WASHINGTON—Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged to employees Monday that “it does not feel right” to refuse to help the FBI hack a locked iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino mass shootings. But he said that to do so would threaten data security for millions and “everyone’s civil liberties.”
“We have no tolerance or sympathy for terrorists,” Cook wrote in an early morning email addressed to the Apple “Team.” ‘'When they commit unspeakable acts like the tragic attacks in San Bernardino, we work to help the authorities pursue justice for the victims.”
But he reiterated the company’s position that to hack the San Bernardino gunman’s phone would ultimately risk “security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people.”
Cook’s email came just hours after FBI director James Comey said in an online post that Apple owes it to the San Bernardino victims to cooperate and said the dispute wasn’t about creating legal precedent.
The FBI “can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead,” Comey said.
The iPhone used by Syed Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in the Dec. 2 rampage, was locked. At the government’s request, a Federal magistrate judge has ordered Apple to help the FBI hack into the password-protected phone.
