This week Apple are refusing to unlock an phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. The company is taking this stance because of their CEO’s vow to fight the FBI’s court order. On Tuesday a Magistrate Judge in Central California issued her court order because the FBI said that they were unable to access the data stored on the iPhone in question.

On Wednesday Apple posted a public letter singed by Tim Cook detailing the reasons as to why they are opposing this court order. The letter posted on their website says in part, “[…] the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation.”

Apple go on to say that if this were to get into the wrong hands the software would have the potential to unlock any iPhone. This means the FBI would effectively have a backdoor into anyones iPhone even though they are saying it would be limited to the San Bernardino case. Apple say they’re challenging the FBI’s demands while respecting American democracy and they think they implications of creating so-called backdoor should be considered.

If a backdoor were created then the US government would be able to extend this breach of privacy and request Apple to build surveillance software to intercept messages, access health or financial data, track locations, or even use your phone’s camera or microphone without your consent.

Tim Cook ends the letter by saying, “While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products and ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”