Apple refuses to break encryption, seeks reversal of UK demand for backdoor
Apple reportedly filed an appeal in hopes of overturning a secret UK order requiring it to create a backdoor for government security officials to access encrypted data.
“The iPhone maker has made its appeal to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent judicial body that examines complaints against the UK security services, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Financial Times reported today. The case “is believed to be the first time that provisions in the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act allowing UK authorities to break encryption have been tested before the court,” the article said.
A Washington Post report last month said UK security officials “demanded that Apple create a backdoor allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud,” including “blanket capability to view fully encrypted material.”
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance