Could the USA order Apple to unlock a phone under the Defense Production Act?
<p>The <a href="http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1650-20490-9035/the_defense_production_act_of_1950.txt" rel="nofollow">Defense Production Act</a> reads in part:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The President is authorized (1) to require that performance under contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) which he deems necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense shall take priority over performance under any other contract or order, and, for the purpose of assuring such priority, to require acceptance and performance of such contracts or orders in preference to other contracts or orders by any person he finds to be capable of their performance</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Could the president order Apple to provide the service of unlocking a phone under this act?</p>

<p>The president would have the minor problem to say with a straight face that such an order would be "necessary or appropriate to promote the national defence". </p>

<p>For example, the ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden has said that overall secure end-to-end encryption is a huge benefit to national security. </p>

<p>PS. Due to recent events: Apple's main argument to refuse handing the FBI the ability to unlock iPhones was that they feared such an ability could find its way into the wrong hands, while the FBI would swear that this would be absolutely impossible. But now hacks developed by the NSA have found their way into the wild and might become available to any criminal with enough money to pay for them, and of course to any nation with enough money to pay for them. So Apple's argument has suddenly become a lot, lot stronger. </p>

<p>Regardless of what the USA wants, Apple can't just unlock encrypted IPhones. Encrypted IPhones are only decryptable by whomever has the password (or can guess the password.)</p>

<p>Apple would have to preemptively change their crypto in order to facilitate such order.</p>

<p>No.</p>

<p>In the context of the cited language, the word "order" is not being used in the context of a military style command, instead it is being used in the context of a purchase order for goods or services (or a contract) that has already been voluntarily entered into by the parties. The overall context is a statute about military procurement of goods and services, not about deputizing civilians to act as involuntary federal investigators. This is about how already existing defense contracts are to be performed by defense contractors, not about anything more profound than that.</p>

<p>It is saying, for example, that if the Air Force purchases 100 iPhones from Apple that the President can insist that it fulfill the Air Force's order of 100 iPhones before it fulfills any other customer's orders (even if they pay a rush fee or are related to the CEO or something).</p>

<p>The cited language does not confer upon the President a general authority to make anyone do whatever he tells them to do for national security purposes. As such, this statute does not authorize the President to tell Apple to decrypt a phone even though there may be some other statute, completely unrelated to this one, that does authorize the President to do that under some very different circumstances. I won't venture to have comprehensive knowledge of all U.S. laws on national security, but the one quoted doesn't get the job done.</p>

united-states cryptography