UK orders Apple to grant it access to worldwide users' cloud data, report says
The move is likely to provoke fury from the US tech industry, which has already accused the UK of Orwellian practices in policing online content.
The Washington Post said the Home Office issued the order last month under the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which enables authorities to compel assistance from companies when it needs to collect evidence.
The law is also known as the 'Snoopers' Charter' and makes it a criminal offence for a company to even reveal that the government has made a request, the Post reported. An Apple spokesman declined to comment to the newspaper.
For years, Apple has promoted the privacy settings it provides its users as standard, as well as offering users an additional, opt-in, Advanced Data Protection tool to fully encrypt a wider range of their data in its iCloud service.
The company has frequently said it regards privacy as a 'fundamental human right' and says its system means no one else can access a user's data, not even Apple itself.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour Party are in a spat with X owner Elon Musk, the world's richest man who has an influential role in US President Donald's Trump administration, raising concerns about possible implications for transatlantic relations.
The dispute includes claims by Mr Musk that the British government was clamping down on free speech around the time of last summer's riots and that it had failed to prosecute grooming gangs.
According to the Post report, sources said Apple may choose to stop offering encrypted storage in the UK rather than break its security pledges to users. But the report warned this would not fulfil the government's demand for broad access in other countries, as the Investigatory Powers Act applies globally to any firm with a UK market, even if they are not based in the country.
Under the law, Apple can appeal against the UK's order, but cannot delay its application even during the appeal process.
Police and security services around the world have pushed for more access to encrypted communications in recent years, warning that encryption allows criminals such as terrorists and child abusers to more easily hide and hampers efforts to catch them.
In response, tech firms have argued that users have a right to privacy and that any backdoors into software created for intelligence and security services could also be exploited by criminals or authoritarian regimes.
Rebecca Vincent, interim director of privacy at civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, described the development as 'an unprecedented attack on privacy rights that has no place in any democracy'.
'Big Brother Watch has been ringing alarm bells about the possibility of precisely this scenario since the adoption of the Investigatory Powers Bill in 2016,' she said, PA news agency reported. 'We all want the [UK] government to be able to effectively tackle crime and terrorism, but breaking encryption will not make us safer.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Today
7 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Britain is in the midst of one long, hot, nervous summer
Adrian Wooldridge, Tribune News Service There is an ominous sense in the air in Britain — a sense that the country is headed toward the rocks and that the captain has no idea how to steer the ship. This feeling is vague — hardly the stuff of graphs or numbers — but vague feelings can sometimes tell us more about the future than the hardest economic statistics. The two biggest rocks on the horizon are labeled debt crisis and civil unrest. Blood-curdling warnings from the right are par for the course. Andrew Neil warns in the Daily Mail that 'broke Britain is on the edge of financial disaster ... I'm scared for what's to come.' But equally dire warnings are coming from the left — and even from the very heart of government. Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, notes that 'our finances are precarious ... this could unravel very quickly.' Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has told her boss that Britain could face a repeat of last year's summer riots unless 'the government shows it can address people's concerns.' Seven in 10 Britons think that it's likely the country will experience race riots in the future, according to a poll for The Economist. Why are the British in such a state of angst? And, more importantly, are they right to be so worried? The country's economic problems stem from a combination of rising debt and dismal growth. The Office for Budget Responsibility recently warned of Britain's 'relatively vulnerable' position, with the sixth-highest debt among 36 advanced economies, the fifth-highest deficit and the third-highest borrowing costs. The government recorded the second-highest June borrowing figure since records began in 1993 (and that was only exceeded by June 2020 when COVID was raging). Bond markets have traditionally given a lot of leeway to Britain because of its reputation for seriousness. They also give leeway to governments that have a large majority and a clear plan for dealing with their debt. But Starmer's Labour looks more like a divided minority government on its