That’s the end of this liveblog. To recap: A grueling five-hour hearing revealed an unusual antipathy toward the Department of Justice in the usually FBI-friendly house of representatives judiciary committee.

Lawmakers didn’t merely accuse the FBI of undermining cybersecurity. Ranking committee member John Conyers attacked bureau director James Comey, saying that using the case of the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino killer Syed Farook had undermined the remit of the legislature itself.

“Can you appreciate my frustration with what appears to be little more than an end-run around this committee?” asked Congressman Conyers. California representative Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, called the quest to provide entry into encryption exclusively for law enforcement “a fool’s errand”.

Farook, with his wife Tashfeen Mailk, killed 14 people and wounded 22 in a shooting spree on 2 December, after which agents retrieved two destroyed cell phones, one useless laptop and Farook’s locked iPhone. Apple has said it will not open the phone despite the government’s acquisition of a court order under the 227-year-old All Writs Act by the Department of Justice attempting to compel the company to write a tool that will break its password security measures.

Law-and-order conservatives including committee chairman Jim Sensenbrenner told Comey they supported his efforts, some invoking arguments ranging from Isis to the nuclear holocaust.

Trey Gowdy told Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell he was unimpressed with the company’s contributions to lawmaking and demanded the company draft a bill to address what he characterized as a technology problem. “We draft it and then your army of government relations folks opposes it, so I’m just trying to save us time,” he said. “Why don’t you propose it? Tell us what you could agree to.”

For perhaps the first time, Comey summarized the Department of Justice’s argument without the disingenuous claim that the San Bernardino case was limited in scope: “It’s not [Apple’s] job to watch out for public safety,” he said. “That’s our job.”

Sewell said that the company did want to help with public safety and said the company held the rights as a private citizen, among them its first amendment right to free speech and thirteenth amendment right to deny forced labor.

The government’s argument in the San Bernardino case “makes my blood boil,” he told the committee. “To say that it’s a marketing ploy, to say that it’s about PR really diminishes a very serious conversation that should be about security of the American people.””

Susan Landau, a security expert who has worked with Google and the National Security Agency, offered perhaps the most daring take of the lengthy hearing: the FBI needs to get real about technology and start trying harder to break encryption. “While the NSA has the right to break into a system, nobody ever guaranteed that it would be easy to do so,” she says. “The FBI needs to take a page from the NSA.”

We’ve written a summary of the full hearing; follow the Guardian technology section and national security editor Spencer Ackerman for more on the developing story.

One of Sewell’s better rhetorical flourishes is immediately undercut by Gowdy, who out-yells committee chairman Sensenbrenner.

“Is it right to make our society overall less safe in order to solve crime?” Sewell asks softly; Gowdy immediately leaps in to demand “a fact-pattern” in which Gowdy would comply with the order.

Sewell: “Congressman, we will follow the law.”

Gowdy: “I’m asking you for a fact-pattern.”

Sewell: “I don’t, uh –”

Gowdy: “Can you give me a fact pattern where you would agree with what the bureau is asking you to do in California, whether it be nuclear weapons or a terrorist plot?”

Sewell: “I can’t imagine such a fact pattern.”

Gowdy: “Can you submit legislation, to Chairman Sensenbrenner’s question, that you would wholeheartedly support?”

Gowdy goes on to make one of the better points against Apple, which is that they already have quite a bit of influence congressionally and the legislature’s inaction on encryption doesn’t exactly have nothing to do with Apple’s interests. “We draft it and then your army of government relations folks opposes it, so I’m just trying to save us time. Why don’t you propose it? Tell us what you could agree to.”

“We’re willing to and we’ve offered to engage in this process,” Sewell says.

Sewell tells Nadler he believes ordering Apple to unlock the iPhone both violates both the first amendment to the US constitution and the thirteenth (which abolished slavery in 1865).

“This is a compelled speech by the government for the purposes of the government which is absolutely a first amendment problem, and it is speech that Apple does not want to make,” he says. “And it is conscription; forced labor.”

Darrell Issa makes a more utilitarian argument, echoing the point former FBI counterterrorism agent Mike German made earlier in this blog. “Have you ever ordered a shredding company to put paper back together?” he asks Vance.

Vance has to concede. “Of course I haven’t.”

Goodlatte asks Sewell whether Comey’s assertion that Apple’s position is informed by its business model is “a fair contrast”.

“It’s by no means a fair contrast, Mr Chairman,” Sewell tells Goodlatte. He says he does not, in fact, agree with the characterization and says that hearing this described as a marketing issue “makes my blood boil”.

