. Apple removed that capability from iOS in the Fall of 2014 (iOS 8?) in response to customer demand. Apple can access user's iCloud data and has done so many times in response to a court order. However rumor is Apple is working on secure encryption for iCloud data perhaps along the lines of FileVault.

Originally Posted By: slolerner
What if it was his personal phone?

He destroyed his personal phone. The phone in question belonged to his employer and according to the phone records seldom, if ever, used.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein