Apple CEO Tim Cook: The FBI wants us to create the 'software equivalent of cancer'

In an interview with David Muir, Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company has done everything it can to assist the FBI with unlocking the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, and anything else would "trample" the civil rights of Apple users.

"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," he said. "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. We believe that is a very dangerous operating system." Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a shooting massacre on Dec. 2. The FBI tried to get into his work-issued phone, but after 10 failed attempts at cracking the passcode, the phone automatically erased its access key and made the phone "permanently inaccessible," ABC News reports.

Last week, a federal judge told Apple it had to assist the FBI, but Cook said the company needs to protect its customers from software that would "trample" civil rights. "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," he told Muir. "I don't know where this stops. But I do know that this is not what should be happening in this country." This case, he added, is "not about one phone. This case is about the future."

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