Did I miss something? I thought Apple was incapable of breaking encryption...

[Reason]

Yet the #1 Fedbook news debate right now is that the us.gov now has a court order demanding Apple "unlock" an encrypted iPhone...

And every single article is debating the morality of this without discussing if it is even possible...

I was under the impression that the encryption can NOT be broken and that there have been previous court cases where the NSA and FBI admitted there was nothing they could do to get into the encrypted physical storage on the device...

[Reason]

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/magistrate-orders-apple-to-help-fbi-hack-phone-of-san-bernardino-shooter/

[Reason]

nvm

Magistrate Sheri Pym, in the US District Court of Central California, ordered the tech giant to provide the FBI with software designed to defeat a self-destruct mechanism on the iPhone, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the news (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/145860f91b854a709c1a47190563c86e/judge-apple-must-help-us-hack-san-bernardino-killers-phone). The self-destruct mechanism automatically erases data on a phone after ten failed password attempts, or rather erases a key that could be used to decrypt that data.
This would allow FBI agents to attempt to open the phone using multiple password tries—a method known as bruteforcing—without worrying that the data will be inaccessible to them forever.

[luctor-et-emergo]

All encryption CAN be broken.

[muh_roads]

Your confusion is valid, Reason. It's because Apple already has a backdoor there that nobody is talking about. They can force a new iOS install on a locked phone. What the FBI really wants is Apple to build software to access this backdoor. The Feds currently don't know how to.

[ShaneEnochs]

What they're being asked to do is write new firmware that would be updated to the phone that would allow a brute force crack. The current firmware doesn't allow this.

Apple is refusing because they're saying if the government forces them to do it once, that'll set the precedent for them to do it again.

[idiom]

Its much much worse.

The FBI wants to be able to brute force any Apple phone wirelessly so that they don't have to even have it in their possession.

Of course, if they can do that, anyone can.