JD Vance 'directly' convinced UK to drop Apple backdoor data demand, protecting Americans' rights: US official

Fox News

2 days ago

Vice President JD Vance – who eviscerated European leaders earlier this year for allegedly retreating on free speech, essentially threatening fundamental democratic values – recently played a commanding role in convincing the United Kingdom to drop its demands that Apple provide the British government a "backdoor" to personal user data, Fox News Digital has learned.
A U.S. official told Fox News Digital that Vance "was in charge and was personally involved in negotiating a deal, including having direct conversations with the British government."
Working with U.K. partners, the vice president "negotiated a mutually beneficial understanding" that the British government "will withdraw the current backdoor order to Apple," the U.S. official said, adding that the "agreement between our two governments maintains each country's sovereignty while ensuring close cooperation on data sharing."
The U.S. official further told Fox News Digital that the vice president "took a strong interest in this issue because of his background in technology, his concern for privacy, and his [sincere] commitment to maintain a strong U.S.-U.K. relationship."
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said in an X post on Monday that she, alongside President Donald Trump and Vance, had been working "closely with our partners in the U.K." over the past several months "to ensure Americans' private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected."
"As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a 'back door' that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties," Gabbard wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to Apple and the British Home Office for comment but did not immediately hear back.
In February, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., penned a letter to the then-newly confirmed DNI, informing Gabbard of recent press reports that the U.K.'s home secretary "served Apple with a secret order" at the start of the year, "directing the company to weaken the security of its iCloud backup service to facilitate government spying."
The directive reportedly required Apple to weaken the encryption of its iCloud backup service, giving the British government "blanket capability" to access customers' encrypted files. Reports further stated that the order was issued under the U.K.'s Investigatory Powers Act 2016, commonly known as the "Snoopers' Charter," which does not require a judge's approval, according to the letter previously obtained by Fox News Digital.
Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Biggs, who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, informed Gabbard that Apple "is reportedly gagged from acknowledging that it received such an order, and the company faces criminal penalties that prevent it from even confirming to the U.S. Congress the accuracy of these press reports." The letter focused on the threat of China, Russia and other adversaries spying on Americans.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance, meanwhile, said that the threat he worried about the most when it comes to Europe was not China, Russia or "any other external actor," but rather "the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America." Vance specifically cited the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British Army veteran and physiotherapist, who was prosecuted under the U.K.'s "buffer zone" or "safe access zone" laws around abortion clinics. British police confronted him for silently praying outside the clinic.
The vice president also called out Europe more broadly for stifling opposition speech.
"To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election," Vance said at the time.
More recently, Vance made a diplomatic visit to the U.K. earlier this month, meeting with the British foreign secretary for talks centered on the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars.
Last week, the State Department, meanwhile, released its 2024 annual country report on "human rights practices." In the report on the United Kingdom, the Trump administration cited "credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression," including "enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism."
The State Department asserted that the British government "sometimes took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, but prosecution and punishment for such abuses was inconsistent."
The report said British authorities, including the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom), are legally authorized to monitor all forms of communication for speech they deemed "illegal." The U.K. Online Safety Act of 2023, which came into force in 2024, "defined the category of 'online harm' and expressly expanded Ofcom's authority to include American media and technology firms with a substantial number of British users, regardless of whether they had a corporate presence in the UK," according to the State Department. Under the law, the report said, companies were required to engage in proactive "illegal content risk assessment" to mitigate the risk of users encountering speech deemed illegal by Ofcom.
"Experts warned that one effect of the bill could be government regulation to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (and therefore user privacy) on platforms," the report said.
The U.K. has been increasingly cracking down on British citizens for opposition commentary, especially online posts and memes opposing mass migration. In August 2024, as riots broke out in the U.K. after a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event left three girls dead and others wounded, London's Metropolitan Police chief warned that officials could also extradite and jail U.S. citizens for online posts about the unrest.
In its report, the State Department noted that the local and national government officials in the wake of the Southport attack "repeatedly intervened to chill speech as to the identity and motives of the attacker," who was later identified as Axel Rudakubana, a British citizen of Rwandan origins. The British government "called on companies, including U.S. firms, to censor speech deemed misinformation or 'hate speech,'" according to the State Department, which also noted that Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson threatened to prosecute and seek the extradition of those who "repost, repeat, or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial/religious hatred."
The report noted that numerous individuals were arrested for online speech about the attack and its motivations, though in some cases charges were later dropped.
"Numerous nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and media outlets criticized the government's approach to censoring speech, both in principle and in the perceived weaponization of law enforcement against political views disfavored by authorities."