Stuart and I both know that his testimony will be littered with perjury. We’ve discussed the lies, making sure that he gets them right. His testimony about my losing my cell phone only requires that he move the timeline from the morning, when I first told him I couldn’t find it, to the evening before. We decided to fix the time as right after dinner, the idea being that we had a lovely family dinner, after which I went to check my phone, and that’s when I alerted him to the fact that I couldn’t find it.

The other lie Stuart will tell concerns my alibi. Stuart and I didn’t share a bed that night. I slept in Jacob’s room. As a result, there’s no way Stuart would know if I’d left the apartment.

“Thank you,” I say to Stuart.

“No need to thank me. I love you.”

51. ELLA BRODEN

51.

ELLA BRODEN

Judge Gold gives me more leeway than I would have anticipated for Izikson to explain the history of the law-enforcement battle between Apple and the federal government over the unlocking of iPhones. Specifically, the phone of Syed Farook, the San Bernardino shooter.

“If you go on the Internet, you see all sorts of theories,” Izikson says. “Some articles claim that Farook’s cell phone was cracked by freelance hackers. Others say that Cellebrite, a competitor of ours, did it. The cost of the work is also hotly debated. There are people who advertise on the web that they can do it for a hundred bucks, while the FBI director at the time said in a speech that it cost more than his entire salary for the remaining years of his tenure, which would be in excess of a million dollars. I don’t know how Cellebrite, or whoever the FBI used, did it. But I know how we do it. And I know it isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t cost a million dollars either.”

I ask him to explain how he does it, even though I know he’s not going to answer. I just don’t want to look like I’m hiding anything from the jury.

“I cannot answer that question,” Izikson says. “It is not only highly proprietary, but a matter of national security. If it became known how we can get into cell phones that are locked, then terrorists and others could engineer around our methods.”

Burrows objects, although I’m certain he knows he’s going to lose. National security supersedes everything these days.