Apple CEO Tim Cook said the FBI is asking the company to create the software equivalent of "cancer" in order to crack the iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.
"The only way to get information — at least currently, the only way we know — would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it — and that is what is at stake here,"
he told ABC "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir in a Thursday interview.
"We believe that is a very dangerous operating system."
Cook said that if Apple were to create a software key that could unlock the phone, it could be compelled to violate its customers' civil liberties down the line.
"If a court can ask us to write this piece of software, think about what else they could ask us to write — maybe it's an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability for the law enforcement to turn on the camera," Cook said, possibly alluding to the NSA's mass surveillance programs.
"I don't know where this stops. But I do know that this is not what should be happening in this country."
After Apple was issued a court order compelling it to help unlock the phone, the computer giant vowed to fight it. Apple has repeatedly said that creating a back door or other hack to help the FBI in the San Bernardino case would compromise the security of all iPhones.
"This case is not about one phone," Cook said. "This case is about the future. ... If we knew a way to get the information on the phone -- that we haven't already given -- if we knew a way to do this, that would not expose hundreds of millions of other people to issues, we would obviously do it. ... Our job is to protect our customers."
Cook noted that Apple gave the FBI access to all of the data it had access to via the cloud, but the FBI would like to know if there is anything on the phone that was not connected to the cloud.
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