{"id":466366,"date":"2025-10-01T17:59:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/466366\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T17:59:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:59:16","slug":"uk-government-tries-again-to-access-encrypted-apple-customer-data-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/466366\/","title":{"rendered":"UK government tries again to access encrypted Apple customer data: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.K. government is still trying to gain access to encrypted iCloud data, according to the Financial Times<\/a>, after British officials allegedly filed a new secret order demanding Apple build a backdoor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the British newspaper reported that the U.K. Home Office sent an order to Apple earlier in September requesting that the tech giant create a system to let officials access encrypted cloud backups of British citizens. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Privacy activists have warned<\/a> that complying with such an order would be a mistake, and something that would impact the privacy of users worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When reached via email, Apple\u2019s spokesperson Julien Trosdorf did not comment on the reported existence second order, but said the company was \u201cgravely disappointed\u201d that it cannot offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP), an opt-in feature that allows users to make their iCloud backups end-to-end encrypted so that not even Apple can access the data, to users in the country. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the U.K. Home Office did not respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the second time that the U.K. government sent Apple what is called a \u201ctechnical capability notice,\u201d after the U.K. government\u2019s first order issued<\/a> in January. At that time, the U.K. Home Office was seeking access to cloud-stored backups of any Apple user account worldwide that was protected by ADP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That first order, made under the\u00a0U.K.\u2019s Investigatory Powers Act 2016<\/a>, also known by critics as the \u201cSnoopers\u2019 Charter,\u201d\u00a0forced Apple to turn off the ability to enroll in ADP<\/a> for new users in the U.K. and eventually to disable it for existing users as well. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have said many times before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will,\u201d Apple said at the time. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That previous effort by the U.K. government apparently failed, when U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard announced<\/a> that the British government had dropped the request after negotiations with the Trump administration. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Apple reportedly challenged the legal demand<\/a> in court, which ruled<\/a> that the process should not be held in secret. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This story has been updated to include comment from Apple\u2019s spokesperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.K. government is still trying to gain access to encrypted iCloud data, according to the Financial Times,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1662,51,3450,155612,59085,6512,16,10788,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-466366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-encryption","11":"tag-end-to-end-encryption","12":"tag-icloud","13":"tag-privacy","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-uk-government","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115300215296392477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}