Bill Gates Sides With FBI In Apple Spat (ft.com)

Fudge Factor 3000 writes: Bill Gates has now publicly stated that Apple should cooperate with the FBI in the San Bernadino terrorist's phone unlocking case. He states that it is for this specific case, but seems to miss the point that there are other law enforcement officials waiting on the wings with their requests should this precedent be set. The war against privacy escalates. Setting aside the actual practicality of unlocking the San Bernadino phone, the teams that are emerging on this issue include some pretty strange bedfellows: John McAfee and Bill Gates on the pro-unlocking side, and Woz, Edward Snowden and even some of the victim's families on the con.

Comments

Re:NBC poll 52% for FBI, 38% for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

and this is why America is no longer the land of the free, its the land of the afraid.

No, he doesn't...

[sumiciu]

He disputes so in a video in Bloomberg..

Bill Gates, co-founder at Microsoft and co-chair at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, addresses his view of Apple's battle against an FBI court order to unlock an iPhone belonging to a shooter involved in the San Bernardino, California terror attack and the need for a balance between privacy and government access.

Microsoft gets huge payments from the NSA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to me that Microsoft is selling itself to secret U.S. government agencies. Who tried to kill the excellent TrueCrypt? The old original TrueCrypt web site pushes people toward a Microsoft product.

Can Microsoft be trusted? Here are some articles:

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Windows 10, Microsoft hiding what it is doing: Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Quote: "Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way." (Aug 21, 2015)

Windows 10, Microsoft takes even more control: Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do -- here's how to opt out But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking. (July 31, 2015)

Microsoft can't be trusted: How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again? (June 17, 2013)

Microsoft releases EXTREMELY buggy software: Microsoft Kills Many Critical Flaws, Some 0-Days, Un-Trusts One Wildcard Cert It is likely that there are many bugs Microsoft hasn't yet found. Are Microsoft products intentionally made insecure? (December 9, 2015)

Says he's misinterpreted

[Geoffrey.landis]

He's refuting he said that he supports the FBI.

He has very slightly backed off, claims that people have misinterpreted his position:
(see the "update:" in this gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-... )

But here is Gates' actual quote from the Financial times article; what do you think-- was he misinterpreted?
  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3559...

“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,” Mr 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’.”

Already destroyed the actual phones used

[Geoffrey.landis]

The biggest problem is that people are reacting to the headline - not the back story.

1) This was the terrorist's WORK phone. He tried (and failed) to destroy his personal phone - and the FBI have all of the data from that. If he didn't destroy the work phone, there probably wasn't anything important on it.

Close, but no.

He tried, and succeeded, in destroying his personal phones:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016...

  The couple took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cellphones, crushing them beyond the FBI's ability to recover information from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer; it has not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential electronic evidence in a nearby lake.

Farook was not carrying his work iPhone during the attack. It was discovered after a subsequent search.

So, the question is: given that they went to great lengths to destroy the phones and hard drives that they used in planning the attack, why in the world would anybody think that this phone they didn't think were worth bothering to destroy would have anything on it?