Gabbard says UK scraps demand for Apple to give backdoor access to data
London – Great Britain has abandoned its request that Apple provides so-called door door to any door to all encrypted user data stored in the cloud, US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Monday.
Gabbard said London and Washington had resolved their dispute with high electronic privacy, writing on X that she and President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have spent the “last months” working with the British government.
“Consequently, the United Kingdom has agreed to remove its mandate so that Apple provides a” back door “which would have enabled access to the protected data protected from American citizens and empiety on our civil freedoms,” she said.
The dispute surfaced at the start of the year with a report that British security officials had issued the American technology giant with a secret order requiring the creation of stolen door access to see fully encrypted equipment.
Apple challenged the Order, which made it fear electronic espionage by national security officials.
The British government would have served Apple what is called a “technical capacity opinion” ordering it to provide access under a radical law called the law on the powers of the 2016 survey, which was nicknamed the Snoopers Charter.
The British home office did not respond directly to the Gabbard declaration, saying that it “does not comment on operational questions, in particular by confirming or refusing the existence of these opinions”.
“We have long had joint security and intelligence arrangements with the United States to combat the most serious threats such as terrorism and sexual abuse on children, including the role played by rapid technology to allow these threats,” said the office. “We will always take all the necessary measures at the national level to ensure the safety of British citizens.”
Gabbard previously said that a request for a carrier access after violating the rights of the Americans and would raise concerns about a foreign government pressure on a technological company based in the United States.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comments. The company had reacted to the order by removing its advanced data protection encryption function for new users in the United Kingdom and by deactivating them for existing users.
The opt-in function protects iCloud files, photos, notes and other data with end-to-end encryption when stored in the cloud.
___
The writer Associated Press Sylvia Hui contributed to this report.
