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US asked to kick UK out of Five Eyes
An unprecedented letter from the US Congress, released today, accuses the UK of “a foreign cyberattack waged through political means”. The claim refers to a Home Office secret demand last month (reported by CW here, here and here) that Apple break the security protecting its Advanced Data Protection cloud security system to let British spies into anyone’s secure files. In a letter to the recently appointed US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, Senator Ron Wyden of Colorada and Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona bluntly ask the administration to kick the UK out of the 65-year-old UK-USA signals intelligence sharing agreement, commonly known as “Five Eyes” if they do not now withdraw the demand to Apple. ”If the U.K. does not immediately reverse this dangerous effort, we urge you to reevaluate U.S.-U.K. cybersecurity arrangements and programs as well as U.S. intelligence sharing with the U.K,” the new DNI is advised. Politically, on other issues, the signatories are on opposed sides of US politics. Wyden is a liberal democrat who has campaigned for healthcare and the environment; Biggs is a loud Trump supporter and a noted organiser of the “MAGA squad”. Wyden, from Oregon, serves on the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committee; Biggs, from Arizona, chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance. Their unified complaint against British tactics and conduct is potentially a unique event in the turbulent political period since Donald Trump’s accession.
The representatives have asked the DNI to tell US Congress whether the administration accepts British claims that it can impose “gag orders” on demands to American companies to provide user data, or to make technical changes to their systems and software. According to UK academic and industry sources, the recent better level of access to some iCloud data may have caused the Home Office to get “impatient and greedy for everything”, and to proceed without legally required technical caution. “The US should pass laws that forbid US companies from installing encryption backdoors at the request of foreign countries,” said Matt Green, a leading cryptographer and professor of computer science at John Hopkins University.
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