In an op-ed in the Financial Times (£), Meredith Whittaker, President of encrypted messaging service Signal, has criticised the UK government's demand that Apple weaken the end-to-end encryption of its iCloud backup service, comparing it to a government secretly telling a car manufacturer to "weaken the effectiveness of the brakes on all the cars it sells".
Whittaker expresses concern that other tech companies may have secretly complied with similar Technical Capability Notices. She also highlights that the incident is part of a wider trend, citing similar legislative proposals in Sweden and France, as well as the EU's controversial chat control regulation to fight child sexual abuse.
In addition, Whittaker argues that weakening encryption undermines cybersecurity and contradicts the UK's ambition to be a leading technology hub. Instead, Whittaker urges the government to withdraw its demand and strengthen security and privacy. She also calls on business leaders to demand strong encryption from technology providers.
£ - This article requires a subscription.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 5,750 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
