Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 28, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 25, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleTrump criticizes UK's demand for Apple user data, comparing it to China's surveillance. The issue raises concerns about privacy and potential CLOUD Act violations.
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump likened the UK government's demand that Apple grant it access to some user data as "something that you hear about with China," in an interview with The Spectator political magazine published Friday.
Trump said that he had told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he "can't do this", referring to the request for access to data. The two met at the White House on Thursday for the first time since the U.S. leader took office, discussing Ukraine and negotiating a bilateral trade agreement.
"We actually told him (Starmer) ... that's incredible. That's something, you know, that you hear about with China," Trump said in his first magazine interview of his second term with the magazine's editor-at-large Ben Domenech.
The UK government and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Apple last week ended an advanced security encryption feature for cloud data for UK users in an unprecedented response to government demands for access to user data. A spokesperson for Britain's Home Office had then declined to comment on whether such an order had been issued.
In a letter dated February 25 to two U.S. lawmakers, Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said the U.S. is examining whether the UK government had violated the CLOUD Act, which bars it from issuing demands for the data of U.S. citizens and vice versa.
The Spectator, which is influential in Conservative circles and was previously edited by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was bought last year by British hedge fund founder Paul Marshall.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Suban Abdulla in London; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Trump compared the UK's demand for Apple user data to practices seen in China, stating he told Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he 'can't do this'.
Apple ended an advanced security encryption feature for cloud data for UK users in response to the government's demands for access to user data.
The CLOUD Act is a U.S. law that allows law enforcement to access data stored by U.S. companies, and the U.S. is examining whether the UK government violated this act.
Keir Starmer is the British Prime Minister who met with Donald Trump at the White House regarding the UK's request for Apple user data.
The interview with Trump was conducted by The Spectator, a magazine influential in Conservative circles in the UK.
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