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Bill Gates Says Apple Should Unlock San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone for FBI [Updated]

Brave stance Bill. Just what we'd expect from the guy at the top of the 1% heap.
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iZac said:
Damn, this is the anti gun control argument - but I agree with it in this case.

I'm so confused.
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Except encryption actually has a value to society.
 
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johngordon said:
To be fair, I think that argument is a red herring.

Presumably the police / security services are not pro-actively looking at everyone's personal information as a matter of course..
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Except, they are. We know this from the Snowden leaks. ALL communication is being monitored and stored for the future by governments.
 
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tgara said:
The standard is whether or not providing the court-imposed assistance to the FBI (e.g., modifying the OS) would be burdensome under the circumstances. Here, there is an ongoing investigation into an act of terrorism by Islamic jiihadists where several people were killed and many more were injured. Those terrorists probably had help in setting up and perpetrating these heinous acts, and the government needs to put a stop to it. Under those circumstances, having Apple modify an OS to allow access to the perp's phone, especially when they have said it is technically feasible, doesn't appear to me to be burdensome or unreasonable.

And your free speech argument is misplaced. There is a substantial public interest in the government completing this terrorism investigation in a thorough manner. Any free speech arguments Apple may make in this regard are likely not to hold up.
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Nope, unreasonable burdens are unreasonable, and "write a new OS for us" is by any rational standard an unreasonable burden. It can be done - it just is very difficult and will require a large number of employees to stop what they're doing and focus on this for months (months where they should be working on an OS that customers will pay Apple for by buying new iPhones). Plus, the severe damage to Apple's reputation is part of that burden.

And substantial public interest has NEVER been a just cause for compelling speech. It's sometimes, rarely, a just cause for suppressing speech but it's a VERY high bar to cross constitutionally. To compel speech, I'm not sure that's ever been done.

Of course, the government is the ones with the guns, so eventually they could disregard the rights of Apple (while they're destroying all iPhone users' privacy). Won't make it right. Won't make it legal. Won't make it anything but a terrible thing to do.
 
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MacRumors said:



Shortly after Apple was ordered to help the FBI recover data from the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, Apple quickly said they would oppose the order, garnering the support of other major tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft. In a new interview with the Financial Times, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has instead backed the FBI, denying that they are asking for a back door.

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While Apple CEO Tim Cook has consistently argued that unlocking one device would set a dangerous precedent, Gates doesn't believe that it would. He argues that Apple has access to the information, but that they are declining to provide access to the information. Gates compares it to when a bank or telephone company is requested to give up records for a particular person.

Gates went on to say that there were benefits to governments having some access to information, but that there would have to be rules in place to limit how they can access that information. He says that he hopes people will "have that debate so that safeguards are built and so people do not opt out -- and this will be in country by country -- [to say] it is better that the government does not have access to any information."

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FBI Director James Comey said in an editorial yesterday that the request was "not trying to set a precedent" and that it was instead about "the victims and justice." However, the FBI also confirmed that it had worked with San Bernardino county officials to reset the iCloud password of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Apple said that, had the FBI not attempted to reset the password, the company would have been able to access the needed information as the iCloud backups would have still been accessible.

The FBI then requested a version of iOS that would remove passcode features like time limits and data erasure measures and other tools to access the iPhone. Apple has maintained that creating such a tool would open a can of worms, setting a dangerous precedent and allowing both bad guys and good guys to take advantage.

Update: In an interview with Bloomberg, Gates said he "was disappointed" with headlines stating he sides with the FBI.Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Bill Gates Says Apple Should Unlock San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone for FBI [Updated]
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Bill is right.
 
k995 said:
BS this is aproved by a judge. Even if this was the case that hundreds of judges all over the country start giving these kind of judgements: its still all according to law.

This is like a landlord who refuses to open a door after a judge gies a search warrent. Total BS to not follow the countries laws here.
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Not really, because there is no door to open this is like a landlord who refuse to call and pay a contractor to build a new door.
 
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I like Gates but can't back him on this. Also his updated statement literally does nothing to refute his original statement.
 
How can this demon Gates be trusted? He is personally funding the population reduction of the world through viruses. His company's latest OS, Windows 10 spys on users, sending thousands of pieces of data back to hundreds of Microsoft servers per day from each PC in the world running it. This cannot be turned off or stopped. It is deeply built in to the software. He participates in Bildersberg meetings in Belgium so obviously he is extremely biased towards his order-givers, who also order government spokespersons (O'Bummer, CaMoron etc.) and officials.
 
The guy thats giving his fortune away to help the world? The guy that is known for Agricultural development, Water, sanitation and hygiene, libraries and education programs... He's a demon? really...
 
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When did crime fighting become about crunching numbers instead of investigating?

In retrospect, this partially explains the Windows track record of being broken into by bad software players. How many Windows patches covered previously intentional holes? It is now much less easy for me to believe that some Windows holes were not completely intentional. Assuming true and following the same thread, how much has Microsoft cost the user base in lost time and functionality?

If you're of the mindset that Gates doesn't understand that creating a new hole causes a permanent leak, that also would explain some of Windows track record.

