Bill Gates says he doesn’t support the FBI in its case against Apple.. but that doesn’t mean he supports Apple either.
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Bill Gates had “broke ranks” among Silicon Valley’s finest, by offering his support of the FBI in its landmark case against Apple. Now, in an interview with Bloomberg, he has denied this report, stressing that he actually doesn’t fully “support” either party, and both sides have good arguments.
“I do believe that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the government, on our behalf – like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future – that that is valuable,” said Gates, adding that we needed to strike a balance between safeguards against government power and security.
Gates, unlike his other tech contemporaries who view the issue as black and white, believes that more discussion is required on the issue.
When asked what his personal stance was on the case and it’s potential verdicts, Gates said “the courts are going to decide this [case]” and “these issues will be decided in Congress.”
In his interview with the Financial times, Gates criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook’s staunch refusal of the FBI order, commenting “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’.”
Once again, Bill Gates has proved himself to be the most sensible man in the tech industry, opting to discuss and analyze over jumping onto the “us vs. them” bandwagon.
Source: The Verge
