The Justice Department said Friday it has withdrawn a request that sought a court order forcing Apple to assist in opening a locked iPhone 5s linked to a drug case in New York.

According to a court filing, the Justice Department no longer needs Apple’s assistance in unlocking the device because an individual provided investigators with the correct passcode Thursday.

This is yet another demonstration that DoJ didn’t need to dragoon a private enterprise into blowing up its own product—here hacking its encryption algorithm, to the detriment of its product and of its private citizen customers—for government convenience.  Government had the capability to get into the iPhone with its own resources.

This cracking, in fact, demonstrates two things: the first is that DoJ was cynically using the suits here and in the San Bernardino terrorism case solely for getting a court ruling that Government can force private enterprise to participate in Government searches, to destroy its own product, whenever Government takes a notion to demand it.

The other is that Government’s need for Apple’s help, which was Government’s claimed motive for its lawsuits against Apple, was a mirage.  On the contrary, these suits were nothing more than an execution of Government’s demand for control over private citizens’ personal data.

In each of the above cases, Government hacked the Apple phones’ encryption systems, encryption applied by the phone owners, not by Apple (Apple just made the capability available).  These hacks exposed weaknesses in Apple’s encryption algorithm.  In each of the above cases, Government has refused to tell Apple the nature of the weaknesses: the weaknesses are the backdoors into privately developed encryption algorithms that DoJ’s FBI Director James Comey has been demanding.

The FBI paid a non-governmental third party over $1 million for technology that allowed the agency to unlock an iPhone 5C that belonged to San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to a remark made by FBI director James Comey at a moderated discussion in London on Thursday.

And

The bureau’s top official added that the purchase of third party tools for the purpose of unlocking encrypted devices is not the preferred road the FBI would like to travel in investigating crimes and terrorism cases.

Of course not.  The FBI would prefer to use OPM to pay for such invasions, in this case Apple’s money to pay for forcing Apple to destroy its own customer-desired and -centered encryption.  Then Comey added in wide-eyed innocence,

I’m hoping that we can somehow get to a place where we have a sensible solution, or set of solutions, that doesn’t involve hacking and doesn’t involve spending tons of money in a way that’s unscalable[.]

That sensible solution includes no back-door, government-mandated accesses to encryption, which Comey has demanded earlier as part of his “sensible” solution.  He’s declined to explain how such backdoors don’t expose American citizens to government snooping and abuse, other than to say, “Trust us.”  He’s declined to explain, in any fashion, how such backdoors don’t expose American citizens to hacking by criminals and other nefarious types.

No, this push to use OPM for gaining entry is just another bit of government disingenuosity.