By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON/London (Reuters) -Britain has dropped its demand for the iPhone maker Apple to 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.
Gabbard issued the statement on X on Monday in the U.S., saying she had worked for months with Britain, along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, to arrive at a deal.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in Washington on Monday along with other European leaders to meet Trump and discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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.
“We will always take all actions necessary at the domestic level to keep UK citizens safe,” the spokesperson added.
Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Gabbard’s statement.
U.S. lawmakers said in May that the UK’s order to Apple to create a backdoor to its encrypted user data could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian governments.
Apple, which has said it would never build such access into its encrypted services or devices, had challenged the order at the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).
The iPhone maker withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for British users in February following the UK order. Users of Apple’s iPhones, Macs and other devices can enable the feature to ensure that only they — and not even Apple — can unlock data stored on its cloud.
U.S. officials said earlier this year they 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’s encrypted cloud storage systems.
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.
Cybersecurity experts told Reuters that if Apple chose to build a backdoor for a government, that backdoor would eventually be found and exploited by hackers.
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.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Sam Tabahriti in London; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
