I don't get why this is turned into some big political/philosophical discussion. If the government wants a backdoor and it wants Apple to open up iPhones based

I don't get why this is turned into some big political/philosophical discussion. If the government wants a backdoor and it wants Apple to open up iPhones based on court orders then the government needs to make a law explictly ordering Apple and similar to provide this service. There is a parallel in my opinion in the legaslation for telecommunication companies in many western countries requiring them to log their users activity and when a court and in some cases just the police requires it, give them the data. For a national telco this is major cost; just in Denmark it was estimated by the former telemonopoly TDC to be in tune of 20 mio usd per year. No company bears that sort of expense out of morals/patriotics. Secondly other countries than the US may be interested in requiring this feature of the phones sold in their jurisdiction.