[citizensixteen]

I do not understand why Bill Gates would take a contrary position to Silicon Valley / tech community on this issue. Any insight into why he is taking this stance?

What I have found even more confusing is why the FBI hasn't asked the NSA for help. The NSA's thousands of skilled hackers simply can't break into an old iPhone?

[madaxe_again]

Because the US government is Microsoft's biggest customer by a country mile.

Hand that feeds you and all that.

The FBI already have the info they need, don't need nsa's help, this is purely about setting a precedent.

[lazaroclapp]

Gates is not in charge of Microsoft anymore... and hasn't been for a long while.

Actually, my best hypothesis is that, remembering that the Gates Foundation, which is the organization Gates is actually involved with now, works a lot in government/policy circles, Bill himself might have views that are more common within that circle that within the tech community. Whether that means that he is taking this point because he has more information, less information or just different priorities, I do not know. I don't even remember if Gates took any position on the original crypto wars.

I personally find that the balance of arguments weights much heavier on the side of security and privacy, versus surveillance, and that creating this tool and setting this particular precedent would do more harm than good. I can still imagine a world in which Gates disagrees with that without being knowingly evil, though.

Actually, when it comes to Gates in particular, I admit that when I was younger I spent a long time thinking of him as "knowingly evil" (or at least selfish to a extreme degree) for completely different reasons. Later I realized that he might have simply put priority on different ethical axioms than my high-school self did... and in the balance of things might end up having been a higher positive force in the world than a negative one, by far, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Eradication_efforts . This doesn't mean I agree with him on the issue at hand, though.

[madaxe_again]

He's not in charge of, but still holds at least $12bn of MS stock, on which a lot of his wealth is leveraged and predicated, which would certainly give him a vested interest in defending microsoft's interests, which are the government's interests.

You may well be right however that the circle he runs in has influenced his stance on this too, however he has historically taken a pro-government anti-knowledge stance - see http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-roll... for instance in which he trots out the "Snowden is a traitor who needs to come home for a fair trial" rhetoric.

[revanx_]

Exactly, especially now that the D.O.D. is rushing to upgrade every device to windows 10, what a joke ;d

[tallanvor]

Because people are allowed to have their own opinion? I don't agree with him, but I certainly don't base my opinion on this matter on the general sentiments in Silicon Valley.

Regardless of the outcome of this case, the best thing that Apple, Google, and everyone else can do is to make sure that it's impossible for them to comply with future versions of the OS.

[SeanDav]

Bill Gates is well aware that people will take this, not as his personal opinion, but as the opinion of Microsoft. He could have made it it clear that this was his personal opinion and not related to the Microsoft position, but he did not.

[tallanvor]

Most people outside the tech industry don't pay attention to what Bill Gates, Tim Cook, or anyone else in the tech industry says. Those in the industry are hopefully smart enough to recognize that Bill Gates saying something doesn't mean that Microsoft is necessarily in agreement with it.

[rahoulb]

But the likes of Bill Gates will get quoted on the news headlines - most people don't care but will hear "Bill Gates says..." and think "well, if the experts think that"

[simonh]

Even the NSA don't have a magic wand for braking cryptographic security. Designing well engineered, secure cryptographic systems that are not hackable is a thing people can do and it appears Apple have done it.

Most of the NSA hacking has nothing to do with cracking cryptographic keys anyway, it's exploiting weaknesses in systems so you don't even need the keys at all. In this case, it appears they would need the keys.

[jonnybgood]

That's not how the NSA operates. The NSA is not a tech support hotline for the Feds. The NSA has its own mission set which its resources go towards. If it doesn't fall within that mission set, then NSA don't care. This iPhone doesn't fall within that mission set.

[majewsky]

Shamir's 3rd Law of Computer Security: "Cryptography is typically bypassed, not penetrated."

[jarcane]

Because caving to the Feds is basically Microsoft standard policy, and always has been?