Apple's encryption fight with the FBI is heating up.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday filed a motion to force the Cupertino tech giant to comply with a court order to help the FBI break into an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters, according to CNBC.
The DOJ said it shares Apple's concern that information needs to be protected, and insists the FBI's order does not compromise that goal. The FBI is not looking for a backdoor or hack to all of Apple's encryption software but assistance in the execution of a search warrant for Farook's device only, the agency argued.
Further, the DOJ said Apple's concern for its business reputation is not a good enough reason for the company to refuse to comply with the FBI's order.
"This Court should not entertain an argument that fulfilling basic civic responsibilities of any American citizen or company — complying with a lawful court order — could be obviated because that company prefers to market itself as providing privacy protections that make it infeasible to comply with court-issued warrants," the DOJ said.
The motion comes after Apple was given three extra days — or until Feb. 26 — to submit its response to the court. Apple, meanwhile, has already said it will not give the FBI backdoor access.
"The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers—including tens of millions of American citizens—from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals," Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a public letter published to Apple's website. "The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe."
The battle started on Tuesday, when Los Angeles District Court Judge Sheri Pym ruled that Cupertino "shall assist in enabling the search" of an iPhone 5c owned by Syed Rizwan Farook.
The tech titan must provide "reasonable technical assistance," like disabling the auto-erase function that kicks in after 10 failed password attempts. The hope is that the FBI can use "brute force" to crack the code, trying millions of combinations without fear of deleting crucial information. Pym's controversial order does not explicitly ask Apple to break the phone's encryption, but rather to develop and install a new mobile operating system to allow the government access to Farook's data.
Apple says that's a slippery slope and suggests that a backdoor created for the FBI could very easily land in the hands of those with nefarious intent.
Tech giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak have all come forth to support Apple in its fight with the FBI.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.