FTC Calls on Tech Firms to Resist Foreign Anti-Encryption Demands

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sent letters to major tech companies in the United States, urging them to resist foreign governments’ demands to weaken encryption. 

The letters were sent by FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson to Akamai, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack, and X.

Ferguson told the companies that they might feel pressured to weaken data security and privacy protections at the request of foreign governments, or in response to their laws. The EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act and Investigatory Powers Act were given as examples by the FTC chairman.

The Investigatory Powers Act was recently cited by the British government as an argument for requesting that Apple provide backdoor access to encrypted data. The US announced last week that the UK had abandoned this demand.

However, the FTC wants to ensure that American tech companies ...