The United Kingdom government reportedly had to give up its demand for a backdoor into encrypted Apple iCloud accounts. The reversal reportedly came as part of ongoing trade talks between the UK and the Trump administration.
Apple fought the demand, and it seems like it won.
UK gives up on iCloud backdoor
The news broke several months ago that the U.K. wants a “backdoor” into iCloud. This would allow law enforcement to secretly access the information that iPhone and Mac users store on Apple servers, despite the files all being encrypted on accounts that have Advanced Data Protection enabled. And the backdoor would be global — not just for residents of England, Scotland, etc.
But the U.K. is now walking back the controversial demand, according to a published report from The Financial Times on Monday. It’s allegedly one result of U.S./U.K. trade talks over tariffs and other matters. U.S. negotiators apparently pressured the United Kingdom to drop the idea of a backdoor into iCloud.
“It’s a big red line in the US — they don’t want us messing with their tech companies,” an unnamed source told the Financial Times.
The Trump administration came out against the plan as soon as news of it leaked out. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) expressed their reservations to Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), about the plan. She told them:
“I share your grave concern about the serious implications of the United Kingdom, or any foreign country, requiring Apple or any company to create a `backdoor’ that would allow access to Americans’ personal encrypted data. This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.”
Apple was fighting all the way
Apple cannot comment on this controversy because the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 forbids companies that have been ordered to surrender user information to investigators from talking about it.
In general, it’s Apple’s policy to follow the legal orders of governments in which it does business. And the company did reduce iCloud encryption in the UK, a step that shows it’s partially complying with the law.
That said, Apple and other companies long ago made it clear that they agree with Gabbard that any deliberately inserted weakness in encryption will inevitably be exploited by hackers.
The CLOUD Act that the DNI mentioned gives U.S. law enforcement the right to subpoena user data held in cloud storage by companies, even when that data is held overseas. It requires a warrant. That makes it quite different from the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which gives a wide range of agencies warrantless access to user data held anywhere in the world.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
