Apple Continues to Fight for Encryption in the UK - DTNS 5323

**Tom Merritt** (0:08)
This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 3rd, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and try to help each other understand.

**Robb Dunewood** (0:16)
Today, Apple is still fighting a UK request to weaken encryption, even if Apple can't tell you that it's fighting.

**Tom Merritt** (0:23)
No, that's true, I'm Tom Merritt.
Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.
The Financial Times reports that Apple has filed a legal challenge against the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal's demand that Apple create a way for the Tribunal to access encrypted cloud backups made by UK users. Now, you may have heard the UK had rescinded that order because it affected non-UK users in the original way that it made the order, but then it issued a revised, what's called a technical capability notice in October.
The order requires a company to provide UK security services with access to UK customer data for investigation of terrorism and child sexual abuse. The law requires the access. How you give the access is not prescribed by the law. So if you have end-to-end encryption, well, company, that's your problem to figure out.
You have to find a way to let us access the required information when legally required to do so. Now, this isn't a phishing expedition. The law is very specific about it. It can only be used for this case. But in order to be able to comply with those cases, a company would have to weaken encryption for everybody. Now, Apple offers end-to-end encryption on a lot of its products, so this can get confusing. This doesn't affect messaging, for example. This is about iCloud. And you may be thinking, well, wait a minute, I didn't think iCloud had end-to-end encryption. iCloud accounts are not end-to-end encrypted by default. That way, Apple can provide easier account recovery. However, for people who have increased privacy needs, increased security needs, maybe you're a whistleblower, maybe you're a security worker or a journalist or an activist. Apple provides something called Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, which does use end-to-end encryption. It's basically Apple's way of saying, like, look, for your average person, you probably don't need end-to-end encryption on iCloud. And so we're not going to provide it that way. If you lose your password, we can help you. But if you know you do need it and you're willing to manage the key yourself and know that we can't help you decrypt it, if you lose that key, then we will provide advanced data protection, where you only are the one who can decrypt it, except in the United Kingdom. Because in response to the first notice, Apple ended advanced data protection for UK users, and it's still unavailable. So if you had it, in fact, Nate Langson from Bloomberg, friend of the show, had it, he doesn't have it anymore.
Apple is legally restricted from commenting publicly about even the existence of such requirements and complaints. Apple can't acknowledge that they are being requested to provide this access. They can't acknowledge why they're doing it. All they can do is say, oh, we took away ADP in the UK. Can't tell you why. However, the reason we know that Apple is still fighting this is because a human rights group called Privacy International and another group called Liberty filed similar complaints about this, and the court had to notify them that they had another complaint from Apple that was similar. And so they need to have a hearing to determine how these similar complaints should be handled by the court. Otherwise, we wouldn't even know that Apple was still fighting this, Robb.

**Robb Dunewood** (3:59)
So here's what I know.
Apple is never going to give into this. I don't think it doesn't matter. We just won't encrypt it, and we will keep the ability for you to encrypt it with our tools away from the users. And then you figure out what users do with their tools, whether it is an iCloud or whether it's somewhere else. But Apple simply just can't be in a situation to where we're going to give you a backdoor in encryption. That's just an untenable position from the being. And I don't think that they will ever take that stance no matter what the UK says.

**Tom Merritt** (4:31)
Yeah, while the law doesn't prescribe a tool, the UK has basically said like, you can provide end-to-end encryption to folks, just make sure we also have a key to it. And like you said, Robb, Apple's like, well, no, that's not encryption. We just won't provide end-to-end encryption for iCloud in that case because that would be worse.