If they have permission from the owner, it's wrong to describe it as trying to get into "someone else's phone". There's no expectation of privacy in a government owned phone.
Who decides paying $1M to get access to a government owned device is appropriate use of public money though?
Why didn't they go through proper channels? Why did they reset the iCloud passwords? What steps have they taken to prevent this from happening in the future?
The FBI is doing a lot of hand waving and there is no accountability. Where are all those fiscal conservatives when we need them?
In my personal experience with an iPhone, it will not backup to iCloud without wifi and it will not connect to wifi without having the passcode entered at least once since boot. According to the government, the device was found powered off. If that is true, the iCloud backup would never have worked.
Of course, you can choose not to believe the government that the phone was found powered off (http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Apple-govt-R...), but I think you'd have to pick and choose what you're willing to believe and not believe from what the government have said.
Finally, even though it wouldn't have helped, it's clear Pluhar's team did not consider the iCloud backup possibility when they were making their examination, so they very well could have screwed this up. It's just that they didn't in this case.
It's also possible the phone was actually found powered on and the battery was drained and it turned off by the time Pluhar's team examined it the same day. It wasn't mentioned if anyone checked it and tried to make sure it was kept charged (probably not). I imagine it might be difficult to train the officers on the ground about mobile device forensics best practices, since they change fairly frequently.
I would not trust their word over Apple's because Apple has a better insight of the situation.
The whole thing was a very poor allocation of resources. Of course, those whose promotions and maybe even jobs are on the line will fight back any claim of incompetence or malice.
