Apple's Tim Cook's Newest Argument on Encryption -- Not Just Privacy, It's About Safety

Apple CEO Tim Cook went directly to a national television audience Wednesday to make the case for why the company is resisting a court order to give the FBI a way into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers.

His latest argument is that it’s not just about privacy — it’s about safety.

“People like to frame this argument as privacy versus national security. That is overly simplistic and it is not true,” Cook told “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir. “This is also about public safety. The smartphone that you carry has more information about you on it than any other singular device or any other singular place.”

It’s Apple’s plainspoken way of explaining its position. Cook returned to the issue of safety three times over the course of the half-hour interview, reiterating that smartphones are a repository of the most intimate details of our lives — our conversations, financial data and health records as well as “the location of our kids, in many cases.”

Here’s the full interview:

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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