Following Google, Facebook and Twitter offering their support for Apple against the FBI’s access requests, Bill Gates has backed the FBI’s case.
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has joined the debate between Apple and the FBI over the latter’s requests to access information on iPhones, citing that the company should share the information stored in the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone with the company on the grounds that it is a ‘particular case’.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has gone on the public record to argue that allowing the FBI to access information on iPhones, even once, would set in place a dangerous precedent for future requests.
Read: Tim Cook blasts FBI request for iPhone access
Previously, Google’s Sundar Pichai, as well as Facebook and Twitter have voiced their support for Apple’s defiance. Gates has gone on the record with a different view, citing that requests to access the Bernadino shooter’s iPhone 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.”
Read: Google‘s Sundar Pichai backs Apple over FBI requests
The former CEO went on to state that “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”.
Read: Facebook and Twitter support Apple against the FBI
Gates, however, insisted that a process should be created to moderate government access to private information, offering that “I hope that we have that debate so that the safeguards are built and so people do not opt “” and this will be country by country “” [to say] it is better that the government does not have access to any information”.
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