Google says UK government has not demanded an encryption backdoor for its users’ data

The U.K. government is reportedly backing down from its earlier demand that Apple build a secret backdoor allowing its authorities access to customer data worldwide, following a harsh rebuke from the U.S. government. But one U.S. senator wants to know if other tech giants, like Google, have also received secret backdoor demands from the U.K. government. 

Google refused to answer the lawmaker’s questions but has since told TechCrunch that the technology giant has not received a backdoor demand, marking the first time that Google has confirmed it is not subject to a similar U.K. order.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that the U.K. Home Office sought a secret court order in the U.K.’s surveillance court demanding that Apple allow U.K. authorities to access the end-to-end encrypted cloud data stored on any customer in the world, including their iPhone and iPad backups. Apple encrypts the data in such a way that only customers, and not Apple, can access their data stored on its servers.

Under U.K. law, tech companies subject to secret surveillance court orders, such as Apple, are legally barred from revealing details of an order, or the existence of the order itself, despite details of the demand publicly leaking earlier this year. Critics called the secret order against Apple “draconian,” saying it would have global ramifications for users’ privacy. Apple has since appealed the legality of the order.

In a new letter sent to top U.S. intelligence official Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that while tech companies cannot say whether they have received a U.K. order, at least one technology giant has confirmed that it hasn’t received one.

Meta, which uses end-to-end encryption to protect user messages sent between WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, told Wyden’s office on March 17 that the company has “not received an order to backdoor our encrypted services, like that reported about Apple.”

Google, for its part, would not tell Wyden’s office if it had received a U.K. government order for accessing encrypted data, such as Android backups, “only stating that if it had received a technical capabilities notice, it would be prohibited from disclosing that fact,” said Wyden.

Google spokesperson Karl Ryan told TechCrunch in a statement: “We have never built any mechanism or ‘backdoor’ to circumvent end-to-end encryption in our products. If we say a product is end-to-end encrypted, it is.” 

When explicitly asked by TechCrunch, Ryan said: “We haven’t received a technical capabilities notice,” referring to any U.K. surveillance order.

Wyden’s letter, first reported by The Washington Post and shared with TechCrunch, called on Gabbard to make public its “assessment of the national security risks posed by the U.K.’s surveillance laws and its reported secret demands of U.S. companies.”

This story was updated with additional comment from Google, shared in response to a TechCrunch inquiry.