According to the financial era, where British officials allegedly filed a new secret order requesting the construction of a backdoor, the UK government is trying to gain access to encrypted iCloud data.
On Wednesday, a British newspaper reported that the Home Office had sent an order to Apple in the beginning of September, requesting that the tech giant create a system that would allow officials to access encrypted cloud backups of British citizens.
Privacy activists warn that compliance with such orders is a mistake, and that anything that affects the privacy of users around the world is a mistake.
Apple and the UK Home Office spokesman did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
This is the second time the UK government has sent what it called a “technical capability notification” to Apple after it was issued in January. At the time, home offices in the UK wanted access to cloud-retained backups of Apple user accounts around the world, protected by Advanced Data Protection (ADP), an opt-in feature that allows users to encrypt ICloud backups end-to-end.
Its first order, created under the UK Research Power Act 2016, also known by critics as “Snoopers Charter,” forced Apple to turn off the ability of new UK users to register with ADP, and ultimately disable it for existing users as well.
“As I said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or a master key for our products or services.
Previous efforts by the UK government seem to have been clearly unsuccessful when US National Intelligence Director Tarsi Gabbard announced that the UK government had withdrawn its demands after negotiations with the Trump administration.
Apple reportedly challenged the court's legal demands, which ruled that the process should not be kept secret.