You are correct you don't know everything. And you don't know this in particular. The state of the tech now is that shit is essentially uncrackable.
http://time.com/4270151/cellebrite-israel-apple-iphone-fbi/?xid=gonewsedit If it can be made by a human it can be broken by a human
Once that key is made, it's game over for every citizen with an electronic device. The FBI will have a precedent that they can use to backdoor their way into anyone's electronic data whenever they deem it necessary, 4th amendment be damned.
If I understand the legal aspect of it correctly, the FBI will be very unhappy when/if this company is able to break in. The legalities state that the company must provide access unless other access is discovered. This lets Apple off the hook and ruins the hopes of a legal precedent for the FBI.
Legalities aside, if an outside agency says "yeah I can crack it" then what does it matter? Essentially it's the same thing most have been saying Apple should do all along. Crack it, give them the data but not how they did it. For the record, I'm against them having the "back door"
The actual, physical information on this particular phone is not what the FBI is after. The FBI is asking the courts to create a legal precedent for which they can use to force future companies to give them access to whatever data they feel is necessary despite whatever security protocols might be in place. We just had a ton of information made public the last couple years about how Yahoo, Google, Apple, etc. gave access to government agencies via not closing backdoors to their software. This is going right back to that practice.
