Should Apple today keep Big Brother away?

The Texas church shooter's phone can't be unlocked without Apple's help. Should Apple be compelled to give it?

Frankly, I'm torn, although I'm inclined to come down on the side of "yes." We need to restrict the government's ability to pry into our lives if we are going to remain a free society. There is a free webmail service called Yandex, which is probably the best one out there, even better in pretty much every way than Gmail. I had an account there for a while. The problem is that it's Russian, and one Russian commentator has called it "virtually a department of the FSB" (the Russian security service that succeeded the KGB).

I canceled my account when I found that out and mentioned the reason on Quora. A Russian gentleman replied that if I'm not a criminal I shouldn't be afraid of the FSB monitoring my emails (I've actually heard that argument from some Americans, too, and it scares me to death). I replied that there was a cultural difference here and that as an American  I didn't think that precisely because I'm not a criminal it's any of the government's business what I say to people in my email and that it was even less the business of the intelligence service of an unfriendly foreign government. I wish I had made a crack about how while I might not be a criminal, the FSB was a criminal organization. But I didn't think of it.

Now, the Constitution protects us only against "unreasonable" searches and seizures. It seems to me that having access to this guy's iPhone would facilitate a search that would be very reasonable. So I'm inclined to the position that the courts should compel Apple to give the FBI access. But I also think that in any such case the government needs to show probable cause and get permission from the courts.

What do you think?