"Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy," Pichai tweeted, adding this "could be a troubling precedent."
Google’s top manager stressed that the company gives law enforcers access based on "valid legal orders," "but that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices and data," he argued.
Apple CEO Tim Cook chose not to comply with a California judge’s order to help the FBI break into Farook's phone, according to his public letter published Tuesday night. Farook, a radicalized Californian man, and his Pakistani wife killed 14 people when they opened fire on a social services agency in San Bernardino last December.
Cook explained that the FBI had asked the company to build a new version of the iPhone operating system and software that would allow authorities to unlock any iPhone. The White House has denied this.
US computer expert and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on US surveillance on phone and internet communications, has described Apple’s standoff with the government over users’ privacy as the most important technology case in a decade.