A worker checks an iPhone in a repair store in New York, February 17, 2016.
Reuters/Eduardo Munoz
Apple Inc argued on Friday that the U.S. Justice Department had failed to substantiate that it needed the company's help to access a locked iPhone in a New York drug case.
Apple's brief, filed in federal court in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, came a week after the U.S. government said it would push on with an appeal of a federal judge's ruling in February holding that he could not force the company to hand over the phone's data.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bill Rigby)