US tech groups fire back over proposed UK surveillance law

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are urging the government to reconsider large swaths of the UK’s proposed new surveillance law, saying it will have far-reaching implications for how other countries upgrade their spying regimes in the digital age.

In a rare show of unity, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft have jointly submitted evidence to the parliamentary committee scrutinising the draft Investigatory Powers Bill. The US tech companies want substantial changes to the proposed law. They are rejecting demands for weaker encryption to allow security services access to their services, want assurances that the British authorities will not force them to hand over data held in other countries, and urge the government not to introduce a legal duty on companies that could require them to hack the accounts of their own customers.