I can't imagine Apple would fire an employee for refusing. AAMOF the best publicity in the WORLD for them would be if they publicly declined to discipline or fire an employee for refusing. "Apple’s engineers may refuse to write software to break into the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters if the FBI wins its court battle with the tech giant, according to more than half a dozen current and former employees." Apple employees are already discussing what they will do if ordered to help law enforcement authorities. Some say they may balk at the work, while others may even quit their high-paying jobs rather than undermine the security of the software they have already created, according to more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees. Among those interviewed were Apple engineers who are involved in the development of mobile products and security, as well as former security engineers and executives. The potential resistance adds a wrinkle to a very public fight between Apple, the world’s most valuable company, and the authorities over access to an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the December mass killing in San Bernardino, Calif. It also speaks directly to arguments Apple has made in legal documents that the government’s demand curbs free speech by asking the company to order people to do things that they consider offensive. “Such conscription is fundamentally offensive to Apple’s core principles and would pose a severe threat to the autonomy of Apple and its engineers,” Apple’s lawyers wrote in the company’s final brief to the Federal District Court for the Central District of California. In full: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/technology/apple-encryption-engineers-if-o... -- RR "Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers ... And neutralize them, neutralize them, neutralize them"