The United Kingdom has dropped its push to require that tech giant Apple provide the country\u2019s security officials with backdoor access to users\u2019 encrypted iCloud backups, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Washington Post first reported<\/a> in January that the UK issued a secret order to Apple that directed the company to provide its law enforcement and intelligence personnel with the \u201cblanket capability\u201d to access customers\u2019 encrypted files worldwide. The order would have affected Apple users across the world, including those in the U.S.<\/p>\n Under the UK\u2019s 2016 Investigatory Powers Act \u2014 known colloquially as the Snooper\u2019s Charter \u2014 Apple received the order to provide cloud data without any judicial review.<\/p>\n In an X post<\/a>, Gabbard said that U.S. officials \u2014 including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance \u2014 have been working with their UK counterparts over the past few months \u201cto ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that, \u201cas a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a \u2018back door\u2019 that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n News of the UK order earlier this year received bipartisan pushback from some lawmakers and calls for the U.S. to reevaluate its cybersecurity and intelligence-sharing relationship with London.<\/p>\n The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data \u2014 or CLOUD \u2014 Act, which was enacted in 2018, provides U.S. law enforcement officials with the ability to obtain data from American companies that is stored on their overseas servers. The law also authorized the creation of bilateral data-sharing agreements between the U.S. and allies. The access agreement between the U.S. and UK went into effect<\/a> in October 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a Feb. 13 letter<\/a> to Gabbard, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked if the Trump administration was made aware of the UK\u2019s order and its understanding of, in part, \u201cthe bilateral CLOUD Act agreement with regard to an exception to gag orders for notice to the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n In a reply later that month to the lawmakers\u2019 missive, Gabbard said she had directed her attorneys to outline the implications of the UK\u2019s order to Apple but added that the move \u201cwould be a clear and egregious violation of Americans\u2019 privacy and civil liberties, and open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to a request for comment from Nextgov\/FCW, an ODNI spokesperson pointed to an X post<\/a> from the agency that praised the UK\u2019s recent decision and cited Gabbard\u2019s response to Wyden\u2019s and Biggs\u2019 letter.<\/p>\n Biggs and Wyden \u2014 along with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. \u2014 also sent a letter in March to the UK\u2019s Investigatory Powers Tribunal that called for the judicial body to \u201cremove the cloak of secrecy related to notices given to American technology companies by the United Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n Wyden similarly released<\/a> draft legislation in February to modify the CLOUD Act\u2019s requirements so that U.S. providers do not have to weaken their security standards to meet requests from foreign governments.<\/p>\n \u201cI sounded the alarm that the UK’s outrageous demands that Apple weaken encryption would put the security and privacy of all Americans at risk,\u201d Wyden said in a statement to Nextgov\/FCW. \u201cIf it’s true the UK has folded, that’s a win for everyone who values secure communications. However, the details of any agreement are extremely important, especially when it comes to other legal avenues the UK could use to obtain Americans’ data, such as by delivering spyware or requiring US user data to be stored in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n Apple did not respond to a request for comment, although the tech giant moved earlier this year<\/a> to remove its high-level Advanced Data Protection tool from the UK market. The company was also in the midst of legal action to overturn the order when the UK dropped its backdoor encryption push.\u00a0<\/p>\n