Comment by nkurz

Did you see Robert Cringely's article where he comes to a very similar conclusion? Ironically, although he sees the same gambit, the two of you seem to be interpreting the situation completely opposite. If I'm reading you both right, you believe Scalia was the most likely to side with Apple, whereas he thinks Scalia was a sure vote for the FBI?

  What’s going on is Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.

  Had Justice Scalia not died unexpectedly a few days ago 
  (notably before the Apple/FBI dustup) and had the FBI 
  pursued the case with it landing finally in the Supreme 
  Court, well the FBI would have probably won the case 5-4. 
  Maybe not, but probably.

  With Justice Scalia dead and any possible replacement 
  locked in a Republican-induced coma, the now eight-member 
  Supreme Court has nominally four liberal and four 
  conservative justices but at least 1.5 of those 
  conservatives (Justice Kennedy and sometimes Chief Justice 
  Roberts) have been known to turn moderate on certain 
  decisions. This smaller court, which will apparently judge 
  all cases for the next couple years, is likely to be more 
  moderate than the Scalia Court ever was.

  So if you are a President who is a lawyer and former 
  teacher of constitutional law and you’ve come over time to 
  see that this idea of secret backdoors into encrypted 
  devices is not really a good idea, but one that’s going to 
  come up again and again pushed by nearly everyone from the 
  other political party (and even a few from your own) 
  wouldn’t right now be the best of all possible times to 
  kinda-sorta fight this fight all the way to the Supreme 
  Court and lose?

  If it doesn’t go all the way to the Supremes, there’s no 
  chance to set a strong legal precedent and this issue will 
  come back again and again and again. 

  That’s what I am pretty sure is happening. 

http://www.cringely.com/2016/02/19/the-fbi-v-apple-isnt-at-a...