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 / Updated By Andrew Blankstein 
 
 A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Apple to give investigators access to encrypted data on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, assistance the computer giant “declined to provide voluntarily,” according to court papers. 
 
 In a 40-page filing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles argued that it needed Apple to help it find the password and access “relevant, critical … data” on the locked cellphone of Syed Farook, who with his wife Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California on December 2. 
 
 “Despite … a warrant authorizing the search,” said prosecutors, “the government has been unable to complete the search because it cannot access the iPhone’s encrypted content. Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily.” 
 
 Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik arrive in Chicago on July 27, 2014. U.S. Government 
 
 Prosecutors said they needed Apple’s help accessing the phone’s data to find out who the shooters were communicating with and who may have helped plan and carry out the massacre, as well as where they traveled prior to the incident. 
 
 The judge ruled Tuesday that the Cupertino-based company had to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the government in recovering data from the iPhone 5c, including bypassing the auto-erase function and allowing investigators to submit an unlimited number of passwords in their attempts to unlock the phone. Apple has five days to respond to the court if it believes that compliance would be “unreasonably burdensome.” 
 
 In a statement, United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker called the move an "important step." 
 
 “Since the terrorist attack in San Bernardino on December 2, 2015, that took the lives of 14 innocent Americans and shattered the lives of numerous families, my office and our law enforcement partners have worked tirelessly to exhaust every investigative lead in the case," said Decker. "We have made a solemn commitment to the victims and their families that we will leave no stone unturned as we gather as much information and evidence as possible. These victims and families deserve nothing less. The application filed today in federal court is another step — a potentially important step — in the process of learning everything we possibly can about the attack in San Bernardino." 
 
 After the shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, authorities said they recovered several cell phones Farook and Malik had tried to destroy and had dropped in a waste bin. The iPhone referenced in the judge’s ruling was found in a black Lexus belonging to Farook’s family. 
 
 An iPhone 5C is displayed during an Apple product announcement at the Apple campus on September 10, 2013 in Cupertino, California. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images file 
 
 The iPhone is owned by Farook's employer, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which assigned it to him. The county consented to investigators' requests to search its contents. 
 
 Prosecutors argued evidence in Farook’s iCloud account indicates that he was in communication with victims whom he and his wife later shot, and phone records show Farook communicated with Malik using his iPhone. 
 
 Prosecutors alleged in their filing that Farook may have disabled the iCloud data feature to hide evidence. Although investigators have been able to obtain several backup versions of Farook’s iCloud data, the most recent version they’ve been able to access dates from about a month and a half before the shooting. They said this showed Farook “may have disabled the feature to hide evidence." 
 
 Last week FBI Director James Comey referenced the San Bernardino shootings when testifying before Congress about the challenges posed by technology that allows cell phones to lock with no apparent means of override. The new court documents give some details about those hurdles and the ongoing investigation. 
 
 Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ||||| An examination of digital equipment recovered from the home of the couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino last week has led FBI investigators to believe the shooters were planning an even larger assault, according to federal government sources. 
 
 Investigators on Thursday continued to search for digital footprints left by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, scouring a downtown San Bernardino lake for electronic items, including a hard drive that the couple was hoping to destroy, sources told The Times. 
 
 FBI agents will probably spend days searching Seccombe Lake and canvassing the neighborhood for clues after receiving a tip that the couple may have visited the area on the day of the attack, according to David Bowdich, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office. 
 
 Farook and Malik were in the final planning stages of an assault on a location or building that housed a lot more people than the Inland Regional Center, possibly a nearby school or college, according to federal sources familiar with the widening investigation. 
 
 Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times A memorial to victims of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino continues to grow near the Inland Regional Center. A memorial to victims of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino continues to grow near the Inland Regional Center. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 Investigators have based that conclusion on evidence left behind on Farook and Malik's computers and digital devices, not all of which the couple were able to destroy before they were killed in a firefight with police, the sources said. 
 
 Images of San Bernardino-area schools were found on a cellphone belonging to Farook, according to a law enforcement source. But the source cautioned that Farook may have had a legitimate reason to have the images because his work as a county health inspector involved checking on school dining facilities. 
 
 On Thursday, one of the federal government sources told The Times that Farook asked his friend and neighbor, Enrique Marquez, to buy two military-style rifles used in the attacks because he feared he "wouldn't pass a background check" if he attempted to acquire the weapons on his own. The rifles were bought at a local gun store, the source said. 
 
