Apple turns off iCloud encryption feature in UK following reported government legal order

Apple turned off the option for its British users to protect their iCloud accounts with end-to-end encryption on Friday, in the wake of a reported legal order from the British government.

The feature, known as Advanced Data Protection (ADP), will no longer be accessible for Apple customers in the United Kingdom. Apple said users who already had it turned on will be given a period of time to disable it in order to keep using their iCloud accounts, although the length of time was not stated.

It follows the British government reportedly issuing a secret legal demand to Apple to provide it with access to encrypted iCloud accounts, according to The Washington Post. The British government said it neither confirms nor denies the existence of such legal demands.

Officially known as a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), the legal power enables the government to demand that Apple retain the ability to access the content of iCloud accounts that it can provide to law enforcement agencies and intelligence services when served a legal warrant.

The Washington Post describes the demand as creating a “back door allowing [British authorities] to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud,” although the British government does not describe TCNs the same way, saying they require a company to be able to retrieve content rather than provide the British government with a surreptitious way to do this without the company’s knowledge. The specifics of the TCN itself are not available.

It is not illegal to report on the existence of a TCN, however the individual target of a notice is instructed not to disclose it and seemingly can face criminal proceedings if they do so, although there is some doubt about this interpretation of the law.

In its statement on Friday, Apple itself did not confirm the reason the encryption feature was being removed from the U.K., but confirmed the service was only being removed in that country.

“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,” the company said.

The spokesperson added: “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.”