A U.K. court on Monday confirmed Apple’s legal challenge of a secret government order to provide a backdoor into encrypted iCloud data. The U.K. government wanted its demand — which would compromise the encryption for iCloud users anywhere in the world — to remain hush-hush.
News of the government order (and Apple’s appeal) previously leaked out. And Apple already disabled its Advanced Data Protection encryption in Britain to comply. However, both the U.K. government’s demand and the legal battle it provoked were supposed to be secret. The ruling by the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal drags the whole thing out into the open.
UK government doesn’t get to keep mum on effort to spy on iCloud data
The news broke in February that the UK wants a “back door” 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.
Apple’s initial response was to stop enabling its British customers to encrypt data stored in iCloud with ADP. That way, at least users won’t mistakenly think their files are safe from being accessed by the UK government.
It also appealed the demand to the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which hears complaints about surveillance by intelligence services. And the IPT won’t keep quiet about it.
“The IPT said in a written ruling that it had refused the British government’s application that ‘the bare details of the case’, including that it was brought by Apple, be kept private,” Reuters reported on Monday.
The government wants its demand for a back door through iCloud encryption kept secret so that users will mistakenly think their data is securely encrypted even as it can be easily accessed by a wide range of UK law enforcement agencies.
But the cat’s out of the bag now. If the leak from February wasn’t enough, the IPT will apparently share juicy details during Apple’s appeal of the order.
Even before the news became official, the U.S. director of national intelligence called the British government plan “a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy.”
