UK reportedly considers dropping Apple encryption backdoor after U.S. pressure
The move follows significant political intervention and echoes previous clashes between tech giants and the British government over user privacy.
It started discreetly. Behind closed doors, the UK government served Apple a “technical capability notice,” demanding it creates a backdoor into iCloud. Issued under the Investigatory Powers Act, often called the “snooper’s charter,” the order would’ve allowed secret access to user data, in the name of national security.
But this order didn’t stay under wraps for long.
The demand landed badly, not just with Apple, but across the Atlantic, and it looks like pressure from the U.S. may have pushed the UK to reconsider. According to The Financial Times, senior U.S. political figures, including Vice President JD Vance, reportedly warned the UK that any move to force an American company to weaken encryption was unacceptable. One unnamed source even described the demand as crossing “a big red line”, and the Home Office could now be forced to back down on its demand to Apple.
The concern about the demand wasn’t just about politics. Apple has long argued that building any kind of backdoor, even for governments, creates a broader security risk. If one group can access it, so can other bad actors.
Back in February 2025, when news of the UK’s demand first broke via The Washington Post, Apple responded by pulling its Advanced Data Protection feature from UK iCloud users, leaving local iCloud users with weaker privacy protections than those elsewhere. At the time, Apple said it was “gravely disappointed,” warning that weakening privacy in one country weakens it everywhere.
By April, Apple had won the right to speak publicly about the case. And last month, WhatsApp joined the legal battle, applying to submit evidence in support of Apple.
Louis Eriakha
This case echoes a similar situation that happened in 2023, when the UK’s Online Safety Bill may have required messaging platforms to weaken their end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp and Signal pushed back hard, saying they’d leave the UK before compromising encryption, leading to the companies striking a deal with the government to keep encryption intact.
Now, that same resistance seems to be building again. While the Home Office hasn’t confirmed the reversal, the political pressure seems to have hit a nerve.
And if the UK does step back, it could signal a growing recognition, on both sides of the Atlantic, that undermining encryption to pursue security can end up compromising it altogether.
