Whether Apple trusts the government or not, it may have no choice but to give access to iPhones, an expert told CNBC on Wednesday.
"I don't know that there's really any middle ground here," Chris Swecker, former assistant director of the FBI, told CNBC's "Squawk Alley." "There should be no safe havens for bad guys — for terrorists, for kidnappers, for organized crime."
In an FBI investigation into the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, the government has made attempts to break into shooter Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone but was thwarted by the security settings. In a letter to customers, Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged to fight a federal order to unlock the phone, arguing the court ruling would force a loophole into the encryption of iPhones that could breach Apple users' privacy around the world.