Mashable:

Apple’s big fight with the Federal Bureau of Investigation could have been avoided if one government employee had kept his hands off the phone.

According to a senior Apple executive, the company has been working with the federal government since early January to try to provide a way to access the San Bernardino county-issued iPhone connected with Syed Farook, the gunman in the massacre.

The problem, according to Apple, is that the company was called too late.

That’s because the phone was apparently erased of any chance to access its data only an hour after the device came into government custody. An unnamed person in the San Bernardino County government — likely an information technology employee — reset the Apple ID associated with the iPhone 5C in an attempt to access the data.

This comedy of errors would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high.