In yet another example of a government overstepping its duties, the UK government is again trying to get unwarranted (and what should be illegal) access to private user data. And Apple is, again, fighting back.
The Financial Times reports that last month the tech giant filed a new legal complaint with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) over the British government’s demand for access to encrypted iCloud backups belonging to UK users, according to an order issued by the court.
In July 2025 the British government ordered that Apple give it blanket access to all encrypted user content uploaded to the cloud. The Washington Post said the secret order required blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world and, if implemented, would undermine Apple’s privacy pledge to users.
Apple challenged the order at the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal in a closed-door hearing. The bipartisan group of members urged the court to “remove the cloak of secrecy” surrounding the order, and to make this hearing and any further proceedings in the case public. They noted that secrecy in this case is pointless, given that the order has now been widely reported and commented on, and that Apple withdrew its encryption service for U.K. users last month.
“Given the significant technical complexity of this issue, as well as the important national security harms that will result from weakening cybersecurity defenses, it is imperative that the U.K.’s technical demands of Apple— and of any other U.S. companies — be subjected to robust, public analysis and debate by cybersecurity experts,” the members wrote. “Secret court hearings featuring intelligence agencies and a handful of individuals approved by them do not enable robust challenges on highly technical matters.”
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers also came to Apple’s defense over the UK government’s attempts to get backdoor access to users’ iCloud data. A bipartisan letter from the U.S. Congress to the President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal demanded that the IPT “remove the cloak of secrecy related to notices given to American technology companies by the United Kingdom.
It was expected that the Home Office would back off on its plans. However, the British government subsequently issued a new technical capability notice (TCN) to Apple last year, limited to users in the UK.
Technical capability notices are issued under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which the government claims is necessary to investigate terrorism and child sexual abuse. They can force companies to hand UK security services access to customer data, even when that data is encrypted.
The court notified Privacy International of Apple’s new complaint. The group, along with Liberty, had already brought a separate complaint against such notices at the IPT, with that case due to be heard in December.
Apple’s latest filing was reportedly submitted to the IPT in July 2026. It’s in response to the UK’s use of what is called a “technical capability notice,” which while it also demands a backdoor, it would ostensibly be one that did not affect Americans.
But, as AppleInsider notes, whatever the UK’s attempts to mollify the US over this issue, however, the fact remains that any backdoor into iOS would be exploited by bad actors. Access to user data of non-Americans would invariably uncover US data that has been shared with them, too.
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