Zia Yusuf. DT.
Britain is fast becoming an Orwellian surveillance state.
As is so often the case, Labour are simply pouring
petrol onto a fire that was started by the Tories.
Zia Yusuf
22 February 2025
Keir Starmer’s government becomes more dystopian by the day. Not content with cancelling elections, he has now taken another leaf from the authoritarian leaders handbook and sought to turn this country into an Orwellian surveillance state.
He wants to access your texts, your photos and your files. In fact, we are now in the shocking situation where a US tech company is standing up to the British government in fighting for the right to privacy of British citizens.
Apple has a service called Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which uses a feature called end-to-end encryption to ensure nobody other than the account holder can access a user’s data. Not even Apple can access it.
Starmer’s government demanded that Apple give the Home Office a backdoor to this feature. Apple refused, citing their long held core value that privacy is a human right.
Apple has refused to comply, and in order to not risk criminal sanction has announced they will withdraw this encryption service from UK customers. This is of course excellent news for the abundance of threat actors who wish to access the personal data of UK citizens.
UK users will be the only ones in the world who will not be able to access this security feature, thanks to this appalling Labour government.
Britain is fast becoming an Orwellian surveillance state. The Home Office demand came in the form of a secret order under the Investigatory Powers Act. As is so often the case, Labour are simply pouring petrol onto a fire that was started by the Tories. It was they that passed this appalling act – known colloquially as the “Snoopers Charter”.
The law makes a mockery of the notion that there would be any proper checks and balances. The whole act is set up to ensure the opposite. It enables the Home Office to issue a “Technical Capability Notice” in secret to companies like Apple, who would be breaking the law to even publicly acknowledge the notice existed. The user whose private data was being compromised would never be informed. The total secrecy and lack of transparency, enforced by law, prevents public debate or scrutiny.
Another stunning aspect of this affair is the fact that the order from this Labour government was not just to get a backdoor into the private data of UK users. Oh no, they wanted access to the private data of Apple users across the globe. The extraordinary megalomania that this betrays is something to behold. So much so that, remarkably, Starmer has inspired bipartisan condemnation of his authoritarian instincts in America.
Senator Wyden (a Democrat) and Congressman Biggs (a Republican) have written a letter to National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard in which they describe the demands made of Apple as “dangerous”. In an extraordinary rebuke, they describe Starmer’s demand as “effectively a foreign cyber attack waged through political means“. Wyden reportedly said, “Trump and Apple better tell the UK it can go straight to hell with its secret demand to access hundreds of millions of Americans’ texts, pictures and files”.
Anyone who understands the technology will tell you that opening a backdoor to encryption in the way Labour are demanding opens a backdoor to cybercriminals, hackers and authoritarian regimes. It also severely compromises civil liberties. This is why Apple has; to its enormous credit, never allowed it. In this new era we are fast moving into, the power of artificial intelligence means the cost of mass surveillance has collapsed. New technology means such surveillance can be done at a scale, speed and cost that is without precedent. It has therefore never been more important to stand up to authoritarian impulses from political leaders.
Labour would love nothing more than to be able to access all your photos and your texts. We know that curtailing your freedom of speech is a key objective of theirs. The Tories, of course, are the ones who introduced this Snoopers Charter in the first place. Britain needs a government that understands this threat, would repeal this appalling act and enshrine the freedom of British people into law.
That is what Reform will deliver.
Zia Yusuf is Chairman of Reform UK
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