US Legislators Complain About Secretive British Court and Apple Encryption
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: A bipartisan pair of American politicians is telling Britain's most secretive court to stop hiding its handling of Apple's legal fight against a government demand to break into its customers' encrypted data, warning that Whitehall's taste for secrecy is 'needlessly' straining relations between the two allies. The letter (PDF), shared with the Guardian…
Two American legislators, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Congressman Warren Davidson, have criticized Britain's secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) for its handling of Apple's legal dispute with the US government over encrypted data access. The pair accused the IPT of unnecessarily straining relations between the two allies by hiding its actions.
The controversy began in January 2025 when the UK Home Office issued a technical capability notice to Apple under the Investigatory Powers Act, demanding a way to access encrypted iCloud backups worldwide. Apple complied by disabling its Advanced Data Protection encryption for UK users. However, the IPT later dismissed Apple's challenge against the order, after the Home Office reduced the notice to target only British users' data.
Wyden and Davidson emphasized that the IPT's secrecy directive is inappropriate for a foreign body to dictate US government powers and that the UK government cannot advocate for legislative oversight while using gag orders to limit US congressional authority.
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