Apple says FBI could force company to turn on iPhone cameras, microphones: Report

Apple’s Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President of the manufacturer of the iPhone spoke to  Univision  in a Spanish-language interview defending the company’s refusal to co-operate with a court order which would help the FBI to extract information used by one of the San Bernardino shooters in December. He says that if the FBI does find its way, Apple could be forced to use an iPhone’s camera or microphone to spy on people.

According to the report, Cue said that, “When they can get us to create a new system to do new things, where will it stop? For example, one day [the FBI> may want us to open your phone’s camera, microphone. Those are things we can’t do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that’s very bad.”

The FBI is pressing Apple to develop a system that would allow the law enforcement agency to break into a locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, a demand the tech company claims would make all its devices vulnerable. Almost everyone in Silicon Valley has Apple’s back too. Several major tech companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft are siding with Apple which is currently in a unique battle with the FBI as the government agency wants to create a backdoor entry into iOS, so it could gain access to information when needed from any user, for situations such as a terrorist attack.

This move has clearly come to light after the San Bernardino, California shooting which took place in December. The county-owned iPhone was used by Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at a holiday party in San Bernardino in December. The other phones, which were seized in a variety of criminal investigations, are involved in cases where prosecutors are compelling the company to help them bypass the pass code security feature of phones that may hold evidence.