President Trump has chimed in on the UK’s attempt to force Apple to add a global backdoor to iCloud, likening the demand to “something that you hear about with China.”
Trump met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at The White House yesterday for a wide-ranging conversation on world politics, tariffs, free speech, and more. It marked Starmer’s first visit to Washington, D.C., since Trump took office last month.
In an interview with British news outlet The Spectator yesterday, Trump was asked about the UK’s anti-encryption legislation. Trump said that he told Starmer that the UK “can’t do this.”
“We told them you can’t do this. We actually told him [Starmer]… that’s incredible. That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China.”
Trump’s comments came after his Director of National Security, Tulsi Gabbard, suggested that the UK may have broken a bilateral agreement when secretly demanding Apple to build a global backdoor into iCloud. Gabbard said she has “grave concern about the serious implications of the United Kingdom, or any foreign country, requiring Apple or any company to create a ‘backdoor’ that would allow access to Americans personal encrypted data.”
In response to the UK’s request, Apple pulled Advanced Data Protection from the UK market. In a statement, the company said, “we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.” Other categories of iCloud data, such as passwords, health data, and Messages in iCloud, remain encrypted in the UK.
An interesting aside: Advanced Data Protection is available in China, so users in China actually have access to an encryption feature that users in the UK do not have.
Follow Chance: Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, and Mastodon.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
