Lots of headlines this morning saying that Bill Gates backs FBI iPhone hack request. The source of this particular headline is the Financial Times, with Bill Gates quotes like:

“This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case,” Mr Gates told the Financial Times. “It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records. Let’s say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said, ‘Don’t make me cut this ribbon because you’ll make me cut it many times’.”

And:

“I hope that we have that debate so that the safeguards are built and so people do not opt — and this will be country by country — [to say] it is better that the government does not have access to any information,” he said.

These quotes were embedded in a Bill Gates backs FBI iPhone hack request headline, and that spawned a sea of stories.

But.

Bill Gates, dismayed by those headlines, responded in this Bloomberg interview:

Q: Were you blindsided a bit? I came in this morning and saw headlines saying, “Bill Gates back FBI”.

Bill Gates: Yeah, I was disappointed, because that doesn’t state my view on this.

And:

Q: What specifically should be done in this case?

Bill Gates: Well, the courts are going to decide this, and I think that Apple said that whatever the final court decision is, they’ll abide by it. In the meantime, that gives us this opportunity to get the discussion, and these issues will be decided in Congress.

If anything, I think these interviews (read the Financial Times piece and watch the Bloomberg interview, I’ve quoted representative snippets) both show that Bill Gates is still new to this, that he has not had the chance to think this all the way through. These quotes feel like someone thinking about an issue out loud, not at all like someone with a strong opinion.

But Bill Gates backs FBI iPhone hack request? Please. That does both Bill Gates and Apple a terrible disservice.