Google won’t say whether the UK secretly requested a backdoor for user data
The UK government is It is reportedly retreating Following the harsh responsibilities of Apple from the US government, its previous demands to build a secret backdoor that will allow authorities to access customer data around the world.
But one US senator wants to know if other tech giants like Google have received secret backdoor requests from the UK government, and Google has refused to say so far.
Earlier this year, the Washington Post was a home office in the UK. A secret court order was sought at the UK surveillance court Apple is requesting that UK authorities can access end-to-end encrypted cloud data stored by any customer around the world, including iPhone and iPad backups. Apple encrypts data so that only Apple, not Apple, can access data stored on the server.
UK law legally prohibits high-tech companies subject to secret surveillance court orders, such as Apple, from revealing the details of the order, or the existence of the order itself. Details of demand that have been leaked publicly earlier this year. Critics called the secret order against Apple “Draconian.” Global impact on user privacy. Apple has it Since then, he has appealed the legality of the order..
In a new letter sent Tuesday to Tarsi Gabbard, the top US intelligence reporting agency, Sen. Ron Wyden, who serves the Senate Intelligence Reporting Committee, said he cannot say whether the tech company has received the UK order, but he has confirmed that at least one tech giant has not received it.
Meta, which uses end-to-end encryption to protect user messages sent between Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, told Wyden’s office on March 17 that the company “has not received an order to back up any encrypted services like those reported on Apple.”
Google refused to tell Wyden’s office if it received an order from the UK government to access encrypted data, such as Android backups.
Google spokesman Karl Ryan told TechCrunch in a statement. “We have never built a mechanism or a ‘backdoor’ to avoid end-to-end encryption of our products. When you say the product is end-to-end encrypted, that’s right. ”
When asked explicitly by TechCrunch, Google will not say whether it has received an order from the UK government.
Wyden’s first reported letter Washington Post and Share with TechCrunchurged Gabbard to publish “an assessment of national security risks posed by UK surveillance laws and the demands of US companies for confidentiality.”