Tag: united kingdom

Apple Pulls Privacy Protections For UK Citizens After The UK Is the First Country to Demand a Backdoor Into Your Private Data

Apple has effectively told the UK government to get lost when it comes to inserting a worldwide surveillance backdoor into its iCloud encryption. Instead of playing along with Britain’s ever-expanding digital police state, the tech giant has chosen to pull its most secure data protection feature — Advanced Data Protection (ADP) — for users in the UK. Because nothing says “we respect your privacy” like stripping away the very feature designed to protect it.

The whole mess started when the British government, wielding the notoriously invasive Investigatory Powers Act (a law that might as well be named the “We Own Your Data Act”), demanded that Apple sabotage its own encryption. The UK’s authorities wanted a golden key to every citizen’s iCloud storage, under the guise of “public safety.” But here’s the wider issue: the directive wouldn’t only affect Brits — it would have compromised Apple’s encryption system worldwide.

This was an attempt to strong-arm one of the world’s most powerful tech companies into submission, setting a precedent that could crack open user privacy like an egg.

Rather than comply, Apple responded with a very diplomatic version of hell no. Instead of weakening encryption for everyone, the company opted to remove ADP from the UK entirely. In a statement that practically oozed frustration, Apple declared:

“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by Advanced Data Protection will not be available to our customers in the United Kingdom, given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.”

They continued, insisting that they remain committed to offering users “the highest level of security” and expressing “hope” that they’ll be able to restore ADP in the UK at some point in the future. That’s corporate-speak for, maybe when your current government stops acting like the digital arm of Big Brother.

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US Tech companies, Including X and Google, Threaten To Leave Starmer’s Leftist Britain Over the Cost of Funding Online ‘Safety’ Censorship

As the ‘Trump Tornado’ is forcefully rearranging things all over Europe, there’s a justified expectation about the Donald J. Trump administration’s reaction to the ill-disguised push for censorship in the upcoming ‘Online Safety Act.’

As of now, Tech companies, including Elon Musk’s X and Google, have warned businesses could leave the PM Keir Starmer’s leftist experiment in Britain over the cost of funding the online safety crackdown.

Google said the fees charged to internet companies will drive services out of the UK, while X says it will ‘disincentivize’ global companies from entering the British market.

The Telegraph reported:

“Ofcom [British Office of Communications] has laid out plans to raise around £70m a year to cover the costs of enforcing the new laws, which take effect in the coming months. They will require tech companies to introduce age checks and limit exposure to harmful content. The bill would almost entirely be borne by the largest five providers – believed to be Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple and TikTok – [that] would face charges equal to 0.02pc of global revenue.”

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UK Could Weaken Online Censorship Law To Avoid US Trade Battle

As European leaders scramble to shield their economies from impending US tariffs, the UK’s Labour government appears ready to make significant concessions. Facing the risk of economic fallout, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration has reportedly signaled to Washington that it is open to revising the controversial and dangerous Online Safety Act — legislation critics have described as an aggressive censorship regime.

The Act, which gives UK regulators the power to fine tech companies for failing to remove vaguely defined “harmful content,” has been a major point of contention between the two allies and has become a major threat to free speech online. The Trump administration has been especially vocal in its opposition, viewing the law as an affront to free speech and a potential financial burden on US tech giants.

According to The Telegraph:

“Downing Street is willing to renegotiate elements of the Act in order to strike a trade deal, should it be raised by the US, The Telegraph understands. The law has been heavily criticized by free speech advocates and economists, who argue its broad provisions to tackle harmful online content could lead to excessive censorship and deter investment from American tech giants.”

The Online Safety Act arms UK media regulator Ofcom with sweeping new authority over social media platforms, enabling the imposition of multimillion-pound fines for failing to police content according to government directives. While supporters claim the law is necessary to protect users, critics argue that its vague wording and punitive approach encourage preemptive censorship — where platforms remove lawful content simply to avoid regulatory punishment.

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Brits who took best UFO picture ever ‘vanished’ as MoD insider addresses ‘assassination’ claims

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) insider has addressed claims of a “deep state assassination” after Brits reportedly took the best UFO photo ever before they “vanished.”

