A host of prominent American tech firms have been warned not to risk the data and privacy security of US consumers in their compliance with the growing body of UK and European regulations.

US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson has written to the leaders of Big Tech firms Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, as well as cloud and hosting businesses including Cloudflare, Akamai, and GoDaddy.

The letter, also addressed to social media companies Signal, Snap, Slack, Discord and X, ‘reminds’ these tech firms of what the US government sees as their obligation to maintain the rights of Americans against what the FTC describe as ‘pressure from foreign governments to weaken such protections’.

In his politically charged letter, Ferguson wrote: “Because online platforms have become so critical to public discourse, pervasive online censorship in recent years has outraged the American people. 

“Not only have Americans been censored and expelled from platforms for uttering opinions and beliefs that were not shared by a small Silicon Valley elite, the previous administration actively worked to encourage such censorship.”

Specifically calling out the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act, along with the ‘anti-encryption policies’ of the UK, Ferguson said that he was concerned these efforts could erode American freedoms, and subject them to ‘myriad harms’, including surveillance, identity theft and fraud.

The letter claims that foreign powers could even use such regulations as a way to ‘limit free expression or weaken data security in the United States’, simply by counting on the idea that tech firms have an incentive to streamline their legal policies across disparate regions. 

Ferguson warned that if, in complying with these laws, Americans become subject to surveillance by a foreign government or censorship, the FTC could take action against the companies involved under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

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While this law has not historically been used to regulate American firms’ overseas operations, the Act ‘prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce’, which Ferguson argued includes the weakening of encryption or other security and privacy measures to comply with the laws of a foreign government.

“If a company promises consumers that it encrypts or otherwise keeps secure online communications but adopts weaker security due to the actions of a foreign government, such conduct may deceive consumers who rightfully expect effective security,” reads the letter.

Ferguson’s letter to Big Tech leaders also follows news last week that the UK Government had dropped its demand that Apple create a backdoor in its end-to-end encryption for law enforcement, as well as statements from the controversial social media site 4chan that it would refuse to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act.