From the ACLU blog, referring to an image of the iPhone 5c internals (found on this page):

> The large chip on the front marked A6 is the processor — a custom chip designed by Apple specifically for its devices. It contains the CPU, BootROM, RAM, crypto engines, Apple’s public signing key (used to verify software updates), and the UID key (see our previous blog post). > > The largest chip on the back (outlined in red above) is the NAND flash, where all the data is stored, including both the encrypted filesystem and the Effaceable Storage. > > The FBI can simply remove this chip from the circuit board (“desolder” it), connect it to a device capable of reading and writing NAND flash, and copy all of its data. It can then replace the chip, and start testing passcodes. If it turns out that the auto-erase feature is on, and the Effaceable Storage gets erased, they can remove the chip, copy the original information back in, and replace it. If they plan to do this many times, they can attach a “test socket” to the circuit board that makes it easy and fast to do this kind of chip swapping.

Seems to me, if this is true, either the FBI is not aware of this possibility, they are aware but not technically able to pursue this process, or they are aware of the technique and are pursuing Apple for political reasons.

Also seems to me that there might be more to it than this blog post implies. It seems logical that iOS would refuse to allow any more login attempts once auto-erase is enabled. However, while reading this guide, I realized that this still wouldn’t prevent the FBI from pursuing their own attempts to access the NAND flash memory.

Interesting.