UK Judges Block Secret Home Office Case Against Apple Over iPhone Security

Key Takeaways

• In February, the U.K. government served Apple with a notice ordering it to provide access to encrypted systems.
• After Apple appealed to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the government sought to have the case play out in private.
• However, judges have ruled that at least the bare details of the case must be made public.

The U.K. government’s efforts to force Apple to create a back door to iCloud encryption faces its first legal challenge after the judges ruled that any hearing into the matter must take place in public.

A ruling of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal published on Monday, April 7, reveals that the Home Office had sought to conduct the hearing in secret after Apple filed a complaint against the government’s order.

Apple Appeals Government Backdoor Order

In February, the office of the U.K.’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper served Apple with a “technical capability notice” ordering it to provide access to encrypted systems.

Such a move would breach Apple’s commitment to end-to-end iCloud encryption, and if Cooper’s order was enforced, Apple would be unable to offer strong security guarantees to U.K.-based users

The latest ruling from Lord Justice Rabinder Singh and Justice Jeremy Johnson of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal confirms that Apple contested the order and that the Home Office asked that the case be conducted in secret in its response.

However, the judges rejected the government’s argument that disclosing even the “bare details” of the tribunal would be damaging to national security.

The decision represents a small victory for open justice. However, the judges deferred a decision on whether the case would be fully public until a later date.

Encryption in U.K. Law

Apple isn’t the first company that has found itself caught up in the U.K. government’s digital surveillance plans.

In 2023, messaging services, including WhatsApp and Signal, threatened to pull out of the country over provisions in the Online Safety Bill that would have criminalized end-to-end encryption.

The government argued that backdoors were needed to police online spaces where child abuse material is shared. But privacy advocates roundly condemned the notion.

“There have been consistent proposals out of the U.K. for backdoors across a number of years,” WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart noted at the time.

Foreshadowing the recent Apple development, Cathcart added that “we can’t introduce a vulnerability that just affects people in the U.K. on a global communication service.”

In the end, the government granted an eleventh-hour concession by agreeing not to impose the strictest interpretation of the law on technology companies.

However, the precise phrasing of the bill doesn’t completely rule out an encryption crackdown at a later date.

Privacy vs. Safety

Cooper’s request to Apple demonstrates that the current Labour government has adopted the same position as its predecessors—that compromising the privacy and security of digital communications is justified in the name of safety.

The privacy versus safety debate has a long history in the U.K., predating the latest clash over iCloud encryption and the 2023 Online Safety Bill.

Although the conversation these days tends to focus on preventing child sexual abuse, in 2015, then-Prime Minister David Cameron raised the issue in a different context—terrorism.

Responding to that year’s Paris gun attacks, Cameron suggested the government could legislate to ban privacy tools used by criminals, arguing that “we must not” allow a means of communication the state cannot pry into.

Without end-to-end encryption, iCloud users in the U.K. would potentially be even more exposed to government surveillance than in other high-surveillance countries such as China.

Ministers could have approached the issue through legislation as their predecessors did. But instead, the Home Secretary attempted to influence Apple behind closed doors with zero transparency.