UK Orders Apple To Break Encryption Worldwide While World Is Distracted

Privacy

from the the-death-of-privacy dept

In a stunning escalation that confirms our worst fears, the UK government has finally shown its true hand on encryption — and it’s even worse than we predicted. According to a bombshell report from Joseph Menn at the Washington Post, British officials have ordered Apple to create a backdoor that would allow them to access encrypted content from any Apple user worldwide.

This comes after years of the UK government’s steadily mounting assault on encryption, from the Investigatory Powers Act to the Online Safety Act. While officials repeatedly insisted they weren’t trying to break encryption entirely, those of us following closely saw this coming. Apple even warned it might have to exit the UK market if pushed too far.

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies.

Let’s be super clear here: The UK government is demanding that Apple fundamentally compromise the security architecture of its products for every user worldwide. This isn’t just about giving British authorities access to British users’ data — it’s about creating a master key that would unlock everyone’s encrypted data, everywhere.

This is literally breaking the fundamental tool that protects our privacy and security. Backdoored encryption is not encryption at all.

The technical reality is stark: You can’t create a backdoor that only works for “good guys.” Any vulnerability built into the system becomes a vulnerability for everyone — state actors, cybercriminals, and hostile nations alike. And right now, it’s worth recognizing that any government (including our own) can be seen as a “hostile nation” to many.

Even if Apple withdraws from the UK market entirely, as the Post reports they’re considering, it won’t satisfy the UK’s demands:

Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K., the people said. Yet that concession would not fulfill the U.K. demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States.

This global reach is particularly concerning given the UK’s membership in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Any backdoor created for British authorities would inevitably become a tool for intelligence and law enforcement agencies across the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — effectively creating a global surveillance capability without any democratic debate or oversight in those countries.

If the UK does this, it means that the FBI will be able to use it to read anyone’s data.

The UK government’s approach here is particularly insidious. While Apple can appeal the order, their appeal rights are bizarrely limited: They can only argue about the cost of implementing the backdoor, not the catastrophic privacy and security implications for billions of users worldwide. This reveals the UK government’s complete indifference to the fundamental right to privacy.

Even more alarming is the forced secrecy component.

One of the people briefed on the situation, a consultant advising the United States on encryption matters, said Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security. The person deemed it shocking that the U.K. government was demanding Apple’s help to spy on non-British users without their governments’ knowledge. A former White House security adviser confirmed the existence of the British order.

This gag order component is particularly chilling — the UK isn’t just demanding the power to break encryption globally, they’re demanding the right to force Apple to actively deceive its users about the security of their data. After years of dismissing concerns about the Investigatory Powers Act as “exaggerated,” the UK government is now proving its critics right in the most dramatic way possible.

The implications here cannot be overstated. This would represent the single largest coordinated attack on private communications in the digital age. It’s not just about government surveillance — it’s about deliberately introducing vulnerabilities that would be exploitable by anyone who discovers them, from hostile nation-states to criminal organizations.

The timing of this demand is nothing short of breathtaking in its recklessness. We are quite literally in the midst of dealing with the catastrophic fallout from the Chinese Salt Typhoon hack — where state-sponsored hackers exploited a government-mandated backdoor in our telephone infrastructure to conduct widespread surveillance. This hack alone should have permanently ended any discussion of intentionally weakening encryption. It’s a real-world demonstration of exactly what security experts have been warning about for decades: backdoors will inevitably be discovered and exploited by bad actors.

The irony here is almost painful: The FBI itself has been actively encouraging Americans to use encrypted communications specifically because our telephone infrastructure remains compromised by Chinese hackers. Yet at this precise moment — when we’re witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of compromised security — the UK government is demanding we create an even bigger, more dangerous, more consequential backdoor?

This is beyond dangerous. There is no reasonable rationale for this.

There’s a good chance that the UK is doing this right now knowing that the US is totally distracted by everything that Musk and Trump are doing to dismantle the US government. But given how much Trump seems to hate the FBI right now, it seems like even more of a reason for him to call this out as an attack on Americans and our privacy. Does he want the FBI reading his data as well?

Senator Ron Wyden, who has been a tireless champion of encryption, is reasonably angry about this and is calling on both Apple and Trump to “tell the UK to go to hell.”

As he says:

Trump and Apple better tell the UK to go to hell with its demand to access Americans’ private, encrypted texts and files. Trump and American tech companies letting foreign governments secretly spy on Americans would be an unmitigated privacy and national security disaster.

Wyden calling out Trump here actually makes a lot of sense. Given Trump’s current antagonistic relationship with federal law enforcement, he might be uniquely positioned to recognize this for what it is — a foreign government demanding the power to spy on Americans, including him personally. The FBI, which would inevitably gain access to this backdoor through Five Eyes sharing agreements, would have unprecedented access to everyone’s communications — a scenario that should alarm privacy advocates across the political spectrum.

This is, without hyperbole, a five-alarm fire for digital privacy and security. The UK government is attempting to fundamentally reshape global digital security through a secretive demand, hoping the world is too distracted to notice or resist. They’re not just asking for a key to their own citizens’ data — they’re demanding the power to unlock everyone’s digital life, everywhere, while forcing Apple to lie about it.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. This isn’t just about privacy — it’s about the future of secure communication itself. Don’t let this slip by in the chaos of the moment. The UK government is betting on our distraction and apathy. Let’s prove them wrong.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, investigatory powers act, privacy, security, spying, surveillance, uk
Companies: apple