Chefs were out walking in the Cairngorms mountains, in the Scottish Highlands, in August 1990, when they took photos of a diamond-like object in the sky as what appeared to be a military jet flew by. But after sending the image to now-Mirror affiliate the Daily Record, the pair vanished without a trace and the image did not emerge until it was published by the Mail in 2022.

A former MoD insider who worked on the department’s UFO desk shared his view about what he believes happened with the chefs. Nick Pope said he believed a “fairly robust” conversation happened with the pair in a bid to keep them from sharing more information.

But he told The Guardian: “The idea that these people were assassinated by the deep state – that’s just nonsense.” He made the comments after a former colleague of the chefs at Fisher’s Hotel, in Pitlockry, told the Mail it was as thought the pair had “vanished off the face of the Earth.”

Richard Grieve claimed the duo had been left “visibly shaken” after they were approached by two people dressed in black during a shift. He said the pair then vanished for four weeks.

It is also not known why the Daily Record did not run the photos. Mr Pope, who worked on the UFO desk for three years from 1991 and previously claimed the ministry “buried” the photo. He told the 2024 UFO documentary The Program that the Daily Record’s article would have “blown our standard line out of the water.”

He said: “Therefore, we wanted to bury this – and we did. All the photographs and all the negatives were acquired by the Ministry of Defence and they were never seen again.”

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After Trump Starts Mass Deportations, the UK Government Tries To Look Tough, Divulges Footage of the Secret Flights Sending Back Foreign Criminals and Failed Asylum Seekers

The Donald J. Trump administration is like a hurricane blowing through Europe, and nothing is the same, anymore.

And we are not just talking about the trade tariffs – many aspects of Trump’s administration are having a disruptive impact in European political establishments, beginning with the hardcore changes in immigration policy.

Now, we see the UK Labour government trying to look like there are vigorously tackling the matter, and the Home Office, today (10) released videos and photos of foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers being deported from Britain.

These images have been published for the first time – showing that up to five security escorts may be needed for every migrant.

The Telegraph reported:

“In an attempt to show Labour’s tougher approach to illegal migrants, the Home Office has released pictures showing five escorts in high-viz yellow vests with body-worn cameras surrounding a single migrant as he is ushered up the steps onto a chartered plane to be returned to his home country in Europe.

The previously secret, high-security deportation flights have been filmed for the first time as Sir Keir Starmer tries to head off the political threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and demonstrate to a skeptical public that Labour is getting tough on illegal migration.”

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UK Government Secretly Orders Apple to Build Global iCloud Backdoor, Threatening Digital Privacy Worldwide

Imagine waking up one morning to find out your government has demanded the master key to every digital iPhone lock on Earth — without telling anyone. That’s exactly what British security officials have tried to pull off, secretly ordering Apple to build a backdoor into iCloud that would allow them to decrypt any user’s data, anywhere in the world. Yes, not just suspected criminals, not just UK citizens — everyone. And they don’t even want Apple to talk about it.

This breathtakingly authoritarian stunt, first reported by The Washington Post, is one of the most aggressive attempts to dismantle digital privacy ever attempted by a so-called Western democracy. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from regimes that plaster their leader’s face on every street corner, not from a country that still pretends to believe in civil liberties.

This isn’t about catching a single terrorist or cracking a single case. No, this order — issued in secret last month by Keir Starmer’s Labour government — demands universal decryption capabilities, effectively turning Apple into a surveillance arm of the UK government. Forget warrants, forget oversight, forget even the pretense of targeted investigations. If this order were obeyed, British authorities would have the power to rifle through anyone’s iCloud account at will, no justification required.

The officials pushing for this monstrosity are hiding behind the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, a law so Orwellian it’s lovingly referred to as the “Snoopers’ Charter.” This piece of legislative overreach forces tech companies to comply with government spying requests while making it illegal to even disclose that such demands have been made. It’s the surveillance state’s dream—limitless power, zero accountability.

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WHY the War on Farmers?

The recent Telegraph headline rang out of England recently with unsettling tones: Tenth of farmland to be axed for net zero

More than 10 per cent of farmland in England is set to be diverted towards helping to achieve net zero and protecting wildlife by 2050, the Environment Secretary will reveal on Friday.

Swathes of the countryside are on course to be switched to solar farms, tree planting and improving habitats for birds, insects and fish.

