U.S. lawmakers back Apple in its bid to squash the UK government’s desire for backdoor access to users’ iCloud data

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers are coming to Apple’s defense over the UK government’s attempts to get backdoor access to users’ iCloud data, reports AppleInsider. 

A bipartisan letter from the U.S. Congress to the President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal published on Thursday demands that the IPT “remove the cloak of secrecy related to notices given to American technology companies by the United Kingdom. 

According to reports, Apple is challenging the order at the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal in a closed-door hearing on March 14. 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.”

The British government has ordered that Apple give it blanket access to all encrypted user content uploaded to the cloud. The Washington Post (a subscription is required to read the article) said the secret order requires blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world and, if implemented, would undermine Apple’s privacy pledge to users, 

Customers who are already using Advanced Data Protection, or ADP, will need to manually disable it during an unspecified grace period to keep their iCloud accounts, according to Bloomberg. Apple said it will issue additional guidance in the future to affected users and that it “does not have the ability to automatically disable it on their behalf.”

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