Bill Gates Sides With FBI in iPhone Hack Request

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said tech companies should be forced to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, entering a fractious debate between Apple and the U.S. government.
U.S. law enforcement teams want to access an iPhone that belonged to one of the terrorists involved in the San Bernardino shootings in December 2015 in which 14 people died. A U.S. magistrate ordered Apple to write software that would enable FBI investigators to break open the phone but Apple has so far refused.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said that the order was "chilling" and "dangerous" and was essentially asking the U.S. tech giant to "hack" its own users.
Speaking to the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday, the founder of Apple rival Microsoft denied that the Cupertino company assisting authorities would set a precedent.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said tech companies should be forced to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, entering a fractious debate between Apple and the U.S. government.U.S. law enforcement teams want to access an iPhone that belonged to one of the terrorists involved in the San Bernardino shootings in December 2015 in which 14 people died. A U.S. magistrate ordered Apple to write software that would enable FBI investigators to break open the phone but Apple has so far refused.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said that the order was "chilling" and "dangerous" and was essentially asking the U.S. tech giant to "hack" its own users.Speaking to the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday, the founder of Apple rival Microsoft denied that the Cupertino company assisting authorities would set a precedent.

"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," Bill Gates told the Financial Times. "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'."

Gates' stance sets him apart from other Silicon Valley executives on the matter. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and the head of Google, Sundar Pichari, have all sided with Apple and Tim Cook.