Wednesday’s New York Times carried a story describing the interactions among the FBI, San Bernardino County, and Apple. The article confirmed what I reported a while back: the FBI screwed up and managed to lock the iCloud account. But that’s not the most important part of the story.  A related story, buried on page 4 of the business section, revealed what the FBI wants.

A second article noted that a number of government officials attended this year’s RSA conference. Despite the tarnished reputation, this event remains a popular venue for technology security experts to get together and share ideas.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch

[pullquote]“For me, the middle ground” is to do “what the law requires,” Ms. Lynch responded, which drew a smattering of laughter and hisses from the audience.[/pullquote]

This year, one of the attendees was the Attorney General of the United States, Ms. Loretta Lynch. After much discussion of finding a “middle ground” between the government and Apple, Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang   asked Ms. Lynch her definition of that phrase. From the Times story ↵

In other words, the “my way or the highway” attitude of the Obama administration remains securely in place. And they wonder why so many companies have filed amicus briefs supporting Apple.  The latest, as of today, is Box.com. 

Engadget.com says these companies are supporting Apple:

Twitter, Airbnb, eBay, GitHub, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Square, Squarespace, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Amazon, and Intel.

Talk about a motley crew.  Did you ever think you’d see this group of companies agreeing on anything?  By the way, Engadget is trying to maintain the canonical list.  You can contact reporter Billy Steele on Twitter @wmsteele.