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Edward Snowden, the most famous whistle blower in the world, is calling for Google to side with Apple and against the FBI in the "most important tech case in a decade."
On Tuesday, the FBI asked Apple to help it crack the password on an iPhone belonging to a shooter in the high profile San Bernardino case. Apple CEO Tim Cook quickly responded with a public letter denying the request and calling it "an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers."
In response to a tweet on Wednesday by WhiteHat Security founder Jeremiah Grossman, Snowden called out Google's silence on the issue:
Today would be the perfect day for Sundar Pichai (Google, CEO) to back up Tim Cook (Apple, CEO).
This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means @google picked a side, but it's not the public's. https://t.co/mi5irJcr25
Google creates Android, the most-used mobile operating system for smartphones in the world. Google has been nowhere near as firm as Apple about its stance on un-compromised encryption - Android is famously an open sourced platform that anyone can modify.
Google's business model is also vastly different from Apple's: Google collects data about its users, including emails sent through Gmail and Google search queries, and sells that data to advertisers. Tim Cook has repeatedly said that Apple's main business is selling hardware, not customer data.