is exaggerated speculation at best. There may well be thousands of crimes that include locked phones in their set of evidence, but there is no guarantee that data on those locked phones would lead to the crime being solved if it were unlocked. It's also possible that many of those crimes could be / will be solved eventually using other pieces of evidence and investigative avenues.

. Wrong. There's a third and obvious option, lower profits. Apple's profit margin isn't some fixed value and higher expenses (e.g. increased tax payments) can't arbitrarily be covered by raising prices or cutting expenses elsewhere. If Apple could raise prices as easily as you imply they would have already done so to maximize their profits. If Apple could cut their expenses somewhere (e.g. salaries) in a way that wouldn't affect their profits they would have already done so to maximize their profits.

Do you seriously believe that the "new" journalism isn't ad sponsored. What, other than ads, do they have as a source of funding? At least the "old" journalism could get some revenues directly from their readers. The "new" journalism, not so much.

Did you miss the word "his" in the first sentence?

No it doesn't. The authors address the differences in the spectrum in the third paragraph of the Discussion section of the study.