On Wednesday, Cook gave an interview with ABC News explaining his rationale for defying the FBI’s request to create a special software to access the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino gunman.
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But the tech giant has refused to comply with authorities, arguing such a program would compromise the privacy of all of their users.
‘And that is what we have been asking, and we owe it to the victims and to the public whose safety we must protect to ensure that we have done everything under the law to fully investigate terrorist attacks on American soil’.
Regarding this situation, Cook said that certain things are hard and certain things are right and certain things are both. “This is one of those things”.
He spoke with ABC News’ World News Tonight with David Muir.
Apple is fighting the court order, requiring it to develop software to prevent the phone’s data from being wiped after 10 unsuccessful Federal Bureau of Investigation attempts to break the device’s security, and to turn off the phone’s built-in time delays between such attempts.
Cook said he was ready to take the case to the Supreme Court: “We would be prepared to take this issue all the way”, Cook said. The company asserts that to comply with the court-ordered request, Apple would be required to create an entirely new operating system, with a backdoor that would expose all of its customers to U.S. surveillance.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has refused to do so, and sent a letter to employees Monday morning making clear the company’s hardline stance refusing to make software to unlock the phone addresses broader issues, not just a single device linked to a grisly attack.
Apple Inc. will tell a federal judge this week in legal papers that its fight with the FBI over accessing a locked and encrypted iPhone should be kicked to Congress, rather than decided by courts, The Associated Press has… “I don’t think that something so important to this country should be handled in this way”.
“What is at stake here is can the government compel Apple to write software that we believe would make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world, including the USA, and also trample civil liberties”, Cook said.
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The idea behind the new levels of security is to stamp out any future situations where law enforcement or governments could demand the Californian company to unlock an individual’s iPhone. Indeed, it is likely that while Apple considered many different aspects of iPhone security, it didn’t consider whether it could one day be forced into violating its security measures.
