Overview

• FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson sent letters on Aug. 21 to 13 companies including Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, X, Signal, Snap, Slack, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy and Akamai.
• Ferguson cited the EU Digital Services Act, the U.K. Online Safety Act and the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act as pressures that could drive censorship or anti-encryption changes affecting U.S. users.
• The letters caution that applying uniform global policies to simplify compliance could lead platforms to censor Americans or expose them to foreign surveillance risks.
• The FTC said weakening promised protections or failing to clearly disclose changes tied to foreign demands may be an unfair or deceptive practice subject to enforcement, and requested meetings by Aug. 28.
• The warning follows a separate announcement this week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that the U.K. agreed to withdraw a request for access to encrypted iCloud data of U.S. users.