Jordan and Biggs Are Right – Protect Americans’ Privacy by Terminating the US-UK CLOUD Act Agreement

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona)

It looks like the CLOUD Act might soon evaporate.

A bilateral agreement under that Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act went into effect in 2022 to facilitate the sharing of data for law enforcement purposes. In February, the news leaked that the UK’s Home Office had secretly ordered Apple to provide a backdoor to the content of all of its users, Americans included. The order would effectively break the Apple iPhone’s Advanced Data Protection service that uses end-to-end encryption to ensure that only the account user can access stored data.

In response, Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Andy Biggs, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, have fired off a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to terminate the agreement with the UK under the CLOUD Act.

They understand the UK order would be a privacy catastrophe for Apple users around the world. Encryption protects dissidents, women and children hiding from abusive relationships, not to mention the proprietary secrets of innumerable businesses and people who simply value their privacy.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two parties can renew the CLOUD Act every five years. Just after the 2024 election, however, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland preemptively renewed the agreement to try to discourage the incoming Trump Administration from canceling or changing the agreement.

These two leading House Republicans told Bondi that the UK order “exposes all Apple users, including American citizens, to unnecessary surveillance and could enable foreign adversaries and nefarious actors to infiltrate such a backdoor.”

Or, as Jordan and Biggs noted, President Trump told UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the order was like “something that you hear about with China.”

Perhaps fearing a consumer backlash in the United Kingdom, the British government made a bid to keep Apple’s appeal of the order in a secret court session, claiming that even discussing the “bare bones” of the case would harm national security. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal rejected the government’s stance, guaranteeing at least some openness in the court’s deliberations.

But we cannot count on the British government to get it right for Americans. For that reason, Chairmen Jordan and Biggs began heaving rhetorical chests of tea into the harbor. They wrote:

“Accordingly, because the UK’s order could expose U.S. citizens to surveillance and enable foreign adversaries and nefarious actors to gain access to encrypted data, we respectfully urge you to terminate the Agreement and renegotiate it to adequately protect American citizens from foreign government surveillance.”

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