Bill Gates Backs Up FBI's Request To Hack iPhone Of San Bernardino Shooter

Recalcitrant Apple may have won over a number of prominent cyber security experts and Silicon tech companies in its fractious opinion-war with FBI. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, however, begs to differ. Instead of siding with Silicon Valley species, Gates instead said that tech companies should be obliged to lend a hand to law enforcement agencies.

FBI earlier asked iPhone maker to create a backdoor iOS version that would enable the feds to hack into the phone of one of the San Bernardino attackers which Apple vehemently refused even with an existing court order fearing an unprecedented consequences.

Gate's recent take on the issue sets him apart from other tech executives like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Twitter's Jack Dorsey who also voiced their support for Apple's Tim Cook.

"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," Gates said as quoted by CNBC.

But Gates clarified that he's not siding with FBI in an apparent disappointment of how some media organizations painted his views as somewhat pro-FBI and anti-Apple.

"I do believe there are sets of safeguards where the government shouldn't have to be completely blind. But striking that balance -- clearly the government has taken information historically and used it in ways we didn't expect, going all the way back to say the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover," the former Microsoft CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg.

The FBI, on its part, tried rather unconvincingly to get Apple working with the agency over the issue which could potentially unlock some lingering questions about the San Bernardino attack.

"We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it. We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land," FBI Director James Comey as he described his request to Apple as 'limited' according to a CNN report.