“I’ve heard this raised before. It was raised in New York, it was raised in San Bernardino. This is not a marketing issue, that’s a way of demeaning our argument. We don’t take out billboards for our security. We don’t take out ads for our encryption. We’re doing this because we think it’s the right thing to do. To say that it’s a marketing ploy to to say that it’s about PR really diminishes a very serious conversation that should be about security of the American people.”

It’s not quite true that Apple doesn’t advertise based on its security, but it is true that Apple advertises its security as being non-annoying, rather than, say, so hard to break that you can sell drugs with impunity.

Sewell goes on to cites Orenstein’s decision from yesterday finding Apple “conscientious,” and says that in fact Apple is at war to improve public safety. “We see ourselves as being in an arms race with crminals, cyberterrorists and hackers,” Sewell said.

The second panel is finally up.

Bruce Sewell, general counsel for Apple, reads the statement released yesterday, telling the committee that he “appreciate[s] your invitation and the opportunity to a part of the conversation on this issue.”

Sewell doesn’t say much to put Comey’s mind at ease, given his earlier remarks on what Comey sees as Apple’s attempt to usurp the FBI’s remit. “We share their goal of creating a safer world,” Sewell says, adding that the company cooperates often with law enforcement.

Susan Landau, a former privacy analyst for Google, gives a very interesting testimony. Among other observations, she says that “smartphones are increasingly wallets” and points out that “NSA will tell you that stealing login credentials is the easiest way into a system,” a direct contradiction to the FBI’s assertion that what it’s asking is less harmful than to break encryption.

Landau also quotes words of wisdom she attributes to a former NSA colleague: “While the NSA has the right to break into a system, nobody ever guaranteed that it would be easy to do so,” she says. “The FBI needs to take a page from the NSA.”

Finally, after three hours of condescending to the House of Representatives and being sniped at in return, FBI director James Comey is getting around to saying what he actually thinks about five minutes before he leaves the panel.

Hakeem Jeffries from Queens presses Comey on whether the Department of Justice’s characterization of Apple’s position as driven entirely by marketing and PR was as contemptuous as it sounded to Jeffries.

Comey responds that he thinks Apple’s market power “is not an illegitimate motive,” but he doesn’t like what they’re selling, because it essentially privatizes law enforcement. “It’s not their job to watch out for public safety,” he says shortly. “That’s our job.”

Comey also manages to state the opposition’s case very succintly in pushing back on a question from Jeffries about breaking into the phone; he also identifies where he takes issue with it: “I don’t agree with your framing,” he tells Jeffries. “It sounds like you’re saying you either have privacy or you have unfettered access and I don’t agree with that.”

Rhode Island democrat David Cicilline asks Comey if encryption law ought to come from the legislative branch rather than case law. “Do you agree that the authority has to come from Congress?” he asks.

Comey, for perhaps the first time, gives a flat negative. “No, I don’t agree with that.”

An interesting note from Comey: a brute force attack on the phone would take 26 minutes, were Apple’s password-entry security measures defeated (again, see our explainer for a little more detail on how this works).

And then Comey tells the committee he blames one man for his current predicament: Edward Snowden.

“Since Mr. Snowden’s revelations, terrorist tradecraft changed.” Terrorists tried to “wrap their lives in encryption,” he says, and as a result, “we’re looking for needles in a haystack, and the most important needles turn invisible.”

Steve King of Iowa brings up the Isis activity on Twitter, possibly, though his syntax is a little hard to decipher. “I’m interested in how the parameters that have been examined thoroughly by all the lawyers on this panel might apply to Isis, or any of their affiliates or subordinates that might be necessary if we’re going to defeat that ideology.”

King’s opinion appears to be that San Bernardino is small potatoes and that the American public ought to be more worried about “radical Islam” than even the constant discussion of Isis around Farook/Malik murders has made them.

“I think it’s known that Isis or Isil are seeking a nuclear device,” King tells Comey. “If that became part of the American consciousness, do you think that would change this debate?”

Comey does the thing he’s done so beautifully during the FBI’s messaging to the public, which is to plead for reasoned debate while reminding everybody that the FBI stands between them and anarchy. “I do worry that it’s hard to have nuanced complicated conversations like this in the wake of a disaster, which is why I think it’s so important that we have this conversation now.”

The director also rejects the contention that the FBI already has the technology and just wants precedent. “If we could have done this quietly and privately, we would have done it.”

James Comey has a friend! Trey Gowdy, the mind behind the Benghazi hearings, says that “I confess up front that my bias is toward public safety” when it comes to the need to balance the various rights conferred by the US constitution.

“You just can’t go in these categories [of device] unless somebody consents, really?” Gowdy asks, appalled. Comey agrees wholeheartedly with Gowdy’s outrage.

