"If a bank has vault and the police have a search warrant, then there's no doubt that the bank has to open the vault," Lessig said. "But when bank opens vault, there's no concern that it's making every other vault unsafe."
The problem with the case, Lessig said, is that Apple is going to have to do a lot of work to convince the court that there's a new issue here. It has to prove that there's something different about its case.
"The Fourth Amendment says if you have a warrant, you have to open the safe," Lessig said. "That's a compelling argument. It sounds like fingers on a blackboard to people in the technology industry, but it's going to be hard to convince at least five justices on the Supreme Court otherwise."