The founder of Microsoft spoke out against Apple on Tuesday, saying that the company should help federal authorities access one of its devices.
“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,'” he added.
Apple was ordered by a federal judge last week to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation in accessing an iPhone 5C used by one of the perpetrators of the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. Specifically, the company is being asked to develop software that would turn off a self-destruct feature on the device that activates when an incorrect password is entered more than 10 times.
Apple has contended that the FBI could keep using the software without any restrictions. The agency has a number of outstanding cases in which it has requested assistance getting into cellular devices. Apple has assisted with more than 70 of those requests since 2007, but the company suggests the current situation is different.
Executives at Microsoft, Facebook and Google have sided with Apple. The company has voiced support for a congressional commission to discuss the issues of encryption and privacy, a discussion Gates said should take place.
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“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,” he said.
