UK May Backtrack on Controversial Demand for Backdoor to Encrypted Apple User Data

[MacRumors]

The British government may be forced to drop its plans to force Apple to build a backdoor to access encrypted user data, the Financial Times reports.

In February, it emerged that the British government had secretly demanded Apple gives it access to all encrypted user content uploaded to iCloud. It argued the ability, which is unprecedented for any other democratic country, is necessary for law enforcement and the security services to investigate serious crimes such as terrorism and child sexual abuse. In response, Apple removed Advanced Data Protection from the UK‌ and filed a legal complaint in an attempt to quash the demand.

Now, senior British officials speaking to the Financial Times say that the UK is likely to drop the plan amid pressure from the U.S. government:

This is something that the vice-president is very annoyed about and which needs to be resolved. The Home Office is basically going to have to back down.

One of the challenges for the tech partnerships we're working on is the encryption issue. It's a big red line in the US — they don't want us messing with their tech companies.

The demand to build a backdoor into iCloud and break Apple's end-to-end encryption could impede vital technology agreements with the U.S. related to artificial intelligence and data partnerships, and has already caused friction between the two governments. Senior members of the U.S. administration, including the President, Vice-President, and Director of National Intelligence, have all raised strong objections to the British government's request.

The Financial Times says that the British Home Office has handled the issue of Apple encryption "very badly" and now has "its back against the wall." For now, the government still appears to be pursuing the demand and apparently discussed next steps with lawyers as recently as this month.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: UK May Backtrack on Controversial Demand for Backdoor to Encrypted Apple User Data

 

[breenmask]

Lol UK and EU are just wasting everyone's time and resources.

 

[zahuh]

Wonder if Apple will treat the UK like it treats app developers that try to go outside the system. It'll charge the UK government a "CORE TECHNOLOGY FEE" of 1 billion dollars per request for users info

 

[GrassShark]

Would be good to see this go away. I'm not in the UK but govts demanding backdoors into encryption is a pretty much never a good thing.

 

[DocMultimedia]

Any government that tries to finalize a backdoor deal will no longer have smart phones.

 

[Justin Cymbal]

There is no such thing as a back door

This is math. Numbers don’t lie

A back door for one is a back door for all and any back doors for specific governments will eventually be decrypted, rendering the encryption useless for everyone

 

[Smartuser]

A government trying to do something so insanely dumb that I’m siding with our administration on the matter. A shameful government.

 

[lord patton]

The real showdown will be over the DSA.

 

[krspkbl]

good. I’m british and our government is going in the wrong direction in so many ways. Thanks USA for putting UK government in its place.

Hopefully Apple will enable ADP again.

A government trying to do something so insanely dumb that I’m siding with our administration on the matter. A shameful government.

Feels weird I’m siding with the US gov here but it shows how silly my goverment is being.

 

[burgman]

Now, senior British officials speaking to the Financial Times say that the UK is likely to drop the plan amid pressure from the U.S. government:

Given US government now being in bed with Palantir I’m sure we’ve offered Britain their services. With laws in both countries we will never know. The way US suddenly said never mind, after seriously pushing for a similar backdoor, means something changed.

 

[JamesMay82]

Good and soon I hope! I stopped using iCloud when they did this and now keep everything local which is great but also very frustrating for keeping things in sync between macs

 

[contacos]

"officially" but unofficially, the US would love to have this data, they just don't want to be the ones gathering it and if I understand correctly, there is some alliance between the US, Canada, Australia and two other countries that share data with each other or at least Intel of their concerns

 

[Zc456]

It's a big red line in the US — they don't want us messing with their tech companies.

Unless you're the US president, of course. Then he'll personally intervene in a company's business.

 

[Ctrlos]

In this case we side with the customer. My government has no right to build a backdoor into the private data of it's citizens, full stop.

There is probably a deeper conversation to be had about the privacy of cloud backups and relying on big tech companies to look after it instead of taking personal responsibility and doing it ourselves, but the state has no right to access it at all.

 

[East India Company]

Back door or not, the US government, by law, can ask any US company for any data about anyone. If you think there is nothing in place currently then you are probably a little bit naive.

 

[ducknalddon]

There is no such thing as a back door

This is math. Numbers don’t lie

Doesn't matter, Apple already disabled encryption for UK users (not that many had it enabled). You don't need a back door to access unencrypted data.

 

[cjsuk]

The repeated political attacks on encryption are getting tiring. Hopefully something comes of this.

I've already removed everything I have from "the cloud". Literally just email sits up there on Fastmail - nothing else.

Really I hope this causes the centralisation of IT to collapse. It's one of the largest mistakes we have made in the industry and nothing good can come of it over time.

 

[Starfia]

A government trying to do something so insanely dumb that I’m siding with our administration on the matter. A shameful government.

Feels weird I’m siding with the US gov here but it shows how silly my goverment is being.

It sounds like the position of the US government is incidental – if you're siding with anyone here, I'd say it's ordinary people who would just like to use the encryption features Apple put all this effort into.

 

[Ctrlos]

The repeated political attacks on encryption are getting tiring. Hopefully something comes of this.

I've already removed everything I have from "the cloud". Literally just email sits up there on Fastmail - nothing else.

Really I hope this causes the centralisation of IT to collapse. It's one of the largest mistakes we have made in the industry and nothing good can come of it over time.

I’m amazed that some company hasn’t seen this as a business opportunity. I’ve mentioned a few times on here how I think that some sort of HomePod x Time Capsule device that primarily backs everything up locally (and optionally uses the cloud for redundancy) would be a big seller. Chuck a 128gb SSD into the HomePod Mini for people on as budget and then a larger 2Tb into the regular HomePod.

 

[Fatboy71]

[Deleted]

 

[mazz0]

My instinctive reaction is "good", because what the government was asking for sounds bad.

But realistically, how do any of us actually know that such backdoors don't already exist? I'd assume anybody with genuinely sensitive data isn't simply trusting Apple on this, and has taken steps of their own to secure their backups elsewhere.

 

[mazz0]

Doesn't matter, Apple already disabled encryption for UK users (not that many had it enabled). You don't need a back door to access unencrypted data.

Misleading phrasing. They didn't "disable encryption", they disabled one particular area from encryption.

 

[cjsuk]

My instinctive reaction is "good", because what the government was asking for sounds bad.

But realistically, how do any of us actually know that such backdoors don't already exist? I'd assume anybody with genuinely sensitive data isn't simply trusting Apple on this, and has taken steps of their own to secure their backups elsewhere.

You'd be surprised. Everyone just chucks it in Amazon AWS and points the lawyers at their T&C. That includes defence, finance, medical stuff. A lot of them even back up AWS to AWS. It's absolutely bananas.

(Replace AWS with GCP/Azure as well as necessary)

 

[LV426]

Doesn't matter, Apple already disabled encryption for UK users (not that many had it enabled). You don't need a back door to access unencrypted data.

Advanced Data Protection is still enabled for me, and I’m in the UK.

 

[JamesMay82]

Advanced Data Protection is still enabled for me, and I’m in the UK.

ahhh I wondered if it would be active for previous users... I disabled and turned all mine off and now I regret it.