UK drops demand to create a ‘backdoor’ into Apple devices

The UK will no longer force Apple to create a backdoor to access user data, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has said. She noted in a publication on X that, along with President Trump and Vice President Vance, they had worked closely with British partners in recent months. “As a result,” she added, “the U.K. has agreed to drop the mandate requiring Apple to provide a ‘backdoor’ that would allow access to encrypted data of American citizens and violate our civil liberties.”
According to The New York Times, the British government issued the secret order earlier this year following amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. That law gives authorities the power to require companies to hand over data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The first reports of the mandate surfaced in February, and Apple actually confirmed it by disabling Advanced Data Protection (ADP) for iCloud in the UK. ADP allows users to enable end-to-end encryption for a piece of data in iCloud, making it inaccessible to authorities without physical access to the owner’s device. “We have stated many times that we have never and will never create a backdoor or universal key to our products and services,” Apple reminded us at the time.

After the mandate was published, a group of US lawmakers from both parties asked Gabbard to take action against what they called a “foreign cyberattack by political means”. Meanwhile, Apple has filed a complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which hears citizen complaints against government agencies. The company has not yet released an official statement saying the mandate in the UK has been lifted.