last legs than a one-year-old government with a huge majority. It failed to pass a modest package of welfare reforms that would raise £1.5 billion ($2 billion) from means-testing winter fuel payments and £5 billion from cutting health and disability benefits, when public spending stands at £1.3 trillion a year. The government's promise that it will grow its way out of its fiscal hole has evaporated, with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves instead digging deeper by increasing taxes on labor and driving away wealthy people (particularly non-doms) who pay a disproportionate share of taxes. The last fortnight has seen a couple of tense street protests — in Epping and Canary Wharf. In both cases, locals protested the government's decision to take over local hotels and fill them with young male asylum seekers, chanting 'send them home' and 'save our kids.' The protests quickly gained national resonance: Organized agitators from both the left and the right came in from across the country, and the internet lit up with furious posts. We have no equivalent of the OBR to give a balanced assessment of the state of the country's social fabric, but a bipartisan report by Sajid Javid, a former Conservative home secretary, and John Cruddas, a Labour grandee, published by the think tank British Future, makes for sobering reading: The authors warn that Britain is sitting on a 'powder keg' of social tensions that could easily ignite again. The social bonds that have traditionally held society together have been fraying for decades, they say, but the tensions have been significantly increased by rapid immigration and poor assimilation. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low with 45% of people in the 2024 British Social Attitudes Survey saying they 'almost never' trust governments of any party to put the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party, up by 22 percentage points from 2020. I think it is still more likely than not that Britain will muddle through without either a debt crisis or a major series of riots, let alone a civil war, as one academic, David Betz, a professor of war studies at King's College, London, has predicted. Reeves has the option of breaking her electoral promise and raising general taxation. The government is, finally, giving the impression that it is taking the small boats crisis seriously by targeting the international gangs that profit from people smuggling and cracking down on the food delivery services that profit from illegal labor. What we are probably in for instead is prolonged pain rather than sudden crisis. But a major shock cannot be ruled out. The most serious worry is that the barriers that protect us from either a debt contagion or a social conflagration have been eroded. Britain's credit with the global markets is not what it was since the Liz Truss fiasco. And many people's trust in the establishment has been weakened by that establishment's failure to control the pace of immigration or manage the social consequences.
The National
2 days ago
- The National
Tesla ordered to pay $243 million in lawsuit over 2019 Autopilot crash
Tesla was ordered to pay $243 million in a lawsuit over the fatal 2019 Autopilot-equipped Model S crash, marking the first major court loss for Elon Musk's electric vehicle company concerning its driver-assistance technology. A jury in Miami federal court in Florida on Friday found that Tesla was responsible for about a third of the accident in the state that killed one pedestrian and seriously injured another when the Tesla Model S drove through a T-intersection and hit a parked car at 80.5kph. The jury assigned the remaining two-thirds to the driver, who was reaching for his mobile phone at the time of the crash. 'Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardise Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology. We plan to appeal given the substantial errors of law and irregularities at trial,' Tesla said in a statement. Brett Schreiber, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said after the verdict: 'Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans.' Mr Musk, the world's richest person, is Tesla's chief executive and majority Tesla shares fell 1.8 per cent at the market close on Friday, and are down 25 per cent this year. In the second quarter of 2025, Tesla said in its safety report that it recorded one crash for every 6.69 million miles driven in which drivers were using its Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot, it recorded one crash for every 963,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration (from 2023) shows that in the US there was an car crash approximately every 702,000 miles. Tesla markets its automated driving systems under two brand names – Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. All new Tesla cars come with the Autopilot driver-assist feature as a standard option and the company sells the more advanced Full Self-Driving at a premium for an additional $10,000. Autopilot allows the car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically for other vehicles and pedestrians. Full Self-Driving offers more enhanced features such as auto-parking and automatic lane changes while driving on the motorway.
