enforcement and intelligence world have the ability to hack into the phone to get whatever information they are seeking. Seems they are trying to force Apple to do this for one of two reasons - to have the easy tool for other cases, investigations, etc and/or so they don't have to reveal how they hacked into it themselves in the court of any forthcoming related prosecutions.

They have been trying for a few years now to get software and technology companies and others to build in backdoors bypassing security to they have easy access to information. IMO they are just using this to try to get it done by court order this time and good on Apple for fighting back.