U.K. Makes New Attempt to Access Apple Cloud Data – This Time, iCloud Backups of U.K. Citizens

Anna Gross and Tim Bradshaw, reporting for the Financial Times (updated link to a syndicated version at Ars Technica, outside the FT’s parsimonious paywall):

The UK government has ordered Apple to allow access to encrypted cloud backups of British users, after a previous attempt to issue a broader demand that included US customers drew a furious backlash from the Trump administration.

The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a backdoor into users’ cloud storage service, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens’ data, according to people briefed on the matter. [...]

In February, Apple withdrew its most secure cloud storage service, iCloud Advanced Data Protection, from the UK.

“Apple is still unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users,” Apple said on Wednesday. “We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP are not available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.” It added: “As we have said many times before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”

This is, as I understand it, a demand from the UK government to allow warrantless access to all UK citizens’ iCloud backups. And your iCloud backups, once decrypted, contain just about everything on your device. With Apple unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the UK, if Apple complies, there’s no way around it. And, to make it even worse, the perversity of the UK Investigatory Powers Act is such that it’s a crime for Apple to even say they’ve been issued such a demand, to warn their UK users about it. Just brutal. The UK government could not be more wrong about this stance.

★ Thursday, 2 October 2025