The National
2 days ago
- The National
UK must drop conditions for Palestine recognition
Keir Starmer is coming under pressure to recognise Palestine without his scheduled delay until December as insider described the decision making process as a formality. With more than half the public now hostile to Israel's conduct of the war, the UK government should see it has the scope to formalise the decision. Public disapproval of Israel's war in Gaza is growing, a new YouGov poll found. Just over half of Britons (51 per cent) consider Israel's actions to be unjustified, but just one in five believe that it is (21 per cent). 'In practice the decision is taken,' said Sir Vincent Fean, a former Consul General to East Jerusalem, who is urging the prime minister to drop conditionally. "Recognition of Palestine is an opportunity – and a threat or punishment for no one." Mr Fean believed this was likely to impact the UK government's approach to issues beyond recognition, such as "ensuring Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank changes," he told The National. The UK has said it is ready to recognise Palestine in September but has given Israel weeks to meet certain conditions. Objections have been raised from all sides to Prime Minister Keir Starmer's pledge to recognise Palestine at the United National General Assembly in September. Mr Starmer told Israel that he would do so if Tel Aviv does not take steps towards ending the war and restarting a peace process by then. Many believe that recognition will go ahead, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to reject the proposal of a peace process. Foreign Office assessment The assessment on whether or not Israel has met the Prime Minister's conditions is likely to be made by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in late September ahead of UNGA. The Cabinet Office being consulted about their conclusions, Mr Fean told The National. The decision cannot be challenged as it was taken using prerogative powers at the government's disposal. 'There won't be a committee, there is no requirement for parliament to decide,' he said. British officials are working on the 'nuts and bolts' of judging how Israel would meet the criteria set out by Mr Starmer 'and how that would be agreed or disagreed', sources told The National. Legal advisers said the resolution on recognising Palestinian statehood can be put forward to the UN General Assembly, a vote is undertaken 'and that's it'. Yet Whitehall insiders accept that unless there is a change of government in Israel or a 'change of heart from Netanyahu in the way he's prosecuting the war', they will not fulfil the British conditions. 'This is an attempt to get the peace process back on track, but it's quite clear that the Israelis don't want to go there,' a Whitehall source said. 'So Palestinian state recognition is going to happen.' With relations between Israel and Britain at possibly their lowest ebb, it is understood there will be no visit of any UK ministers to the country in the coming period. Hostage pleas Opponents of the decision include the families British hostages in Gaza, who fear that it would give Hamas an incentive to prolong the war. Members from the four families met with the FCDO on Thursday evening to raise their concerns. 'It was clear from the meeting last night that the British government's policy will not help the hostages, and could even hurt them,' said their lawyer Adam Wagner KC. 'It was made obvious to us at the meeting that … in deciding whether to go ahead with recognition, the release or otherwise of the hostages would play no part', he wrote in a statement. Political question The Labour government said it would be guided by international law in its foreign policy making. But the decision to recognise Palestine is being framed as a political question, with Business Minister Gareth Thomas telling Sky News that 'recognition of another state is a political judgment'. Nonetheless, it is likely that Mr Starmer will 'want to have legal cover' for the recognition with lawyers from the foreign office working up a 'cold, technical approach to it,' former diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown told The National. 'They will likely set up a mechanism which will enable them to say that the British conditions have not been met,' he said. The former ambassador to Yemen suggested that UNGA was the 'least problematic forum for the upgrade' where many heads of state or government will be present in September, including Mr Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and potentially Mahmoud Abbas from the PA – if the US allows him to enter. This is not lost on critics. 'The government usually tries to shut down debate by characterising political issues as legal questions (immigration, Chagos Islands),' said Shadow Attorney General Lord David Wolfson, writing on social media. 'It's now trying to argue that recognition of a foreign state, which has always been and universally as a legal question, is only a political issue.' Earlier this week, peers and leading lawyers opposing recognition wrote to Attorney General Lord Richard Hermer, to warn that the move could break international law. Mr Hermer's office would not comment on whether or not he had advised the Government on recognition, citing a long standing convention. Conditions questioned Mr Starmer also faces pressure to recognise Palestine at UNGA but with the conditions he set out this week. The Bishop of Southwark, who is the House of Lords Lead Bishop for the Middle East said it was 'disappointing' that the recognition had been used as a 'bargaining chip.' 'The UK has a particular historical and moral duty to recognise the State of Palestine, and it is therefore disappointing that this recognition has been made conditional,' the letter said. 'The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is not a bargaining chip, and there can be no conditions placed on it,' he wrote, in a letter cosigned by other Church of England Bishops, including Stephen Cottrell Archbishop of York. We urge the Government to move ahead with recognition of Palestine regardless of the facts on the ground.