He isn't stupid, but he is playing a dangerous game assuming the people he is talking to are stupid. We can infer through Apple comments the data is encrypted at Apple. Gates is slyly saying that Apple effectively has an unencrypted copy. This leads me to a third train of thought, even more chilling, revealed between the lines; Microsoft employees can see everything you do and will mine data or do whatever it takes to monetize what should be your private computing habits and cloud stored data, without concern, remorse, or recompense. I expect a kernel of truth in this statement, based on how chatty the latest Windows is.

Your right to privacy isn't trumped by a broad statement that bad things happen in the world. Why are so many people willing to give up their privacy virginity on the promise of better security, when in fact, the opposite is true? Here I expect a lot of general agreement, but out there, power brokers jockey to keep their positions of power convincing people to give up even more freedoms on promises that cannot be kept.

So what was Gates' real agenda in the video? He appeared to be agitated. As to what caused it will require more than a minute clip video.
 
Bill Gates never cared about user's privacy, or had an interest in creating anything beyond what could be used to sell advertising and licences. That's why Windows became what Windows is, and anyone who uses Internet Explorer and Windows and a Mac can clearly see this guy's 2 cents isn't worth a penny. At least on this subject.
 
AFEPPL said:
When it comes to terrorist privacy rights, I'm on the side of the government....
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So, basically you came to this thread and posted without reading anything? I agree that the terrorists should have no privacy rights, BUT what about everyone else? That's the point of this whole argument. You can't break privacy on one without breaking privacy on ALL of us. A backdoor is a backdoor. Today it's the 'terorrist,' tomorrow it's all of us.

First they wanted 1 phone. Now it's 12. How can you not see a problem here?
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GadgetDon said:
That's nice. How do you create a back door that only works on terrorist phones but not on the phones of everyone else?
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Exactly.
 
tgara said:
The standard is whether or not providing the court-imposed assistance to the FBI (e.g., modifying the OS) would be burdensome under the circumstances. Here, there is an ongoing investigation into an act of terrorism by Islamic jiihadists where several people were killed and many more were injured. Those terrorists probably had help in setting up and perpetrating these heinous acts, and the government needs to put a stop to it. Under those circumstances, having Apple modify an OS to allow access to the perp's phone, especially when they have said it is technically feasible, doesn't appear to me to be burdensome or unreasonable.

And your free speech argument is misplaced. There is a substantial public interest in the government completing this terrorism investigation in a thorough manner. Any free speech arguments Apple may make in this regard are likely not to hold up.
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It's burdensome because it amounts to a compulsion to work, i.e. to produce a tool which does not exist, against your will, contrary to the 13th amendment. Then there's the problem of the requirements of forensic instrumentation and forensic lab servicing. When conducting forensic work, the requirement for expert assistance is that the work must be reproducible, so that process by which digital evidence is produced is falsifiable and thus can be given the assurance that no produced data is novel or fictitious. That means that the tool that they are being compelled create will have to be peer-reviewed. It will not ever stay internal to Apple. This means that not only will their intellectual property be easily open to theft, but at some point a pirate version of the tool will enter the wild. It's inevitable.

Even disregarding that, your public good argument doesn't hold water. You are sacrificing a material good, the reasonable affirmation of integral privacy moving forward, against the possible actions of individuals which may or may not even exist. Remember, the same FBI that wants this done is the same FBI which stated repeatedly that though the actions of Syed Farook were religiously-motivated, it did not appear to be part of a larger network of concentrated activity. If that's the case, who do they expect to find? Moreover, this trampling of right to privacy walks hand-in-hand with the increasing militarisation of local law enforcement throughout the US. I would stack the lives of those fourteen poor souls kill in San Bernadino against the number of people that have been killed, maimed, blinded or otherwise permanently disabled in the execution of arrests without probable cause or through the use of no-knock warrants that were issue in error, through overt and deliberate government overreach, or from the same attitude of right-fatalism that you're espousing.
 
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I have nothing to hide, so i have no issues if they read my data.. and i read it all despite the flippant comment.
Law enforcement has asked for the access, it should be provided rather than creating a marketing PR storm..
 
fifthworld said:
Not really, because there is no door to open this is like a landlord who refuse to call and pay a contractor to build a new door.
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No, its simply to open a door, what technical skills are required is irrelevant .
 
AFEPPL said:
The guy thats giving his fortune away to help the world? The guy that is known for Agricultural development, Water, sanitation and hygiene, libraries and education programs... He's a demon? really...
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A fellow Brit should have better command of his Shakespeare:

Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
 
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Alenore said:
Just like Apple agreed with govenrments to provide datas, backup and logs when requested, except in this case.
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Uh, no, not like that at all. Apple's older versions of iOS did not have the encryption and security protections it does today, and they complied with warrants to hand over this unencrypted data, the same way hundreds of other tech companies would. Microsoft has actually created backdoors for the government, was the first to sign up to PRISM, and has unecrypted people's private data. Microsoft also gave China the source code for Windows and other software, presumably so the Chinese govt. can exploit bugs to spy on its citizens.

Microsoft and Apple are worlds apart on a commitment to protect the privacy of its users.
 
JohnGrey said:
A fellow Brit should have better command of his Shakespeare:

Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
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But however you go about your revenge, don’t corrupt your mind or do any harm to your mother
 
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