The U.S. Government Is Apparently Upset About the U.K. iCloud Backdoor Demand ⇥ ft.com

Joseph Menn, Washington Post:

The U.S. Justice Department told Congress in November that there were no major disputes with the United Kingdom over how the two allies seek data from each other’s communication companies.

But at that time, officials knew British authorities were preparing a demand that Apple build a back door to its users’ encrypted data, according to people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal department matters.

There are only two reasons I can see for Biden officials to omit this from their report: first because it was not, in November, a current dispute but a potential future one; and, second, it understood it could not talk about it. Neither seems justifiable.

Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times:

Donald Trump has lashed out at the UK’s demand for Apple to grant secret access to its most secure cloud storage system, comparing the move to “something … that you hear about with China”.

[…]

Earlier this week, Tulsi Gabbard, US director of national intelligence, said any move to force Apple to build a back door into its systems would cause “grave concern” as an “egregious violation” of Americans’ privacy. Gabbard said she had ordered lawyers and intelligence officials to investigate the matter.

It is amazing to see this particularly despicable U.S. administration arguing for the correct position given its history. To be fair, Tulsi Gabbard is less of a surprise; though she now apparently supports U.S. surveillance programmes, she has a history of questioning privacy overreaches. But the first Trump administration was not at all friendly to end-to-end encryption. According to Menn, then at Reuters, the FBI tried to pressure Apple to kill its plans for end-to-end encryption in iCloud, a feature which would ultimately be launched – in 2022 – as Advanced Data Protection. In 2019, the U.S. was exploring whether it could ban end-to-end encryption entirely and, in 2020, was a co-signatory on a multilateral statement requesting a backdoor as policy.

Thankfully, none of the more extreme U.S. positions on end-to-end encryption has become law. And, while the U.S. is among many in opposing end-to-end encryption, there have been no reports of it compelling service providers to do what the U.K. government is expecting of Apple, though Menn reports the FBI has tried. That is not to say the U.S. would not issue a mandate, nor that we would find out about it. The PRISM program was a backdoor into tech company data maintained secretly for six years before its existence was revealed by Edward Snowden, while Yahoo built (maybe?) a way for it to search users’ email accounts after being compelled of the U.S. government. I do not think anyone should expect ideological or principled consistency from the Trump administration on this matter. There is a history of U.S. officials making these kinds of demands.

Maybe there is a third reason Biden officials did not want to notify Congress after all.