Apple co-founder: Steve Jobs would agree with Tim Cook

Steve Jobs would have backed Apple Chief Tim Cook’s fierce resistance to federal authorities on privacy issues, the tech giant’s co-founder Steve Wozniak said.

“I think Steve would have gone for the privacy,” Wozniak told CNBC on Thursday, asked to speculate on how the late Jobs would have reacted to federal demands for a “back door” that would allow searches of private data in iPhones.

On Wednesday, Cook blasted a court order requiring Apple to help the feds search an iPhone used by one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., last year.

Wozniak said he was “not intimately involved in the fight,” but if he were, he might fight the order “quite vigilantly.”

Such orders could sap customers’ trust in the brand, Wozniak warned.

“I’m definitely against that,” he said. “I don’t think phones should have back doors.”

On Wednesday, Cook called the court order “chilling,” saying authorities could eventually use it to “extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software” to gather personal data.