Apple axes top security feature in Britain amid row with Yvette Cooper
Apple has removed a key security feature from British iPhones in an escalation of the tech giant's row with Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary.
IPhones in the UK are not able to activate advanced data protection (ADP), which fully encrypts iCloud storage, as of Friday afternoon.
It comes after the Home Office issued the company with a secret notice ordering it to break the service's encryption under surveillance laws.
While Apple is barred from revealing the existence of the order, it has previously warned that it would withdraw features such as ADP rather than build a 'backdoor'. It is the first time Apple has removed the feature in any country.
After 3pm on Friday, users seeking to activate ADP were met with a message saying 'Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users'.
The company said it would give existing users time to turn the feature off before they lose their iCloud backups.
Last month, the Government issued Apple with a secret notice known as a technical capability notice, which requires the company to develop a way to break its encryption.
British politicians have repeatedly clashed with technology companies over end-to-end encryption, which they say allows terrorists and paedophiles to hide their tracks online. Security advocates say that the technique protects users from hackers and that it is impossible to break encryption only for criminals.
Removing the feature in Britain does not technically free Apple from the notice, which can apply globally. However, if the Home Office has issued the notice to obtain information about a UK individual, disabling the feature in Britain may mean the notice is no longer needed.
The company said it was 'gravely disappointed' by developments and that it had always refused to build a backdoor.
'Apple can no longer offer advanced data protection in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,' the company said.
'ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices. 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. Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.
'Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. 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.'
The Home Office said: 'We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.'
Under ADP, an optional feature Apple introduced in 2022, content such as messages and photos stored in iCloud are end-to-end encrypted, meaning that even Apple cannot access them when asked by law enforcement.
Returning those accounts to the weaker default level of protection will allow security services to request the contents of suspects' iCloud accounts.
Apple's iMessage and FaceTime apps remain end-to-end encrypted.
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