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Since 2023, the FBI has been investigating a senior Republican Congressional staffer over suspicions they were acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar. As part of the previously-unreported probe, the DOJ ordered Apple to provide extensive information on the staffer, including their location history, emails, iMessages and other texts from encrypted apps including WhatsApp and Signal.

To keep the investigation secret, the Justice Department also ordered the tech giant to stay quiet about the extent of the surveillance for at least five years, according to court documents reviewed by Forbes. That would mean the suspect wouldn’t find out about the investigation until August 2029.

But Apple fought the gag order throughout the first half of 2025. Then in June last year, it won. A judge agreed the company could inform the Congressional staffer that Apple was sharing their data with the DOJ. That person, who is being investigated for potential breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, is yet to come forward. They are described as a “senior staffer to a member of the House of Representatives” but their identity and the full nature of the investigation remain unknown. Apple’s attempts to fight the non-disclosure orders were unsealed in November.

"We have a longstanding policy to inform users of........

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