US officers are inspecting whether or not the UK broke a bilateral settlement by reportedly demanding that Apple construct a “backdoor” permitting the British authorities to entry backups of knowledge within the firm’s encrypted cloud storage techniques.
Apple final week withdrew an encrypted storage characteristic for UK customers, after stories that it had refused to create such a backdoor permitting entry to messages and photographs even for customers exterior the nation. The Washington Put up reported that Apple rejected such a requirement by the British authorities.
In a letter dated February 25 to 2 US lawmakers, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of nationwide intelligence, stated the US is inspecting whether or not the UK authorities had violated the CLOUD Act, which bars it from issuing calls for for the information of US residents and vice versa.
“My attorneys are working to offer a authorized opinion on the implications of the reported U.Ok. calls for in opposition to Apple on the bilateral CLOUD Act settlement,” Gabbard wrote to US Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican.
“Upon preliminary overview of the US and UK bilateral CLOUD Act Settlement, the UK could not situation calls for for knowledge of US residents, nationals, or lawful everlasting residents (“US individuals”), neither is it authorised to demand the information of individuals positioned inside the US.”
In 2022, Apple launched end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups of its iPhones, which means that solely the person – slightly than Apple – has the keys to unscramble the information.
Cybersecurity specialists advised Reuters that if Apple had chosen to construct a backdoor for a authorities, that backdoor would finally be discovered and exploited by hackers.
Apple has sparred with regulators over encryption way back to 2016 when the US authorities tried to compel it to construct a software to unlock a terrorism suspect’s iPhone.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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