The government of the UK has agreed to stop demanding Apple provide backdoor access to user data, according to the U.S. Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard claimed to have worked with partners in the UK, as well as President Donald Trump and VP J.D. Vance, on the UK’s backdoor mandate. After months of work, Gabbard says that the UK has dropped the mandate affecting Apple. Gabbard adds that the UK’s attempt to get access to Apple’s customer data could have potentially given access to the data of American citizens and “encroached on our civil liberties.” Neither the U.S. nor UK governments have made any formal announcement about the matter. Given the secretive way the UK has tried to handle the matter, there may not even be any confirmation on that side of the Atlantic. Ostensibly, the UK wanted Apple to create a backdoor into its encryption, not just turn off end-to-end encryption, so that government officials could read any data they deemed necessary in criminal investigations. What the UK asked for was worldwide access, which is part of what enraged the US. Arguably what the UK really wanted was for Apple to do what it did and remove certain protections from the UK. If so, it got what it wanted, but there are ramifications. With UK data such as messaging less protected than anywhere else in the world, it’s harder for anywhere else in the world to deal with the UK. In February 2025, US Intelligence Services said that they were considering a reduction or a full stop on sharing data with the UK. It’s not yet clear if Apple will turn end-to-end encryption back on. It seems likely that it will not.