By ScheerPost Staff
In an interview with The Spectator, US President Donald Trump described the UK government’s recent effort to force Apple to grant the UK access to user data as “something that you hear about with China.”
As Reuters described, “Trump said that he had told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he ‘can’t do this’, referring to the request for access to data.”
Last week, Apple killed a privacy feature that provided “advanced security encryption” for the cloud data of UK users in what Reuters called “an unprecedented response to government demands for access to user data.” However, “A spokesperson for Britain’s Home Office had then declined to comment on whether such an order had been issued.”
Tulsi Gabbard, the current Director of National Intelligence, stated in a letter to two US lawmakers that “the U.S. is examining whether the UK government had violated the CLOUD Act, which bars it from issuing demands for the data of U.S. citizens and vice versa.”
While Trump seems to have displayed privacy concerns on this issue regarding the UK and Apple, his and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has undertaken controversial efforts to secure sensitive financial data of Americans, notably with a cadre of former Palantir, Neuralink and SpaceX employees. Musk is serving in this capacity as “a special government employee,” which means that he “doesn’t have to divest from his businesses, but he is supposed to follow conflict-of-interest laws and recuse himself when necessary,” according to NPR.
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