The move comes on the back of an aggressive and highly unpopular inheritance tax placed on generational farmers by British politician Rachel Reeves that has drawn sustained protest in the country. The commercial officer of Britain’s largest supermarket chain Tesco warned Reeves’ tax raid on farmers is placing “UK’s future food security is at stake.”

What if that’s the whole point? Tucker Carlson recently asked Piers Morgan this uncomfortable question.

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UK Home Secretary Signals Tougher Online Censorship Beyond Current Censorship Laws

Judging by the most recent statements made by UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the government feels it will have to implement even more stringent speech-restrictive measures than those contained in the sweeping and controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act.

Appearing on a BBC political talk show, Cooper kept beating the now well-established drum the ruling Labour has gone for in the wake of last year’s Southport killings, and subsequent mass protests – namely, to try to portray social media companies as somehow “a part of the crime,” which is verbatim how the cabinet minister put it.

One of the recurring themes these last weeks, since the Southport trial saw its conclusion, has been that tech companies are “morally responsible” for not deleting (that request came only last week) one of the violent videos viewed by the killer, Axel Rudakubana.

This request was made even though said companies are under no legal obligation to do that, until the spring of this year and the start of the enforcement of some parts of the Online Safety Act.

The stage set that way, Cooper’s logic – or lack thereof – goes like this: “We are being clear that we are prepared to go further if the Online Safety Act measures are not working as effectively as we need them to do,” she told the host, Laura Kuenssberg.

There is no way to predict how social media firms will act once they are under obligation to remove certain types of content – and yet Cooper is already threatening to make the Online Safety Act even worse.

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Tony Blair urges Starmer to bring in national digital IDs to use against the populist right

Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair wants his successor as British premier and Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to impose a digital ID regime, in part to “flush out” anti-mass migration populists. 

“What the populists do is they take a real grievance and they exploit it but they very often don’t want to have a solution because solutions are much tougher than talking about problems,” Blair said, adding: “The grievance would be on immigration that the thing is out of control. The grievance would be on crime that we’re not doing enough on it. So you say, ‘OK, here’s what you do’. And then you have a big political fight. The populist is forced to choose. You’ve got to create an agenda that the other side has to respond to.”

Right-wing populists do offer solutions to Britain’s record-breaking mass migration influx – for example, simply capping visas issued at a set level – but in an interview with The Times,[1] Blair implies they have no proposed policy fixes and that digital ID can fill this gap.

“We are putting in place the building blocks for it, so that’s good. But we should embrace it fully and roll it out as soon as we can because it will have an immediate set of benefits,” the Iraq War architect told the newspaper, which revealed he is in regular contact with Prime Minister Starmer and his Cabinet.

“There will be a big debate coming down the line – and this is the political argument people should have – which is: how much privacy are you prepared to trade for efficiency? … My view is that people are actually prepared to trade quite a lot,” he argued, adding: “I think it’s a political debate the Government will win. It will also flush out a lot of people who want to talk about issues like immigration or benefit fraud but don’t actually will the means to get to the end.”

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UK Gov’t Wants Sweeping Powers to Spy on Your Bank Account

The UK’s Labour government announced plans this week that would further erode civil rights in the country, this time in the name of “preventing benefit fraud”.

The plans include revoking the driver’s licenses of those convicted of benefit fraud, “early morning raids” by “crack teams” from the DWP, and – most shockingly – permitting the government access to private banking information so they can take back money they believe they are owed, without the knowledge or permission of the accused.

In their own classically impartial fashion, the BBC reported this as:

Benefit cheats could be stripped of driving licenses

But this isn’t about “benefit cheats”. Even the government’s own figures say that benefit fraud makes up only ~3% of the welfare budget, and this move will only save £1.5 billion over the next five years.

£300 million per year is nothing in government terms. They just pledged 10x that amount, per year, to Ukraine.

They don’t care about the money, they care about power and precedent.

  • They want to be able to take away your driver’s license.
  • They want to be able to monitor your bank account.
  • They want to be able to take your money without your knowledge.
  • They want to be able to search your electronic devices and track your spending.

Maybe it will start with “reclaiming benefits”, but do you think it will end there?

Remember they also want to introduce Universal Basic Income, which would mean – technically – everyone is on “benefits”.

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