MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and other conservative voices railed Wednesday morning over
Apple's opposition to a court ruling that would help the FBI crack the San Bernardino terrorists' iPhone passcode voluntarily, saying the company is jeopardizing the nation's security to protect the rights of two dead killers.
"What message is Apple sending to ISIS today?" said Scarborough. "What messages are they sending to the next San Bernardino shooter? What message are they sending to terrorists across America and the globe? Buy Apple, they will defend you even after you shoot and kill innocent Americans."
And what is "outrageous," Scarborough said, is that high-tech companies lecture about privacy "when they are the most invasive people in our lives ever . . . walking down the street, a Google alert, would you like to buy the pink socks you're looking at in the window right now? There's a word I can't say on the air."
By refusing to comply with the court order on the San Bernardino shooters, Scarborough said, "Apple is putting their rights as dead terrorists above the rights of living Americans and law enforcement officers who want to actually stop the next San Bernardino attack."
GOP front-runner Donald Trump, on
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program, also agreed that Apple needs to unlock the phone.
"Can you imagine that here are the people that killed 14 people, other people laying desperately ill and in the hospital from what they did," he said. "These are two people radicalized, who were given a wedding party by the people that they killed.
"There's something going on. We have to be very careful, we have to be vigilant. But to think that Apple won't allow us to get into her cell phone, who do they think they are?"
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also appearing on the same show, commented that national security trumps Apple's worries about privacy.
"I blame this to some extent on [Sens.] Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and the ridiculous hysteria they created about privacy and the government trying to take the information for improper purposes," said Giuliani.
"The government had all of this information from all of these telephone calls in its possession for years and never abused that power once . . . It's ridiculous that the government has to be put in a position where if they have information about a possible attack we waste a second because that could be the second that kills somebody."
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, on the "Morning Joe" show, agreed that Apple has to find a way to release the records.
"They don't want to get in this if God forbid there's another San Bernardino or Paris [attack] and people are using encrypted iPhones," he said.
"The backlash would be tremendous, not just Apple, but basically this entire industry has to think about how again, they balance their political instincts and their devotion to privacy and commercial interests with the fact that we have collect security interests as a society."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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