Jordan Demands Answers From UK Over Surveillance Powers That Could Expose American Communications

June 6, 2026

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has formally urged the United Kingdom to reconsider surveillance powers that cybersecurity experts warn could compromise the private communications of American citizens and government officials.

In a letter sent Thursday to U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the Ohio Republican called for a review of Britain's use of secret government directives known as Technical Capability Notices under the Investigatory Powers Act. Jordan expressed concern that these powers could force American technology companies to create backdoor access into encrypted platforms, while being prohibited from disclosing such requests to Congress or the public.

The chairman specifically objected to the British government's decision to block a U.S. company from briefing Congress about an alleged backdoor notice. Jordan warned that the lack of bilateral coordination on the matter raised "serious concerns about the trust and effective partnership between our two countries."

The dispute centers on encryption technology that protects everything from personal messages to sensitive government communications. Former Department of Defense official Andrew Badger, who co-authored the book "The Great Heist: China's Epic Campaign to Steal America's Secrets," said the implications extend far beyond the immediate privacy concerns of individual users.

"We have already seen how this ends," Badger told Maine News Now. "There are legitimate privacy concerns here, and those have been well aired. The less examined issue is national security."

Badger argued that compelling a backdoor for one allied government would effectively invite China, Russia, and Iran to demand similar access. "Once one government can quietly compel access, others will demand the same, and a one-off concession hardens into a permanent vulnerability," he said. "A backdoor compelled by one ally becomes a standing invitation to Beijing, Moscow and Tehran."

The former defense official emphasized that the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, which includes both the United States and United Kingdom, depends on mutual trust among partners. "Five Eyes works because every partner trusts the others not to weaken the systems they all depend on," Badger said. "If Washington also concludes that U.K. surveillance powers could inadvertently expose Americans and American officials to espionage, it puts real strain on the relationship and makes future cooperation on intelligence and cyber harder to sustain."

The controversy arrives amid heightened awareness of foreign cyberespionage operations. Reports indicate that Chinese state-sponsored hackers linked to the Salt Typhoon campaign have targeted telecommunications infrastructure by exploiting lawful-intercept systems built into networks. Through these intrusions,Badger said, hackers gained access to communications of senior Western officials and information about surveillance targets.

"The telling thing is that no one issues burner phones for a trip to Sweden or Germany," Badger noted, pointing to reports that U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper used a disposable device during a recent visit to Beijing. "The precaution is itself an admission of the threat environment. The working assumption — correctly — is that anything digital taken into China should be treated as potentially compromised."

Badger connected the episode to broader concerns about Chinese operations targeting British democratic institutions, including the hacking of senior Downing Street officials' phones and a breach at the Electoral Commission that exposed data belonging to roughly 40 million voters.

He argued that the situation reveals a fundamental tension in British policy toward China. "You can't simultaneously treat China as a trusted economic partner and a hostile intelligence threat," Badger said. "This case perfectly underscores the contradiction at the heart of the U.K. Labour government's China policy: chasing positive economic relations and expanded trade with Beijing on one hand, while being forced to take elaborate precautions against a state whose core interests remain fundamentally at odds with its own."

On the technical side, Badger noted that encrypted messaging platforms have evolved into essential infrastructure for sensitive communications across government, business, and journalism. "Any access point built into them becomes a permanent target," he said. "It is not a private key the requesting government gets to keep to itself."

The letter from Jordan represents the latest friction point in U.S.-U.K. relations over digital security and intelligence sharing, issues that have drawn increasing attention from congressional oversight committees on both sides of the Atlantic.