Bill Gates comes out against Apple, critical of company’s arguments for refusing to hack terrorist iPhone

Source: www.geekwire.com - Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and one of the all-time tech-industry greats, flat-out disputes that Apple would create a major privacy threat by helping the FBI unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. In an interview with The Financial Times , Gates showed he holds a minority opinion among techies by siding with the FBI. A federal judge has ordered Apple to help the feds open the iPhone owned by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two shooters in December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino. Both were killed in a shootout with police. Apple said that the company will oppose the order on privacy grounds. In a note to the public, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the government’s request to create a digital “master key” will create a backdoor to all iPhones that could endanger the privacy of millions of innocent iPhone users. But Gates flatly rejected Cook’s argument. “Nobody is talking about a backdoor,” Gates told the FT. “This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case. It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information. Should anybody be able to get at bank records…it’s a simple question of do voters want the government, in any case, is there any case where a company should provide the information?” Gates said he welcomed a debate on the issue “so that the safeguards ar

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