Apple vs FBI : Bill Gates Ditches Apple in the iPhone Encryption Case
As the plot thickens in this complex saga of privacy vs security, Apple has seen a lot of big names put their weight behind its argument but today in a change of trends, one of the biggest names that the tech industry has ever seen has come out surprisingly in open support of the FBI.
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has backed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its legal battle against Apple over encryption in an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December’s San Bernardino attacks.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates dismissed the notion that Aple’s CEO Tim Cook is propagating that granting the FBI access would set a legal precedent for future cases such as this one. Bill Gates argued that the FBI is “not asking for some general thing, and is asking for a particular case.”
Adding to this, the Co-Founder of Microsoft goes on,
“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. Let’s say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said ‘don’t make me cut this ribbon, because you’ll make me cut it many times.’”
As it stands, Microsoft communications chief Frank X. Shaw declined to comment on Bill Gates’ comments which sees him alienating himself from other Silicon Valley top executives, such as Facebook Inc chief Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter Inc founder Jack Dorsey and Google head Sundar Pichai, who have all backed Cook’s decision, the newspaper added.
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