A judge has ordered Apple to help the FBI gain access to data from an accused Boston gang member's locked iPhone.
According to an order issued Feb. 1 but unsealed on Friday, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered Apple to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the FBI to obtain information on a phone seized from alleged Columbia Point Dawgs member Desmond Crawford.
It is believed Crawford may have shot a rival gang member, and the FBI believes information about the shooting and other gang related details may be contained in the phone.
Crawford was one of 48 members and associates of the Columbia Point Dawgs indicted last summer as part of a massive operation that authorities say wiped out the leadership of the "most-feared" gang in the city.
The gang started operating out of the Columbia Point housing project in the Dorchester section of Boston in the 1980s, eventually trafficking drugs from Boston to Maine.
The FBI and Apple have been embroiled in a legal battle in recent months over access to the iPhone used by gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December.
Last month, the government announced that it had found a technique to hack into Farrok's iPhone. But that technique apparently only works on select iPhone models.
