FNC’s Peters: Apple’s Tim Cook ‘Would Rather Sell Phones to Terrorists than Protect the American People’

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” network strategic analyst Ralph Peters excoriated Apple CEO Tim Cook for his unwillingness to conform to a U.S. government request to build a so-called “backdoor” to reveal what was on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.

Peters insisted there were no constitutional projections for Apple on this issue.

“Tim Cook is a complete fool,” Peters said. “This is not about privacy rights of law abiding Americans. This is about Apple selling a lot of iPhones to really, really bad people around the world. And Tim Cook doesn’t want Apple to have a reputation of, well, we might give a key to the feds here. Sean, there is nothing in the constitution or Bill of Rights that says that terrorists or crooks or pedophiles have a right to encrypted communication. Even Ben Franklin, our most tech savvy founding father, didn’t put that in there. And so this is all about selling phones. And it’s a — as you pointed out, it’s a clear cut case. The federal magistrate issued the order.”

Later in the segment, Peters said Cook put more of a priority on selling iPhones than the safety of the public.

“Tim Cook would rather sell phones to terrorists than protect the American people,” he added. “I’m not buying any more Apple products. And I will also tell you this, Sean, that this is absolutely shameful. The federal government did everything right, got the court order, and Tim Cook is acting like Hillary Clinton, above the law, better than the rest of us.”

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