Bill Gates says he was misunderstood, disappointed by reports that he backs FBI outright

An earlier report by the Financial Times indicated that Bill Gates had taken a strong stance supporting the FBI in the San Bernadino iPhone case. In a later interview with Bloomberg however, Bill Gates clarified that he was misunderstood and was disappointed by the report. When asked by Bloomberg to clarify his stand, Bill Gates said that tech was empowering to everyone, even terrorists. If terrorists are using technology to protect themselves and cause great harm to others, we want our government to be out there, doing something about it. He essentially said that someone needs to be doing the monitoring, but that the government really hasn’t had a good track record with managing all that data. Referring to Edgar Hoover’s times and the more recent revelations following Snowden’s leaks, he said that the issue—accessing user data—is something that needs to be discussed in congress. It needs to be discussed and there needs to be a way to “strike a balance” between privacy and access to data. The government must be given access to the information it needs in cases like this, it’s just that there needs to be some mechanism to ensure that this power is not misused, as it has been in the past.