Trump compared Britain's secret iPhone spy demand to something you only hear about from China.
Britain backed down when Trump pushed back and then quietly filed a new secret court order.
A White House official just warned in writing who Britain plans to spy on.
Britain's Secret iCloud Order Survived Trump's Pushback
In January 2025, the UK Home Office secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor into iCloud – access to any encrypted data from any Apple user anywhere on earth.
Apple refused.
Rather than build a master key for a foreign government, Apple pulled Advanced Data Protection – its strongest encryption feature – from every UK user in February 2025.
That stripped end-to-end encryption from roughly 35 million iPhone users in Britain.
Donald Trump called the order something you only hear about from China and his administration got to work.
Tulsi Gabbard, then Director of National Intelligence, spent months working alongside Trump and Vice President JD Vance to force Britain to stand down.
In August 2025, Britain officially withdrew the order.
Weeks later, they quietly filed a new one.
The replacement Technical Capability Notice – issued in secret under Britain's Investigatory Powers Act – narrowed the demand to UK users only.
Britain got caught building a global spy tool aimed at Americans, so they rebuilt it and filed again through a secret court.
Apple filed a second legal challenge at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in July 2026.
The case is still ongoing, and Britain will neither confirm nor deny the order exists.
Jim Jordan Warned Britain Its Encryption Backdoor Threatened Every American
Jim Jordan saw this coming and has spent over a year trying to stop it.
In May 2025, Jordan and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast wrote to UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper warning that a backdoor into end-to-end encrypted systems would create "systemic vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious actors, including cybercriminals and authoritarian regimes."
Because Apple builds one encryption system for the entire world, a backdoor built for British users is a backdoor for everyone.
Jordan and Arizona Republican Andy Biggs then wrote to former Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to renegotiate – or end – the US-UK CLOUD Act agreement, the data-sharing treaty Britain is using as cover while violating its core restriction: no orders targeting US citizens.
Britain answered a year of letters with a year of classified silence.
Now a White House security official has put in writing what Jordan has been warning about.
The message – sent in September 2026 and reported by the New Statesman – states that "The UK is making another attempt to put a backdoor on iCloud," this time through a secret court order, and that Britain "will use this back door to spy on the administration and Nigel Farage."
The targets were not criminals or terrorists – they were the President of the United States and the leader of Britain's most popular political party.
Farage is not a fringe figure.
He drove Brexit across the finish line when the entire British establishment said it couldn't be done, built Reform UK into the country's dominant political force, and has been one of Trump's most consistent international allies.
He is, by every political measure, Britain's equivalent of Donald Trump – and the man Labour has been watching beat them at the ballot box for two years.
They just handed their intelligence services the key to his iCloud.
Labour Is Losing to Nigel Farage and Building an iCloud Spy Tool Through a Secret Court
Britain's Labour government – openly hostile to Trump, Farage, and the America First movement – has spent the better part of two years building backdoor access into the world's most popular cloud storage system.
Trump forced Britain to put the order down, and they picked it back up the moment Washington stopped watching.
Britain handed their intelligence services a master key with no restrictions on who can use it – and as Jordan warned from the beginning, Apple's encryption is the same system worldwide. A key built to catch British criminals works just as well on an American President.
The White House official who sent that warning was not being alarmist – they were being honest about something Britain's government would prefer to keep buried behind a secret court and a legal gag order.
Britain called it an essential law enforcement tool.
Trump looked at former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the eye and told him that is something you only hear about from China.
The White House memo confirms Trump was right.
Sources:
- Jim Jordan and Brian Mast, "Letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper," House Judiciary Committee, May 7, 2025.
- Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs, "Letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi," House Judiciary Committee, April 8, 2025.
- Ken Macon, "Report: White House Fears UK Apple iCloud Backdoor Targets Trump, Farage," Reclaim The Net, October 8, 2026.
- "Apple Files New Legal Challenge Against UK iCloud Backdoor Order," iClarified, August 3, 2026.
- "UK Government Walks Back Controversial Apple Backdoor Demand," Reuters, August 19, 2025.
