some of them, like thomas drake, ended up getting charged with federal crimes only to have the chargessage at the nsa was very clear was that you could not go through channels. john: after the terror attack in california this year, the fbi said it needed to get inside the killer's iphone to see if there were isis contacts. they wanted apple to help them get past the phone's security. >> essentially, we're asking apple take the vicious guard dog away, let us try and pick the lock. john: apple replied: customers don't want their phones opened up. they want privacy. >> they have set out to design a phone that can't be opened. >> those phones aren't only protecting people's pokemon games, they're also protecting people's bank accounts. it's not possible to produce systems like the ones that the fbi would like that can't then be abused by bad actors as well. john: but the fbi did finally get into that iphone without apple's help. >> yes. by spending a considerable amount of money. what the fbi would like is to have it be so simple that lots of bad people would also be in a position to do th