Security officials in the UK 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. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues.

Rather than break the security promises it made to its users everywhere, Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the UK, the people said. Yet that concession would not fulfil the UK demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the US.

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 UK Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorises 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 offence to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple can appeal the UK capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.

In March, when the company was on notice that such a requirement might be coming, it told Parliament: “There is no reason why the UK [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption.”

The Home Office said on Thursday that its policy was not to discuss any technical demands. “We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices,” a spokesman said.

Senior national security officials in the Biden administration had been tracking the matter since the UK first told the company it might demand access and Apple said it would refuse. It could not be determined whether they raised objections to Britain. Trump White House and intelligence officials declined to comment.

One of the people briefed on the situation, a consultant advising the US on encryption matters, said Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security. The person deemed it shocking that the UK government was demanding Apple’s help to spy on non-British users without their governments’ knowledge. A former White House security adviser confirmed the existence of the British order.

At issue is cloud storage that only the user, not Apple, can unlock. Apple started rolling out the option, which it calls Advanced Data Protection, in 2022. It had sought to offer it several years earlier but backed off after objections from the FBI during the first term of President Donald Trump, who pilloried the company for not aiding in the arrest of “killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.” The service is an available security option for Apple users in the US and elsewhere.

While most iPhone and Mac computer users do not go through the steps to enable it, the service offers enhanced protection from hacking and shuts down a routine method law enforcement uses to access photos, messages and other material. iCloud storage and backups are favoured targets for US search warrants, which can be served on Apple without the user knowing.

Technologists, some intelligence officers and political supports of encryption reacted strongly to the revelation after this story first appeared.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said it was important for the US to dissuade Britain: “Trump and American tech companies letting foreign governments secretly spy on Americans would be unconscionable and an unmitigated disaster for Americans’ privacy and our national security.”

Meredith Whittaker, president of the non-profit encrypted messenger Signal, said: “Using Technical Capability Notices to weaken encryption around the globe is a shocking move that will position the UK as a tech pariah, rather than a tech leader. If implemented, the directive will create a dangerous cybersecurity vulnerability in the nervous system of our global economy.”

Law enforcement authorities around the world have complained about increased use of encryption in communication modes beyond simple phone traffic, which in the US can be monitored with a court’s permission.

The UK and FBI in particular have said that encryption lets terrorists and child abusers hide more easily. Tech companies have pushed back, stressing a right to privacy in personal communication and arguing that back doors for law enforcement are often exploited by criminals and can be abused by authoritarian regimes.

Most electronic communication is encrypted to some degree as it passes through privately owned systems before reaching its destination. Usually such intermediaries as email providers and internet access companies can obtain the plain text if police ask.

But an increasing number of tech offerings are encrypted end to end, meaning that no intermediary has access to the digital keys that would unlock the content. That includes Signal messages, Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger texts, and Apple’s iMessages and FaceTime calls. Often such content loses its end-to-end protection when it is backed up for storage in the cloud. That does not happen with Apple’s Advanced Data Protection option.

Apple has made privacy a selling point for its phones for years, a stance that was enhanced in 2016 when it successfully fought a US order to unlock the iPhone of a dead terrorist in San Bernardino, California. It has since sought to compromise, such as by developing a plan to scan user devices for illegal material. That initiative was shelved after heated criticism by privacy advocates and security experts, who said it would turn the technology against customers in unpredictable ways.

Google would be a bigger target for UK officials, because it has made the backups for Android phones encrypted by default since 2018. Google spokesman Ed Fernandez declined to say whether any government had sought a back door, but implied none have been implemented. “Google can’t access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order,” he said.

Meta also offers encrypted backups for WhatsApp. A spokesperson declined to comment on government requests but pointed to a transparency statement on its website saying that no back doors or weakened architecture would be implemented.

If the UK secures access to the encrypted data, other countries that have allowed the encrypted storage, such as China, might be prompted to demand equal backdoor access, potentially prompting Apple to withdraw the service rather than comply.

The battle over storage privacy escalating in Britain is not entirely unexpected. In 2022 UK officials condemned Apple’s plans to introduce strong encryption for storage. “End-to-end encryption cannot be allowed to hamper efforts to catch perpetrators of the most serious crimes,” a government spokesperson told the Guardian newspaper, referring specifically to child safety laws.

After the Home Office gave Apple a draft of what would become the backdoor order, the company hinted to lawmakers and the public what might lie ahead.

During a debate in Parliament over amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act, Apple warned in March that the law allowed the government to demand back doors that could apply around the world. “These provisions could be used to force a company like Apple, that would never build a back door into its products, to publicly withdraw critical security features from the UK market, depriving UK users of these protections,” it said in a written submission.

Apple argued then that wielding the act against strong encryption would conflict with a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that any law requiring companies to produce end-to-end encrypted communications “risks amounting to a requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users” and violates the European right to privacy.

In the US, decades of complaints from law enforcement about encryption have recently been sidelined by massive hacks by suspected Chinese government agents, who breached the biggest communications companies and listened in on calls at will. In a joint December press briefing on the case with FBI leaders, a Department of Homeland Security official urged Americans not to rely on standard phone service for privacy and to use encrypted services when possible.

Also that month, the FBI, National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency joined in recommending dozens of steps to counter the Chinese hacking spree, including “Ensure that traffic is end-to-end encrypted to the maximum extent possible.”

Officials in Canada, New Zealand and Australia endorsed the recommendations. Those in the UK did not.

THE WASHINGTON POST