"While it may be true that Apple doesn't have access to encrypted data, that's only because it designed its messaging service that way," Sen. Tom Cotton said. | AP Photo Cotton slams Apple on encryption

Sen. Tom Cotton on Monday slammed Apple CEO Tim Cook over his defense of encryption on "60 Minutes" and warned that major tech companies risk becoming havens for “child pornographers, drug traffickers and terrorists alike.”

In the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., top law enforcement officials including FBI Director James Comey have complained about the lack of “backdoors” that would help the government decipher private communications. But Cook, during an interview that aired Sunday night, repeated his industry’s vocal defense of encryption, stressing any such backdoor in tech products would create serious privacy and security vulnerabilities that ”bad guys" could also exploit.


Cook added that Apple responds to proper government warrants. But messages sent over the company's iMessage service are encrypted and stored on the user's device, and Apple can't access the data — in other words, according to the CEO, "we don't have [the data] to give."

Responding in a statement Monday, Cotton (R-Ark.), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused Cook of having “omitted critical facts."

"While it may be true that Apple doesn't have access to encrypted data, that's only because it designed its messaging service that way," the senator said in a statement. "As a society, we don't allow phone companies to design their systems to avoid lawful, court-ordered searches."

And Cotton took aim at the entire tech industry. "If we apply a different legal standard to companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, we can expect them to become the preferred messaging services of child pornographers, drug traffickers, and terrorists alike — which neither these companies nor law enforcement want," he added.

Apple declined to respond to Cotton’s remarks.

The senator's comments are the latest sign of pressure on Silicon Valley in the debate over how to combat terrorist groups like the Islamic State. One House lawmaker wants to commission an entire, select panel to study encryption; others have asked the National Academy of Sciences to open an inquiry. And a growing number of lawmakers are looking at ways to require the tech industry to play a greater role in policing social media for potential terrorist threats.

Encryption also has factored heavily into the early jostling among Democrats and Republicans for the White House. At the Democratic debate Saturday, front-runner Hillary Clinton went as far as to call for a "Manhattan-like Project" to study ways to balance law enforcement needs with privacy, though she argued that "maybe the back door is the wrong door." Republican candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, meanwhile, have affirmed their support for greater surveillance tools.