Things are heating up where in the encryption row battle between the FBI and Apple, as Microsoft’s founder and Chairman, Bill Gates, has become the latest to take sides.
Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, who took sides with Apple, Gates has sided with the FBI. We’re not sure how the general public will take this, but from what we have seen, it might work out well in Gates’ and Microsoft’s favor since the public is more in support of the FBI than Apple.
FBI-iPhone Encryption issue
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Gates talked about the court order that requires Apple to give the FBI access to a work phone that belonged to Syed Farook, a gunman who he and his wife killed 14 people back in 2015.
According to Gates, it 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.”
The Microsoft front-man also went on to compare this case to when the FBI request information on telephone and bank records. Despite his support of the FBI, Gates said the bureau must be subject to certain rules that ensures it doesn’t get to go around and seek information whenever it wants.
“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,” Gates said.
We understand that Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, have managed to destroy several mobile phones to the point where all information is lost. Furthermore, it is likely the couple is involved with the group, ISIS.
Source: Fox News.
NOTE: Adi Kingsley-Hughes tweeted to us a clarification. Do read it.
“work phone that belonged to Syed Farook”. Since it was a “work phone” it did NOT belong to Farook. It is the property of his employer and it was his employer that gave the FBI permission to access the phone.
Where a phone is just another add-on piece of evidence to someone who’s been investigated along more traditional lines, and other probable cause exists first, of course an impartial inspection of a phone would be like any other evidence…as long as it’s under Court order, of course, or at least Court review; but where we need to follow 30 million + phone users all the time generally, or leave the door open to such “amusement” for amusement’s sake, I take the position usually given by Bruce Schneier or UK’s Baroness Shields.