US lawmakers criticise UK backdoor order to Apple, warn of cybercriminal risks
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast warned Britain on Wednesday that its order to Apple to create a backdoor to its encrypted user data could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian regimes.
Apple, which has said it would never build a so-called back door into its encrypted services or devices, has challenged the order at the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).
The iPhone maker withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK users in February following the UK order. Users of Apple's iPhones, Macs and other devices can enable the feature to ensure that only they — and not even Apple — can unlock data stored on its cloud.
"Creating a backdoor into end-to-end encrypted systems, as the TCN does, introduces systemic vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious actors, including cybercriminals and authoritarian regimes," Jordan and Mast wrote in a joint letter to Britain's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
TCN (Technical Capability Notice) refers to the UK order.
"These vulnerabilities would not only affect UK users but also American citizens and others worldwide, given the global nature of Apple's services," they said.
They urged Cooper to allow Apple to disclose the existence of the order to the U.S. Department of Justice so it can evaluate whether it complies with the U.S.-UK agreement made under the CLOUD Act which prohibits orders requiring companies to decrypt data.
Under UK laws, American companies would commit a criminal offence if they disclose or confirm such an order, even to their home government.
"We urge the Home Office to reconsider the issuance of TCNs that require the weakening of encryption, as such measures conflict with international human rights standards, including the European Court of Human Rights' ruling that undermining encryption violates privacy rights," the lawmakers said.
Britain's Home Office has said a warrant would be needed for any individual's data to be accessed.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Richard Chang)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
42 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Top housing official sends Fed Chair Powell blunt message on mortgage rates
American homeowners and aspiring homebuyers are exhausted by mortgage rates that are the highest in this century. With 30-year fixed mortgages at 6.77% on June 26, the housing industry is stagnant: no buyers, no sellers, and – an important economic indicator – lagging new construction. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter U.S. Housing FHFA Director William J. Pulte, echoing his boss President Donald Trump, puts the blame squarely on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Related: Fed chair sends strong message on tariffs to Senate panel Pulte ratcheted up criticism of Powell this week, first calling for his resignation and then delivering a powerful personal rebuke on June 27. Image source: Bloomberg/Getty Images Pulte, also the head of Fannie Mae, is the grandson of the founder of the mega homebuilder PulteGroup and formerly served on PulteGroup's board of directors. The U.S. housing market is especially brutal right now for first-time homebuyers, who can barely afford down payments, since supply shortages have propped up home prices. The median price for a new home exceeded $407,000 in April, up from $310,000 in 2020. The average mortgage payment also doubled to $2,207 in 2024, according to Bankrate, leaving first-time buyers struggling to keep up. Related: Fannie Mae chief Pulte sends savage one-word message to Fed's Powell Privately-owned housing starts in May were at a seasonally adjusted rate of 1,256,000. This is 9.8% below the revised April estimate. The Northeast, South, and Midwest saw declines, while the West saw an increase. The Fed's dual mandate is to prudently monitor monetary policy to maintain inflation (at about 2%) and keep unemployment relatively low to ensure the recession-free economy and its GDP are humming along. It's a delicate balance. The Federal Open Meeting Committee controls the Federal Funds Rate, which banks charge each other overnight to borrow money. At the June meeting, the funds rate stayed at 4.25% to 4.50%. The last funds rate cut was in December 2024. The funds rate is tied to the cost of borrowing money for consumers, investors, and businesses. Related: Fed official predicts when to expect interest rate cuts Mortgage rates typically run 2% to 3% higher than the 10-year Treasury note yield, and the Fed Funds Rate highly influences the 10-year yield. As a result, 30-year mortgage rates have risen to roughly 6.8% from 2.7% in early 2021. The average mortgage payment also doubled to $2,207 between 2020 and 2024. At the time of the June Fed meeting, Powell said the post-pandemic economy was resilient and stable, but the risk of tariff inflation on prices on the nation's supply chain prompted a "wait-and-see" approach to holding rates steady. He repeated those assertions to both the House and Senate panels this week, adding that the expected inflation from the tariffs would likely bubble up into economic indicators for June and July. If interest rates drop, so will mortgage rates, Pulte said in a June 27 CNBC interview. Powell "can hallucinate about what tariffs can do,'' but he's wrong, Pulte said. "That's why we need the 'Fake High Priest of the Fed'...to lower rates,'' Pulte said. More Federal Reserve: Fed interest rate cut decision resets forecasts for the rest of this yearFederal Reserve prepares strong message on long-term interest ratesFed official revamps interest-rate cut forecast for this year Large, medium, and small construction companies are all hurting from the housing crisis, Pulte said. Publicly traded builders are not immune, he added. "The American people are sick and tired,'' said Pulte, who earlier called for Powell to resign. President Trump's proposed tariffs – essentially an external sales tax to U.S. trading partners that we pay one way or another – face a July 9 deadline. The president, during a press conference in the White House Briefing Room on June 27, re-hashed his displeasure over high interest rates, calling Powell "just not a very smart person." The next Fed meeting is July 29-30. Both Fed and market watchers had forecast the next probable rate cut could appear at the central bank's September FOMC meeting. Related: Fed official makes surprising interest rate cut prediction The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Unemployment among young college graduates outpaces overall US joblessness rate