 The timing of the rifle purchases is significant to FBI investigators. Another federal government source previously told The Times that Farook may have been considering a separate terror plot in 2011 or 2012. 
 
 Farook was self-radicalizing around that time, FBI Director James Comey said, and met Malik soon after, eventually escorting her to the United States. Farook was a practicing Muslim. Marquez converted to Islam around the time he purchased the weapons, sources have told The Times. 
 
 FBI agents believe Farook abandoned his plans to launch the earlier attack after a law enforcement task force arrested three men in Chino in November 2012. The men were later convicted of charges related to providing material support to terrorists and plotting to kill Americans in Afghanistan. A fourth man arrested in Afghanistan also was convicted in the scheme. 
 
 Bowdich said federal agents are investigating whether the men had ties to Farook. 
 
 Marquez has emerged as a central figure in the investigation. The FBI had been conducting interviews with 24-year-old, who checked himself into a mental health facility after the attacks. 
 
 The former Wal-Mart security guard has waived his Miranda rights and cooperated with the inquiry, and it was Marquez who told FBI agents about Farook's earlier plans, according to one of the government sources, who also requested anonymity. 
 
 (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 "They were talking generally about something, but I don't think it made it to anything specific," one of the sources said of the earlier plot. "I don't think it got to a time or a place." 
 
 The source said it remains unclear whether Marquez had any involvement in the planning of the shooting or had any prior knowledge that an attack was pending. 
 
 Marquez, a cycling enthusiast who wanted to join the U.S. Navy, was a longtime friend and neighbor of Farook. He also married the sister of Farook's sister-in-law last year, although the circumstances of the union are now under investigation, a government official previously told The Times. 
 
 There was no paperwork transferring ownership of the assault rifles from Marquez to Farook, as required by California law, government officials told The Times. 
 
 Hours after the shooting, Marquez posted a cryptic message on his Facebook page. 
 
 "I'm. Very sorry sguys," the message read. "It was a pleasure." 
 
 Bowdich on Thursday declined to answer questions about Marquez, who has not been charged with a crime. 
 
 Marquez told FBI agents that the Facebook post has been "misunderstood," according to one of the government sources. Agents are concerned that Marquez's mental and emotional state may affect what he has been telling interrogators, the source said. 
 
 While Marquez has spoken to agents about his ties to Farook, federal officials are still working to verify the information he has provided, the source said. 
 
 Marquez's mother, Armida Chacon, addressed reporters on Thursday from her Tomlinson Avenue home in Riverside, sobbing as she said she hadn't been in contact with her son since the day of the massacre. 
 
 "I don't know how this happened.... My world is upside-down," she said. "My life changed Wednesday." 
 
 Chacon was outside with one of her sons, cleaning up the broken glass and twisted panels of their garage door. The damage occurred when federal agents raided the stucco home over the weekend. 
 
 As she combed through the wreckage of the garage door, Chacon eventually turned to the reporters camped out on the street and agreed to an off-camera interview. 
 
 Marquez was his mother's "right hand at home," helping take care of his brothers, she said. 
 
 She said her son loved to hang out with friends and go to parties. 
 
 "My son is a good person," she said. 
 
 When asked about Farook, Chacon said her son was friends with him and "nothing more."
– The FBI is still being thwarted by an encrypted phone in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting investigation. "We still have one of those killers' phones that we haven’t been able to open," FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, per the Los Angeles Times. "It has been two months now and we are still working on it." That's making it difficult for investigators to track communication between Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik before they were killed in a police shootout after the Dec. 2 attack. The FBI said last month it was having trouble cracking encryption on multiple phones and hard drives in the case. It's not clear whose phone is still causing trouble. Comey said law enforcement is sometimes unable to unlock phones even after obtaining warrants ordering the phones be opened, the AP reports. The FBI is trying to retrace the couple's movements before and after the attack—last month, investigators said they couldn't account for an 18-minute stretch after the attack—and determine whether anyone else helped. At this time, the FBI still has no evidence the couple had "outside direction or support," the Times notes, but other questions remain: Investigators don't know whether the couple planned other attacks, whether anyone knew about the plans for the Dec. 2 attack, or why Farook left a bag containing homemade pipe bombs in the conference room they attacked. The FBI's encryption struggle illustrates what law enforcement has been warning about for more than a year—advanced encryption methods on some newer phones often hinder investigations, particularly at the state and local levels.