To the extent most members of the public have heard of the All Writs Act, it’s likely thanks to the statute’s role in the high-profile clash between Apple and the FBI over access to an encrypted phone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters. There, the FBI sought to force Apple to write code that would undermine the phone’s security’s measures — but the Act has also played a more secretive role in other government surveillance efforts, as new litigation aims to reveal.
The Act, a version of which was first adopted in connection with the Judiciary Act of 1789, provides that federal courts “may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and…