Silicon Valley VC: There's Nothing Stopping An Apple Engineer From Taking Whatever They Want From You

There's nothing stopping an Apple Inc. AAPL engineer from taking whatever they want from you, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said in an interview to Vanity Fair.

Answering a question on the Apple-FBI dispute, Palihapitiya, a former employee of Facebook Inc FB, said the following:

"I'm more on the side of the government on this one. I think we're almost lying to ourselves in pretending that Apple can't do something that they do every day. Instead, what I think has happened is we've started to fall on our sword on some weird marketing thing. They want to seem like they're on the side of the consumer. But there's nothing stopping an Apple engineer today from rooting your phone and taking whatever they want. It's a bit of a red-herring conversation right now."

The dispute between Apple and FBI over the access of the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone continues to evolve. The United States Justice Department recently issued a statement mentioning it may no longer require Apple's assistance in opening an iPhone used by the gunman.

On the situation, JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall wrote, "We believe that the FBI has likely had physical access to it that would bypass the phone's security (decapping the chips and thus circumventing Apple's security by directly reading the information stored on the phone)..."

A seperate survey released by The Pew Research Center last month showed that 51 percent of respondents feel Apple should cooperate with the FBI and unlock the iPhone.