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.

US administration asked to kick UK out of 65-year-old Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement after secret order to access encrypted data of Apple users.

  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    Imagine how much damage Trump will do once he starts wielding his dictatorial powers using big tech companies and cloud providers. If he banned them from servicing any country he could cripple their governments and critical infrastructure, who are all dependent on some combination of Windows / Azure, AWS, GCP, Cloudflare, etc.

    If he wanted to invade canada the fascist secret police could push updates to all of Canadas Windows, Apple, and Android devices — that bricks them like ransomware at a set time and date — and disable all their cloud services; crippling the entire economy without firing a shot.

    America’s former allies need to start the transition to Linux and non-US/distributed services NOW. It would take a decade under the best of circumstances.