Via Reuters:
Feb 19 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called on Friday for a boycott of Apple Inc products until the tech company agreed to help the U.S. government unlock the cellphone of one of the killers in last year’s San Bernardino, California, shooting.
“Boycott Apple until such time as they give that information,” Trump said at a campaign event in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. “It just occurred to me.”
Trump, front-runner for the Republican nomination ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election, made the off-the-cuff comment at a town hall-style event at a country club, a day before the state’s nominating contest.
Even as he was still speaking, Trump’s campaign posted on his Twitter handle (@real Donald Trump) from an iPhone, with the timestamp labeled “via Twitter for iPhone.”
Trump later posted on Twitter that he used both an iPhone and a Samsung device.
In response, senior Apple executives, on a call with reporters on Friday, said they felt they were in good company given the other groups and people Trump has criticized in the past. They defended encryption as a way to protect Apple customers’ rights.
Apple is challenging the order:
“The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement to customers Tuesday night. “[T]his order … has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.”
“The FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on [the shooter’s] iPhone,” Cook added. “In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.”
In addition, all of the personal and sensitive information on customers’ phones “needs to be protected from hackers and criminals who want to access it, steal it, and use it without our knowledge or permission,” Cook wrote.