WASHINGTON (AP) — While completing a master's degree in data analysis, Palwasha Zahid moved from Dallas to a town near Silicon Valley. The location made it easy to visit the campuses of tech stalwarts such as Google, Apple, and Nvidia. Zahid, 25, completed her studies in December, but so far she hasn't found a job in the industry that surrounds her. 'It stings a little bit,' she said. 'I never imagined it would be this difficult just to get a foot in the door.' Young people graduating from college this spring and summer are facing one of the toughest job markets in more than a decade. The unemployment rate for degree holders ages 22 to 27 has reached its highest level in a dozen years, excluding the coronavirus pandemic. Joblessness among that group is now higher than the overall unemployment rate, and the gap is larger than it has been in more than three decades. The rise in unemployment has worried many economists as well as officials at the Federal Reserve because it could be an early sign of trouble for the economy. It suggests businesses are holding off on hiring new workers because of rampant uncertainty stemming from the Trump administration's tariff increases, which could slow growth. 'Young people are bearing the brunt of a lot of economic uncertainty,' Brad Hersbein, senior economist at the Upjohn Institute, a labor-focused think tank, said. 'The people that you often are most hesitant in hiring when economic conditions are uncertain are entry-level positions.' The growth of artificial intelligence may be playing an additional role by eating away at positions for beginners in white-collar professions such as information technology, finance, and law. Higher unemployment for younger graduates has also renewed concerns about the value of a college degree. More workers than ever have a four-year degree, which makes it less of a distinguishing factor in job applications. Murat Tasci, an economist at JPMorgan, calculates that 45% of workers have a four-year degree, up from 26% in 1992. While the difficulty of finding work has demoralized young people like Zahid, most economists argue that holding a college degree still offers clear lifetime benefits. Graduates earn higher pay and experience much less unemployment over their lifetimes. The overall U.S. unemployment rate is a still-low 4.2%, and the government's monthly jobs reports show the economy is generating modest job gains. But the additional jobs are concentrated in health care, government, and restaurants and hotels. Job gains in professions with more college grads, such as information technology, legal services, and accounting have languished in the past 12 months. The unemployment rate has stayed low mostly because layoffs are still relatively rare. The actual hiring rate — new hires as a percentage of all jobs — has fallen to 2014 levels, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 6.2%. Economists call it a no-hire, no-fire economy. For college graduates 22 to 27 years old, the unemployment rate was 5.8% in March — the highest, excluding the pandemic, since 2012, and far above the nationwide rate. Lexie Lindo, 23, saw how reluctant companies were to hire while applying for more than 100 jobs last summer and fall after graduating from Clark Atlanta University with a business degree and 3.8 GPA. She had several summer internships in fields such as logistics and real estate while getting her degree, but no offer came. 'Nobody was taking interviews or responding back to any applications that I filled out,' Lindo, who is from Auburn, Georgia, said. "My resume is full, there's no gaps or anything. Every summer I'm doing something. It's just, 'OK, so what else are you looking for?'' She has returned to Clark for a master's program in supply chain studies and has an internship this summer at a Fortune 500 company in Austin, Texas. She's hopeful it will lead to a job next year. Artificial intelligence could be a culprit, particularly in IT. Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, has calculated that employment for college graduates 28 and above in computer science and mathematical occupations has increased a slight 0.8% since 2022. For those ages 22 to 27, it has fallen 8%, according to Martin. Company announcements have further fueled concerns. Tobi Lutke, CEO of online commerce software company Shopify, said in an April memo that before requesting new hires, 'teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.' Last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI would likely reduce the company's corporate workforce over the next few years. 'We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,' Jassy said in a message to employees. 'We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' Zahid worries that AI is hurting her chances. She remembers seeing big billboard ads for AI at the San Francisco airport that asked, 'Why hire a human when you could use AI?' Still, many economists argue that blaming AI is premature. Most companies are in the early stages of adopting the technology. Professional networking platform LinkedIn categorized occupations based on their exposure to AI and did not see big hiring differences between professions where AI was more prevalent and where it wasn't, said Kory Kantenga, the firm's head of economics for the Americas. 