U.K. Government Drops Apple Encryption Backdoor Order After U.S. Civil Liberties Pushback

The U.K. government has apparently abandoned its plans to force Apple to weaken encryption protections and include a backdoor that would have enabled access to the protected data of U.S. citizens.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, in a statement posted on X, said the U.S. government had been working with its partners with the U.K. over the past few months to ensure that Americans’ civil liberties are protected.

“As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a ‘backdoor’ that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties,” Gabbard said.

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The development comes after Apple switched off its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature for iCloud in the U.K. earlier this February, following government demands for backdoor access to encrypted user data.

“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the U.K., given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” the company was quoted as saying to Bloomberg at the time.

“As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services, and we never will.”

The secret order to require Apple to implement a “backdoor” came in the form of a technical capability notice (TCN) issued by the U.K. Home Office under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) to enable blanket access to end-to-end encrypted cloud data, even for users outside the country. The order was issued in January 2025.

Critics have argued that enabling access to encrypted cloud data, including backups, essentially amounts to building a backdoor that could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian governments.

Apple has since appealed the legality of the order, with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) denying the Home Office’s attempts to keep the case a secret.

Late last month, Google told TechCrunch that, unlike Apple, it did not receive any request from the U.K. to weaken encryption protections and allow authorities access to customer data.

In a new letter sent to Gabbard, Senator Ron Wyden said Meta “offered an unequivocal denial […] stating that “we have not received an order to backdoor our encrypted services, like that reported about Apple.'”

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