Is the FBI v Apple PR war even about encryption?

What the US intelligence agency is asking the tech company to do may not affect mobile security as much as its CEO Tim Cook wants you to believe

The war between Apple and the FBI is a PR war. And it's one that the FBI has fought well, from its initial selection of the battleground (a fight over access to a dead murderer's government-owned iPhone) to the choreographed intervention of the relatives of the victims of the San Bernadino shootings - who were contacted by the FBI for support before the dispute even became public, according to Reuters.

But Apple has also been carefully controlling the debate through its own interventions, and nowhere is that more obvious than Tim Cook's open letter published last week, headlined A Message to Our Customers.