YEREVAN, March 12, ARMENPRESS. U.S. President Barack Obama said on March 11 that smartphones — like the iPhone the FBI is trying to force Apple Inc. to help it hack — can’t be allowed to be “black boxes,” inaccessible to the government. The technology industry, he said, should work with the government instead of leaving the issue to Congress, 'Armenpress' reports citing post-gazette. Com website.

“You cannot take an absolutist view on this,” Mr. Obama said at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. “If your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can and should create black boxes, that I think does not strike the kind of balance we have lived with for 200, 300 years, and it’s fetishizing our phones above every other value.”

Mr. Obama’s appearance on March 11 at the event known as SXSW, the first by a sitting president, comes as the FBI tries to force Apple to help investigators access an iPhone used by one of the assailants in December’s deadly San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack. Apple has appealed a magistrate court order that it assist the government, saying to do so would undermine its encryption technology.

Siding with Apple are technology companies including Amazon Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc. and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. On March 10, the US government filed a memorandum in the case arguing that Apple would need to assign as few as six workers for as little as two weeks to hack into Syed Farook’s phone.

Mr. Obama was interviewed at the festival by the CEO and editor in chief of the Texas Tribune, Evan Smith, who told him that “it looks to the tech community, or to some in the tech community, that government is the enemy” in its dealings with Apple. South by Southwest, now 30 years old, has grown from an event to highlight local musicians and artists into one of the nation’s largest and most popular technology conferences and film-and-music festivals.

The White House has backed the FBI in its fight with Apple but has said Mr. Obama believes it it is vital to balance privacy protections against the needs of law enforcement. Mr. Obama has not weighed in on legislation being drafted in the Senate that would require companies to comply with court orders asking for assistance accessing encrypted data.