U.K. Demands Access to Any Apple User’s Data, Anywhere in the World
The United Kingdom’s Home Office is reportedly demanding that Apple, one of the world’s largest tech companies, provide law enforcement access to its users’ private data, not just in Britain but around the world.
European regulators are no strangers to making demands that the rest of the world has to live with. In 2022, the European Parliament mandated USB-C connections as the standard for data transfer, causing Apple to abandon its proprietary Lightning ports worldwide.
But the U.K.’s demand for access to Apple user data poses a grave threat to global digital security.
“Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud,” The Washington Post reported earlier this month. “The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies.”
Neither Apple nor the government have confirmed the order, though the Post notes that the request was made “under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence” and “makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand.”
“These reported actions seriously threaten the privacy and security of both the American people and the U.S. government,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) wrote last week in a letter to newly minted Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up in Americans’ phones, tablets, and computers, undermining the security of Americans’ data, as well as of the countless federal, state and local government agencies that entrust sensitive data to Apple products.”
Wyden and Biggs asked that Gabbard “giv[e] the U.K. an ultimatum: back down from this dangerous attack on U.S. cybersecurity, or face serious consequences.” Wyden also released a draft of a bill designed to close loopholes in U.S. law that could allow foreign governments to make such
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