Apple pushes UK court to lift secrecy around encryption backdoor order

In a recent legal hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London, Apple challenged the UK government’s refusal to openly confirm or deny a recent order issued to compel the tech giant to grant access to encrypted user data stored in iCloud. This development follows a previous refusal, reported last year, to disclose whether the government had ordered Apple to embed a security backdoor into its iCloud service, effectively a global request or a UK-specific one.

Apple, in response, ceased offering Advanced Data Protection (ADP) to new UK users, as enabling ADP would render iCloud data end-to-end encrypted, making it inaccessible to the government. The IPT ruled earlier that disclosing the existence of such a case wouldn’t endanger national security, prompting Apple to continue its fight.

Apple’s legal challenge intensified when the UK government introduced a new Technical Capability Notice, specifically targeting UK users. Apple’s lawyer at the hearing argued that the government's policy of neither confirming nor denying the order’s existence hampers open justice and meaningful public discussion of the case. The IPT will now determine whether the government can persist with its “neither confirm nor deny” policy in this instance.