Nearly 20 hours after Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said he would fight a court order directing him to help the FBI gain access to a murderer’s iPhone, only two tech heavyweights spoke out on the issue.
Both supported Cook.
Sundar Pichai, boss of Google, said it was wrong for Uncle Sam to ask companies to “enable hacking of customer devices & data.”
“We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders,” Pichai tweeted on Wednesday night.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum also supports Cook.
“We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set,” Koum wrote in a Facebook post. “Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake.”
Edward Snowden, the former CIA computer professional who leaked classified National Security Agency information in 2013, pressed Google when it didn’t sound off earlier.
Addressing what he called “the most important tech case in a decade,” he interpreted Google’s initial silence as meaning it had “picked a side, but it’s not the public’s.”
Facebook, Amazon, Verizon and Microsoft all remained silent.
Others voiced dismay over the lack of a louder Silicon Valley voice backing Cook.
One tweeted that if Google “refuses to speak against Apple encryption demands by day’s end, I will irrevocably boycott all Google services.”
And a self-described Android die-hard tweeted, “If @google can’t come out against the govt’s encryption demands, I’m switching to Apple.
