Apple CEO, Tim Cook, is a man on a mission to make sure the FBI never gets the software it needs to gain a backdoor entry into the company's iPhone devices. Recently, claimed that the iPhone-cracking software required by the FBI is equivalent of cancer, and those should be viewed as fighting words.
The Apple CEO made this statement to World News Tonight" anchor David Muir in a recent interview on ABC.
"The only way to get information -- at least currently, the only way we know -- would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it -- and that is what is at stake here," he said. "We believe that is a very dangerous operating system."
Apple is making a bold stand in order to make sure neither the government or the FBI gets what it wants. It is going to be a tough battle as the FBI is adamant that Apple must comply with demands to create a software that is capable of giving it access to an iPhone once owned by Syed Farook, who along with wife Tashfeen Malik, murdered 14 people back in 2015.
The feud between the FBI and Apple has spilled over into the public, and as such, many folks are debating on whether the iPhone factory should do as the FBI says or not.
On one end of the spectrum, we have folks saying that Apple should comply with the demands of the government, and on the other, there's another set of folks saying it shouldn't because it could lead to more requests in the future.
According to Cook, he's worried that if the court can ask his company to write a software to bypass the iPhone's security, then one day the courts might ask American companies to create an operating system for surveillance purposes.
Cook said Apple will never comply as it has done everything the FBI requested, but this will not be one of them.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the many folks who have come out in support of Apple in a bid to make sure the government does not get access to software it doesn't need.