Vance negotiates agreement to protect Apple data from UK backdoor demand

Vice President JD Vance – Earlier this year, he was retreating for allegedly on freedom of speech, essentially threatening the fundamental value of democratic values – recently played a leading role in persuading the UK to enable Apple to provide a “backdoor” to personal user data, Fox News learned.

A U.S. official told Fox News that Vance “is responsible and personally involved in negotiating the agreement, including direct dialogue with the UK government.”

U.S. officials said working with British partners “negotiated the reciprocal understanding of the British government”, “the British government will withdraw its current backdoor order,” U.S. officials said. “The agreement between our two governments safeguards the sovereignty of each country while ensuring close data sharing cooperation.”

Bipartisan letters warn Gabbard new UK backdoor Apple data could harm Americans

The U.S. official further told Fox News that the vice president “due to his technical background, his concerns about privacy and his [sincere] Committed to maintaining strong U.S. relations. ”

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on Monday that she is with President Donald Trump Over the past few months, Vance has been working “closely with our partners in the UK” to ensure that Americans’ private data remain private and that our constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected. ”

“The UK has therefore agreed to abandon Apple’s mission to provide a ‘backdoor’ that will be able to access the protected encrypted data of U.S. citizens and to encroach our civil liberties,” Gabbard wrote.

Fox News Digital contacted Apple and the UK home office but did not hear it immediately.

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 UK’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 requires Apple to weaken the encryption of its iCloud backup service, giving the UK government a “blanket capability” to access customers’ encrypted files. The report further states that, according to a letter previously obtained by Fox News Digital, the order was issued under the UK Rights to Investigation Act 2016, 2016, and is often referred to as the “Spyker Charter”.

Wyden and Biggs, who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired the House’s Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Judicial Subcommittee, told Gabbard that Apple reportedly “All Apple reportedly admits it received such orders and that the company faces criminal fines to prevent its penalties for these crimes and could even allow the U.S. Congress to accurately report the orders.” The letter focused on threats from China, Russia and other opponents surveillance against Americans.

exist Munich Security Conference Meanwhile, Vance said that the threat he was most concerned about when he was about Europe was not China, Russia or “any other outside actor”, but “the threat of retreating from Europe, from some of its most basic values, values shared with the United States”. Vance specifically cites the case of British veteran and physical therapist Adam Smith-Connor, who was prosecuted under the “buffer zone” or “safety access zone” law around the abortion clinic. British police faced him praying silently outside the clinic.

The vice president also called on Europe to kill the opposition speeches more widely.

US Vice President JD Vance hosted a visit from the Royal Air Force of the United States Air Force on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 to the United States Fairford. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

DNC tore JD Vance fishes with British Foreign Secretary in latest weird attack; Republicans fight back

“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 disorder, 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.

Recently, Vance paid a diplomatic visit to the UK earlier this month, holding talks with the British Foreign Secretary centered on the Ukrainian-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars.

Last week, State Council At the same time, it released its 2024 annual report on “Human Rights Acts”. In the report on the UK, the Trump administration cited “reliable reports of serious restrictions on freedom of speech”, including “threats to enforce or threaten criminal or civil law to limit speech; and crime, violence or threats motivated by anti-Semitism.”

The State Department asserted that the UK government “sometimes take reliable steps to identify and punish officials who commit human rights violations, but the prosecution and punishment of such abuse are inconsistent.”

Report British authorities Including the Office of Communications (OFCOM), it is legally authorized to monitor all forms of speech they consider “illegal”. According to the State Department, the UK Online Security Act 2023 came into effect in 2024, “defines the category of ‘online hazards’ and explicitly expands OFCOM’s authority to include U.S. media and technology companies that include a large number of UK users, whether they own the company’s business in the UK or not,” said the State Department. The report said that under the law, companies must conduct proactive “risk assessments of illegal content” to mitigate users’ risks of experiencing speech of Ofcom’s deemed illegal.

“One impact of the bill could be government regulations to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (as well as user privacy) on the platform,” the report said.

Protesters were detained in Nottingham, central England on August 3, 2024, and the “Enough” protests responded to the fatal stabbing of three young girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event in Southport on July 29. (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)

The UK is increasingly cracking down on comments by British citizens about opposition, especially online posts and memes against mass immigration. In August 2024, after a massive stabbing in the UK during a dance event themed by Taylor Swift, the riots broke out in the UK, killing three girls and injured others, and the chief of the Metropolitan Police in London warned that officials could also extradite and prison U.S. citizens online posts to get online posts about the turmoil.

The State Department noted in its report that after the Southport attack, local and national government officials “repeatedly interfered in speeches on the identity and motivation of the attacker” and were later identified as British citizen Axel Rudakubana, who was later identified as Rwandan Origins. According to the State Department, the UK government “calls companies including U.S. companies to review speech or ‘hate speech’”, and the State Department also noted that the Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson threatened to prosecute and seek extradition to those who “repeat, repeat or amplify a false, threatening hatred, or stir up hatred.”

The report noted that many people were arrested for online speeches and their motives, although in some cases the charges were later dropped.

Click here to get the Fox News app

“Many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and media outlets have criticized the government’s censorship of speech, both in principle and in the weaponization of law enforcement, and opposing political views are detrimental to the authorities.”