'We don't see any broad-based evidence that AI is having a disproportionate impact in the labor market or even a disproportionate impact on younger workers versus older workers,' Kantenga said. He added that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes have also slowed hiring in tech. Many IT firms expanded when the Fed pinned its short-term rate at nearly zero after the pandemic. In 2022, the Fed began cranking up rates to combat inflation, which made it harder to borrow and grow. In fact, IT's hiring spree when rates were low — fueled by millions of Americans ramping up their online shopping and video conferencing — left many firms with too many workers, economists say. Cory Stahle, an economist at the job-listings website Indeed, says postings for software development jobs, for example, have fallen 40% compared with four years ago. It's a sharp shift for students who began studying computer science when hiring was near its peak. Zahid, who lives in Dublin, California, has experienced this whiplash firsthand. When she entered college in 2019, her father, who is a network engineer, encouraged her to study IT and said it would be easy for her to get a job in the field. She initially studied psychology but decided she wanted something more hands-on and gravitated to data analysis. Her husband, 33, has a software development job, and friends of hers in IT received immediate job offers upon graduation a few years ago. Such rapid hiring seems to have disappeared now, she said. She has her college diploma, but hasn't hung it up yet. 'I will put it up when I actually get a job, confirming that it was worth it all,' she said. ___ AP Writer Matt Sedensky in New York contributed to this report.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Apple iPhone 17 Series: The Best Views Yet Of All TheNew Designs Just Leaked
Updated June 28 with further images claiming to show the design of the iPhone 17 series. Although it's around 12 weeks until the next iPhones go on sale (read exactly when they will launch here), there have been numerous reports and leaks. The latest comes from a regular leaker, and aims to show exactly what the iPhone 17 Pro will look like in black. The same leaker has now posted more images, showing what the iPhone 17 Air and other models in the range will look like: more on that and images of the whole iPhone 17 series in the form of dummies below. Apple iPhone 16: are the new leaked dummy images of the iPhone 17 series accurate? Getty Images Of course, it's not yet known exactly what colors the next iPhones will come in, or what they'll be called, but it's highly likely that there will be a new black color this time around (which will be similar, perhaps, to the current titanium black found on the iPhone 16 Pro. Forbes Apple iPhone 17 Series Will Showcase 'Design Revamp,' New Report Claims By David Phelan The leak comes from serial tipster Majin Bu who has a strong, though not perfect, track record. Their latest post on X reads, 'iPhone 17 Pro Black, absolutely beautiful,' and the caption shows two images of what it will look like, it's claimed. It's a persuasive replica, with lots of detail and convincing materials. But the reason it's interesting is that it shows the new camera panel design in a way that many will find attractive. Previously, I've been skeptical about how the predicted wider camera panel will work in practice. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed that the panel would not be black on all models, that it would match the color of the iPhone. So, it's not yet clear what models in other colors will look like, but the images here show a panel which seems in keeping with the handset, and even makes the three camera lenses look less dominant than they do on the iPhone 16 Pro. In the dummy, the panel looks as though it rises out of the phone more deeply than before, perhaps to create a greater distance between the lens and the sensor beneath. The lenses are still raised on top of the panel. This is the iPhone 17 Pro, and it's the Pro Max model which is rumored to be the thickest iPhone Pro yet, so this looks, well, not super-thin, but not chunky. Of course, however carefully researched a phone dummy is, it can only take us part way to understanding what the real thing will look like. But these images make the iPhone 17 Pro look better than some had been expecting. The same could be said for the iPhone 17 Air, which Majin Bu has also featured, in a post on X captioned, 'iPhone 17 Air looks fantastic,' and showing two images of dummies claiming to show what the slim iPhone, nicknamed the Air, will look like. If you've already seen images said to be the iPhone 17 Air, you'll know that it has quite a different look on the rear of the phone (let alone its profile). There's only one camera expected on the iPhone 17 Air, and it seems it will sit on the left side of the phone's back, as Apple's cameras always have. But the raised camera panel which is one of the biggest design changes in the iPhone 17 series stretches across the width of the phone. It's a controversial look that is most noticeable on the one-camera slim phone. That said, it looks more persuasive in this dummy than has previously been seen. And then there's the profile: turn the phone sideways and this dummy shows how strikingly thin it is. Majin Bu has also posted more images, including a group shot of the entire iPhone 17 series, showing them in a pale color, silver, perhaps. Seeing them together shows a distinct and consistent design language which, did we but know it at the time, began with the iPhone 16 in September 2025. All models apart from iPhone 17 base model have a camera panel that stretches the width of the phone. It again makes one ask why the panel is that wide on the slim model with its single camera. My only guess is to separate it in design from the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16e, which will still be on sale. Plus, it seems it's going to be a pricier model than the iPhone 17, so the slim iPhone needs something else to set it apart. Plus, of course, with a phone that thin, you may need to use some of the camera bump to squirrel away components for which there's otherwise no space. By the way, if you look at the dummies, you know that's what you're looking at: the leaf at the top of the Apple logo is missing on the supposed iPhone 17 Air. I think it's pretty clear that that's not a design change we should be expecting. Forbes Microsoft Confirms Windows 11 Automatic Deletions: Take Action Now To Protect Yourself By David Phelan
