{"id":90473,"date":"2025-08-20T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=90473"},"modified":"2025-08-20T02:39:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T02:39:00","slug":"us-spy-chief-gabbard-says-uk-agreed-to-drop-backdoor-mandate-for-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=90473","title":{"rendered":"US spy chief Gabbard says UK agreed to drop \u2018backdoor\u2019 mandate for Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Britain has dropped its demand for the iPhone maker Apple\u00a0to provide a \u201cbackdoor\u201d that would have enabled access to the protected, encrypted data of American citizens, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said.<\/p>\n

Gabbard issued\u00a0the statement on X, on Monday in the U.S., saying she had worked for months with Britain, along with President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0and Vice President JD Vance, to arrive at a deal.<\/p>\n

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in Washington on Monday along with other European leaders to meet Trump and discuss Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the British government said on Tuesday that while they would not comment on any agreement, Britain had long worked with the U.S. to tackle security threats while seeking to protect the privacy of citizens in both countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will always take all actions necessary at the domestic level to keep UK citizens safe,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Gabbard\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n

U.S. lawmakers\u00a0said in May that the UK\u2019s order\u00a0to Apple to create a backdoor to its encrypted user data could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian governments.<\/p>\n

Apple, which\u00a0has said it would never\u00a0build such access into its encrypted services or devices, had challenged the order at the UK\u2019s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).<\/p>\n

The iPhone maker withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for British users in February following the UK order. Users of Apple\u2019s iPhones, Macs and other devices can enable the feature to ensure that only they \u2014 and not even Apple \u2014 can unlock data stored on its cloud.<\/p>\n

U.S. officials\u00a0said earlier this year\u00a0they were examining whether Britain broke a bilateral agreement by demanding that Apple build a backdoor allowing the British government to access backups of data in the company\u2019s encrypted cloud storage systems.<\/p>\n

In a letter dated February 25 to U.S. lawmakers, Gabbard said the U.S. was examining whether the UK government had violated the CLOUD Act, which bars it from issuing demands for the data of U.S. citizens and vice versa.<\/p>\n

Cybersecurity experts\u00a0told Reuters\u00a0that if Apple chose to build a backdoor for a government, that backdoor would eventually be found and exploited by hackers.<\/p>\n

Apple has sparred with regulators over encryption as far back as 2016 when the U.S. government tried to compel it to build a tool to unlock the iPhone of a suspected extremist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"USBritain has dropped its demand for the iPhone maker Apple\u00a0to provide a “backdoor” that would have enabled access to the protected, encrypted data of American citizens, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4251,10,9,2139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-politics","category-popular","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}