> If one human isn't using a thing to communicate to other humans, it's not speech.
Imagine a coder refusing an order from the FBI to create a tool. She is refusing to translate her thoughts into code. What is that other than refusing an attempt to compel speech?
There is only one human in this picture. But the code an FBI order is attempting to extract from her brain is still speech.
> She is refusing to translate her thoughts into code.
You seem to be mixing up the standard for the fifth amendment and the first amendment. The fifth amendment says that the government can't compel you to testify against yourself, and that a physical action (like punching in a key code) can be testimonial if it involves accessing one's thoughts. The fifth amendment doesn't apply here because Apple is under no threat self-incrimination.
And "accessing your thoughts" is not the test under the first amendment. The test is whether the speaker is expressing an idea. Instructing a computer to do something is not expression, it's not communication with another human. It's a human acting on an inanimate object. The fact that the action involves accessing one's thoughts is irrelevant. E.g. the government can definitely compel a bank employee to punch in a key code to unlock a vault, even though that involves translating thoughts of the combination into a sequence of key presses.
NB: it's kind of interesting to be splitting hairs over what is and is not speech here. A court can compel you to come in and testify against someone, which is undoubtedly speech. Yet the power to compel testimony is one of the fundamental powers of a court, and has never been understood to be a violation of the first amendment.
You can be compelled to recite facts you may know, when there is some evidence that you know them. Not infrequently, witnesses claim not to have known, not to have a reliable account, or not being able to recall those facts.
This is substantially different from compelling coders to discover how to break their own secure implementation and implement a deliberately broken implementation. This is compelling a creative work, and a particularly perverse one.
Imagine a coder refusing an order from the FBI to create a tool. She is refusing to translate her thoughts into code. What is that other than refusing an attempt to compel speech?
There is only one human in this picture. But the code an FBI order is attempting to extract from her brain is still speech.