“I love privacy too but I want my fellow citizens to understand that we also love our bodies,” Gowdy says.

“If you have a bullet from an officer who was shot in a defendant, you can go to a judge and ask the defendant to anesthetize a patient and remove a that bullet from the body.” If that’s not unreasonable search and seizure, the South Carolina Republican asks, what is?

Gowdy is 100% wrong on this.

The incident to which he appears to refer is a well-known Supreme Court case called Winston v Lee in which it was decided that the use of a previous high court decision, Schmerber v California, to mandate surgery to recover bullets against the will of a defendant was unreasonable search and seizure.

“The proposed surgery would violate respondent’s right to be secure in his person and the search would be ‘unreasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment,” said the court.

We’re back, and the committee has resumed queuing up around Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building to spank the director of the FBI.

Jason Chaffetz of Utah asks Comey when historically the government has been able to compel a company to create a product to help it. Comey says he doesn’t know but cites one of the cases in the DoJ’s brief, New York Telephone. Comey is fairly short with him.

Chaffetz then tells Comey he thinks the FBI already overreaches to a serious extent. “We can’t even see the degree to which you’re using Stingrays, or the requirements [to use them].” Chaffetz points out that the devices are apparently being supplied to the IRS without any congressional oversight. What is the occasion of their use, he asks. “Is it articulable suspicion? Is it probable cause?”

“I don’t have a great answer,” Comey responds. “I like the idea of giving as much transparency as possible.”

The Guardian has repeatedly attempted to use the Freedom of Information Act to acquire records on the use of Stingrays from law enforcement and the documents received have without exception been redacted to remove all mention of the device.

An amazing exchange between Texas Republican Ted Poe, whose accent occasionally vanishes as the jargon gets more and more technical and who at first blush does not appear to be repeatedly scolding Comey for trying to circumvent this committee.

First, Poe asks how many encrypted phones the FBI has that it wants to break into.

“I don’t know,” Comey responds. “A lot.”

“Congress has to resolve this problem,” Poe opines. “We shouldn’t leave it up to the judiciary to make this decision, and determine what the expectation of privacy is.”

Comey: “I think that the courts are competent to resolve the narrow question about the scope of the All Writs Act, but this collision between public safety and privacy, the courts cannot resolve that.”

Poe: “Should Congress resolve this issue of expectation of privacy of citizens? I’m just asking you.”

Comey: “I think Congress has a critical role to play and I think we’re playing it today, I hope.”

Poe: “I agree with you, I think Congress has to determine the expectation of privacy.”

Comey’s first question, from Goodlatte, is on the FBI’s use of the 227-year-old All Writs Act to compel Apple to write software in the San Bernardino case. Is it outdated? Comey has a pretty snappy response: “The constitution is older than the All Writs Act, and I think that’s still a pretty useful document.”

Yesterday, New York magistrate James Orenstein said former didn’t jibe with the latter in the FBI’s interpretation and said the All Writs Act would itself be unconstitutional; Comey says he hasn’t read the decision when quizzed on it.

Comey is trying to thread a few difficult needles here; he has said repeatedly - including in an op-ed on beltway legal blog Lawfare - that the FBI isn’t trying to set precedent in the San Bernardino case. When Steve Chabot asks him whether the FBI would take advantage of the precedent set, he says, “Sure, potentially!” With respect to tech companies including Apple that the DoJ accused of putting marketing ahead of abused children, Comey says he “doesn’t question their motives” under questioning from Conyers.

Conyers presses Comey on precedent: won’t the FBI look for more cases to be resolved this way if the courts rule in the FBI’s favor? “If the All Writs Act is available to us and the relief under the All Writs Act is available to us under the interpretation by the courts, then of course.”

And then Conyers says something that probably explains why House Judiciary seems so annoyed with Comey at the outset: “Can you appreciate my frustration with what appears to be little more than an end-run around this committee?”

Comey says he cannot.

Comey is up. He calls encryption “the hardest issue I have faced in government”, says he worries that “we’ve been talking past each other,” and says “the problem of encryption [is what] the government calls ‘going dark.’” He also says he says he hopes “you’ll poke at me” where you think it’s unfair.

For all his exhortation to keep the conversation dispassionate, Comey almost immediately invokes “Isil’s efforts to reach into this country and task people to kill people,” tying it to the San Bernardino killings, which are generally believed to have been the work of people who were not under direct orders from anyone overseas.

Our explainer on the issue’s stakes for both the FBI and Apple is here.

“The tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less and less effective.”

Comey sounds very frustrated. “The FBI is not an alien force imposed on the American people from Mars,” he says. “Our job is simply to tell people there is a problem.” That problem, he says, is the increasing presence of spaces the bureau calls “warrant-proof.”