Why is it so hard for the FBI to hack the San Bernadino shooters iPhone?

If the government has a department like the NSA filled with professional hackers, why do they need Apple to break the iPhone s encryption? Will it look bad if the government hacks the phone themselves?

By the way, I'm not taking anyone s side here. I understand why Apple is reluctant to create this "back door" to bypass the iPhones encryption. And I know that hacking the shooters phone could answer so many questions people have.

This above is just a stupid string of non answers-they address nothing!

They are just cheap. Why pay a hacker to break in when they can bully Apple into doing it gratis.

Apple's current software self-erases after 10 failed log-in attempts. That means that traditional brute force hacking techniques will probably destroy the information.

You need a code number to open the phone. Let's say it is 5 digits long and can be any letter (Large or small) or number or symbol. So for each of the five digits you can have any of 26 letters, large or small = 52, plus the 10 numbers plus 25 or so symbols for a total of 87 possible entries. Now do the math 87 x 87 x 87 x 87 x 87 gives more than 4.98 billion possible combinations. Let's assume you can try 100 per second. That will take 49,800,000 seconds. That is 576 DAYS. Now the kicker, the phones are set up that if you enter the wrong code 20 times, the phone will erase everything. So with each try you have one chance in a quarter billion of getting it right. You can't hack it, you either have the code or you have a back door. The feds want Apple to install a back door on all the phones.

I think, this isn't about the FBI being unable to hack the iPhone, this is the FBI using a 'problem' to force a company into submission, make things easy on themselves(and make it easy to spy on regular people), which is a scary development.

They should just ask a 15 year old.

The government already said they can't, they tried but found out Apple is pretty smart about it.

I do wonder if they have not broke into it. But don't want the other side to know how easy it was.