Washington, April 13

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey said on Tuesday he was glad a court fight in California over access to a locked iPhone had ended because it ‘was creating an emotion around the issue that was not productive’, likening the emotion and passion around discussion to the debate over gun control.

Comey told an audience of Catholic University law school students that FBI was correct to ask a judge to force Apple to help it hack into the phone used by a gunman in the December mass killing in San Bernardino, California.

“That litigation,” he said, “had to be brought, in my view, because that case had to be investigated in a reasonable way.”

But generally speaking, Comey said, lawsuits and court fights won’t resolve the broader collision between privacy and national security. He said he regretted that the San Bernardino case in particular had ‘created an emotion around the issue that was not productive’.

“We can’t resolve these really important issues that affect our values — technology, innovation, safety and all kinds of other things — in litigation,” he said.

The Justice Department last month told a magistrate judge that it had managed to access the phone of Syed Farook without Apple’s help — though it didn’t say how — effectively ending the case.