Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: The UK will no longer require Apple to create backdoor access to
users' data

Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2025 11:00:14 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-uk-will...

UK officials will no longer compel Apple to create backdoor access to its
users' data, according to US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
She wrote on X that she, President Trump and Vice President Vance worked
closely with their "partners in the UK" over the past months. "As a result,"
she continued, "the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a
'back door' that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of
American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties."

Over the past few months, IΓÇÖve been working closely with our partners in
the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans' private data remains
private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected.

As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for…

ΓÇö DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) August 19, 2025

As The New York Times notes, the UK government issued the secret order
earlier this year after amending the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. The
law gives the UK government the right to compel companies to turn over data
to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Reports about the mandate
started to come out in February, however, and Apple pretty much confirmed it
when it disabled iCloud's Advanced Data Protection feature in the UK. ADP
gives users the power to to add optional end-to-end encryption to a variety
of iCloud data, which means the information can't be accessed by authorities
unless they have the user's device in their hands. "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," Apple said at the time.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers asked Gabbard to take measures to prevent
what they called "a foreign cyberattack waged through political means" after
the information about the mandate went public. Meanwhile, Apple filed a
complained with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which "investigates
complaints about the alleged conduct of public bodies in relation to members
of the public," to get the order reversed. The company has yet to issue an
official statement about the reversal of the UK mandate.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-
tech/the-uk-will-no-longer-require-apple-to-create-backdoor-access-to-users-
data-110014398.html?src=rss

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