It is not every day that Donald Trump gets to play the part of defender of civil liberties. His constant attacks on the marginalised (covered in last month’s issue), were accompanied in his first campaign by promises, thankfully undelivered, to lock up political opponents. His return has been accompanied with an attack on oversight across the US government, including a move to fire 3 members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, taking it below the number it needs to operate. 

Fortunately, last week he was meeting Keir Starmer, a man who as Director of Public 

Prosecutions pushed for absurdly harsh sentences for people caught up in the riots that 

erupted after the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a move that culminated in sentences like 6 months of jail time for someone whose only crime was to steal a bottle of water from Lidl.  

The current row surrounds Apple preventing people turning on its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature in the UK, which uses encryption to prevent anyone – including Apple – from accessing a user’s iCloud. Apple’s statement did not say why, only that it “can no longer offer” the feature and it was “deeply disappointed” in this turn of events. It stated, “we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services, and we never will.” However, it follows reports in the Washington Post that the UK government had demanded access to iCloud data protected with ADP using a secret order under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (known as the ‘snoopers charter’). 

This has provoked outrage on both sides of the political aisle in the US. In a joint letter from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Representative Andy Biggs it was 

described as, “effectively a foreign cyberattack waged through political means.”  

Meanwhile, director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated lawyers are working on determining whether the UK may have broken a treaty it signed with the US. 

This appears to have even reached Donald Trump, who told The Spectator whilst his meeting with Keir Starmer was “very good”, he told the prime minister on the topic of the alleged order, “you can’t do this … That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China.” The order also makes it seem like the UK’s intelligence services do not speak to each other, as The Telegraph pointed out only a few months ago the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre had recommended turning on ADP as a measure lawyers and other legal professionals should take on its website. The National Cyber Security Centre appears to have now removed this guidance. A review of previous versions of the webpage by Concrete using archive.today, shows that this page has been changed to redirect users to a related page sometime between the 24th of February and the 4th of March. The Telegraph article was published on the 25th of February. 

A spokesperson for the British government told Reuters “We have a close intelligence 

relationship with the U.S. and we take the partnership seriously,” while The Minister of State for Security told the BBC, “It would not be appropriate for me either to confirm or to deny the existence of any notices under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.”