By Tom Ackerman  | [email protected]

A judge has denied a request for data that would show Andrea Farrington’s cell-phone communication just before her death, a decision that thrusts a local case into a national conversation about encryption, the U.S. government, and privacy.

Alexandar Kozak, a 22-year-old security office at the Coral Ridge Mall where Farrington worked at the Iowa Children’s Museum, allegedly shot Farrington.

Family members don’t know the 20-year-old Farrington’s password, and law enforcement can’t hack into the iPhone 5s with iOS 8.3 for evidence purposes, as they were able to in older phones. If the incorrect password is entered more than 10 times, the phone will delete all the data, according to court documents.

“In everything we do, we have to just weigh time and costs versus what you have to gain out of it,” Coralville police Lt. Shane Kron said about the investigations.

In many cases, he said, it’s not worth trying to get information from a phone because it takes hours away from more serious investigations that may be occurring.

Kron couldn’t discuss specifics of the ongoing case, but said there have been more and more phones the department can’t access.

This comes at a time of national discussion for what is and isn’t considered private information, reflected in the U.S. government’s current legal battle with Apple Inc., to create a program to allow authorities easier access to iPhones.

Jude Pannell, an assistant Johnson County prosecutor, said local attorneys always work to get a search warrant as a general policy.

“It just does a better job of protecting citizens’ privacy and ensuring everything is done fairly,” he said, adding it’s tough to say what the decision will be nationally.

Pannell said there was a recent local gathering of prosecutors where they discussed computer forensics and the legal changes occurring.

“We had prosecutors from all over the country attend, and we spent some time talking about this,” he said. “Everybody nationwide is watching this case very closely to try to see where things will go.”

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2014 search warrants are necessary to acquire evidence and data from mobile devices. The question now is whether the government should step in when evidence that might contribute to an ongoing case is on a password protected device.

“It’s not just opening one phone,” Veronica Fowler, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa said. Fowler said the ACLU is against the idea of Apple giving authorities easy access to phones.

“It basically would allow other courts to give police new investigative tools to snoop on individual citizens,” she said. “This is far beyond a simple ‘turn over what you have and tell us what you know.’ It’s compelling Apple to think of new ways to spy on people.”

Fowler said Apple claims it wants to protect the privacy of its customers.

Apple has said it’s cooperating with law enforcement and has pointed to the fact roughly 80 percent of the almost 10,000 requests from law enforcement in the past 12 months have been provided.

The other 20 percent, it said, involved information that didn’t exist or requests that were canceled.

Kron said police aren’t interested in people’s personal information, just what could help them solve crimes, though he understands why people are upset at the thought of a loss of privacy.

“Besides the fact that they’re doing illegal stuff, I think a lot of people, when they give us their phone, they give us the password, and they take us to what we want, what they’re really saying is, ‘I’m willing to give you the criminal stuff, I just don’t want you looking at all the personal stuff.,’ ” Kron said. “We’re OK with that.”

Kron, who has worked for the Coralville police for 26 years, said even though policing and legal implications are always changing, investigators would continue to do their best to get the facts.

“Our job is to gather all of the available information,” he said. “When it’s not available, it’s just not available.”