Apple Pulls Advanced Data Protection From the UK, in Defiance of UK Demand for Global Backdoor

Friday, 21 February 2025

Apple, in a very precisely worded statement issued to the media (including me) this morning:

Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature. ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices. We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before. Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. 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 context for this is the news that broke two weeks ago, by Joseph Menn in The Washington Post, and Tim Bradshaw in the Financial Times, that (quoting Menn’s report, emphasis added):

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. [...]

The office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence, the people said. The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

By definition, end-to-end encryption can have no secret backdoor, so compliance with this order from the UK would, in broad strokes, require Apple to abandon end-to-end encryption — not just for users in the UK but all users in all countries globally.¹ More insidiously and outrageously, they are apparently forbidden by UK law, under severe penalty (imprisonment), from even informing the public about this demand, or, if they were to comply, from telling the public what they’ve done. The UK expects Apple to give them secret access to all iCloud data without Apple telling anyone — including, I believe, even the US government — that they’ve granted the UK government this breathtaking access.

Rather than comply, Apple is choosing instead to pull Advanced Data Protection from the UK. For UK users not already using ADP, the ability to enable it was already turned off before Apple’s statement was sent. This report from BBC News has a screenshot of what UK users see if they attempt to enable it today.

Re-read Apple’s statement above, which I’ve quoted in full, including the hyperlink. What stands out is that Apple is offering no explanation, not even a hint, why the company “can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature”. On issues pertaining to security and privacy, Apple always explains its policies and features as best it can. The fact that Apple has offered no hint as to why they’re doing this is a canary statement of sorts: they’re making clear as best they can that they’re under a legal gag order that prevents them from even acknowledging that they’re under a legal gag order, by not telling us why they’re no longer able to offer ADP in the UK. This sort of read-between-the-lines implicit confirmation that they’re under a gag order is the only sort of confirmation they can legally offer, at risk of imprisonment.

Enabling ADP is controlled server-side, so Apple was able to disable the ability for UK users to turn on ADP without requiring a software update to devices. But it’s an open question how this will play out for users in the UK who already have ADP enabled. Apple cannot disable ADP remotely. With a moment’s thought, you can realize why they can’t: it would defeat the entire purpose. In the same way that Apple can’t hold its own key to decrypt a user’s data with ADP, they also can’t hold the ability to disable ADP.

Enabling ADP is reversible, however. After turning it on, a user can revert to standard protection, turning it off. But they must manually confirm it. I suspect what Apple is going to do for UK users with ADP already enabled is begin issuing warnings, instructing them to disable it manually, before some deadline. Once that deadline passes, I think Apple will have to stop allowing iCloud access to ADP-protected accounts in the UK. That won’t leave the data of those users unprotected — they simply will lose access to sync until they disable ADP and revert to standard protection.

The bottom line is that the UK government is proceeding like a tyrannical authoritarian state. That’s not hyperbole. And the breathtaking scope of their order — being able to secretly snoop, without notice that they even have the capability, not only on their own citizens but every Apple user in the entire world — suggests a delusional belief that the British Empire still stands. It’s simultaneously infuriatingly offensive, mathematically ignorant (regarding the nature of end-to-end encryption), dangerous (as proven by the recent Salt Typhoon attack China successfully waged to eavesdrop on non-E2EE communications in the United States), and laughably naive regarding the UK’s actual power and standing in the world.

Apple is, rightly and righteously, telling them to fuck off.