The U.K. government is reportedly backtracking on plans to force Apple to create a backdoor into encrypted communications.
In January, the U.K. issued a technical capability notice to Apple, demanding that it create a backdoor in encrypted communication systems that would allow law enforcement and security services to read customers’ messages.
Apple resisted the move and has launched a legal challenge, as well as removing the Advanced Data Protection encryption from some of its services in the U.K. market. Apple has subsequently been joined in its legal challenge by the Meta-owned WhatsApp.
Now, according to a report in the Financial Times, the U.K. government is seeking ways to avoid a confrontation with the tech companies, through fear of upsetting Donald Trump’s U.S. administration.
“This is something that the vice-president is very annoyed about and which needs to be resolved,” a “senior official” in the UK’s technology department told the newspaper. “The Home Office is basically going to have to back down.”
Attack On Free Speech?
The vice-president has been repeatedly critical of what he views as attacks on free speech by European governments. The officials who spoke to the Financial Times said the U.K. government is keen not to be drawn into anything that the vice-president may regard as a free-speech issue.
Donald Trump has also publicly stated his opposition to breaking encrypted communications, publicly urging the prime minister Kier Starmer not to introduce such measures.
Aside from being a free speech issue, it’s also one of communications security. Apple and other tech companies have long argued that it’s not possible to create a backdoor for the security services alone, that once encryption has been compromised it becomes a potential attack vector for anyone.
“Apple has never created a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services,” the company claims in a statement on its website regarding government security requests. “We have also never allowed any government direct access to Apple servers. And we never will.”
The company does co-operate with governments and law-enforcement agencies around the world, when legally required to hand over details of customers’ devices or accounts. Apple publishes a transparency report to show how many of these requests it deals with on a country-by-country basis.
For example, between January and June 2024, the company dealt with 2,925 device requests in the U.K. and 2,550 requests for details of customers’ accounts. In the U.S. those figures are 12,043 and 12,812 respectively for the same period. Apple’s transparency data shows that the number of such requests has grown sharply in recent years in both countries.
Tech Companies Threaten To Walk
It’s not only the U.S. administration that the U.K. government might be mindful of upsetting, but the tech companies themselves. Aside from Apple and WhatsApp leading a legal challenge, other communications firms have threatened to leave the U.K. altogether if they are forced to break encryption.
Signal president Meredith Walker told the BBC in 2023 that her company “would absolutely, 100% walk” if it were forced to weaken the privacy of its messaging system in the U.K.
Signal is, of course, the encrypted messaging system that was the center of a U.S. government security scandal earlier this year when senior members of the administration were revealed to be discussing battle plans in a conversation in which a journalist was accidentally added to the group.
