The FBI picked the lamest case they possibly could for their fight to force Apple to strip away iPhone security features. So said Apple and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Mr. Wozniak shared his thoughts with Conan O'Brien when asked about the FBI's court order compelling Apple to create a version of iOS that removes the protection against brute force passcode attacks.
"I side with Apple on this one," Woz said. "[The FBI] picked a lame case. They picked the lamest case you ever could."
His reasoning is that the suspects in the case in question, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, weren't charged with crimes as terrorist, which is true since both were killed in a shootout with police after killing 14 of their coworkers. The Mac Observer's own Bryan Chaffin pointed out on our Daily Observations podcast this was exactly the right case because it makes a perfect platform for the FBI to set a precedent.
Woz also admitted to writing a couple viruses for the Mac as an experiment, then destroyed the code for fear it could end up in the hands of hackers. He used that as an analogy to Apple creating a less secure version of iOS saying if the code ever fell into hacker's hands, or certain foreign governments, the results would be disastrous.