Apple’s British Encryption Issues Spell Trouble for Global User Privacy

In 2016, Obama’s government gave Apple an excellent marketing opportunity. The press and culture had generally turned against large tech companies and their data-harvesting practices, and Apple was trying to stand out as a pro-privacy company. Posters and billboards only say so much, though; opposing the government gave them real credibility.Namely, after the San Bernardino terrorist attack, the FBI asked Apple to build a “backdoor” into the two-way encryption of Apple’s iCloud backup system so that they could easily break into the computers and phones of terrorists and other criminals. Without it, the FBI could still get this information, but it takes far longer and requires far more effort. A “backdoor” would make it trivially easy.The flaw, however, is that it would also make it easier for anyone to get the data from Apple customers, and with no legal obligation to build the backdoor, they loudly and publicly refused to comply, using the whole thing as a marketing opportunity to signal their commitment to user privacy.This “pro-privacy” narrative was undermined by Apple’s compliance with Communist Chinese data laws, which require that customer data — and encryption keys — be kept on servers in the state. After all, there’s no need for encryption “backdoors” if you hand the government the encrypted data, and the keys to unlock it; but most Western customers didn’t notice or care. In the years since, Apple has only increased its focus on privacy, notably adding another layer of encryption through its Advanced Data Protection feature.Encryption is the digital equivalent of a locked safe, opened with a digital key. Most Apple users are happy for Apple to hold the key, making it easier to recover your data if there’s any issue and making for a more seamless, straightforward service. The downside is that Apple could access your data, as could any government that compels Apple to hand it over. Advanced Data Protection, introduced in 2022, gave users the key to their encryption, which they could use and store as they saw fit. If you lost it, you would lose all your data forever, so most didn’t enable it. But, for the privacy-minded, setting it up meant that Apple could not decrypt your information, no matter who asked.This feature is still available in America and other territories, but under orders from Keir Starmer’s Labour government, it is no longer in the United Kingdom. And that’s not even the worst of it.In an exclusive for the Washington Post, Joseph Menn reported in early February that the current Labour government had issued a technical capability notice to the Cupertino company, provided under the “U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016.” This act allows law enforcement to compel assistance in evidence collection; the technical capacity notice is a kind of order requiring the way in which Apple would do so.The details of this order are also not available, as the law also makes it a criminal offense to disclose that the government has made a demand such as this; but, according to Menn’s sources, the order in question required that Apple break the encryption of any user globally, under the request of the British government, should they want that information. Apple is pushing back on this, and the only immediate aftermath is that the little-used Advanced Data Protection feature is no longer available for British users. Details of this notice may leak, but even if they don’t, Apple will fight this in court, out of the public eye. It is also comforting that Meta and Google’s encrypted services remain online, and services like Signal haven’t been shut down.However, despite the noises made by Tulsi Gabbard and some privacy security senators about this matter, don’t feel confident that the Trump administration will step in to protect user privacy. The FBI has long pushed for weaker user encryption standards and would make an order like this if it were possible under American law. Apple initially delayed rolling out Advanced Data Protection under pressure from President Trump, who said that the time that Apple’s encryption was aiding “killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.”

Apple’s British Encryption Issues Spell Trouble for Global User Privacy

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