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UK Home Office May Be Forced to Drop Demand For Backdoor Access to Apple Data

By  |  July 21, 2025

Facing intense pressure from the Trump administration, the U.K. government may be forced to back down from its demand that Apple provide access to secure customer data, two senior British officials told the Financial Times, according to a reprint in arsTechnica.

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    The officials said the Home Office, which ordered Apple in January to provide access to its secure cloud storage system, would probably need to drop its demand in the face of pressure from senior officials in Washington, including Vice President JD Vance.

    “This is something that the vice president is very annoyed about and which needs to be resolved,” said an official in the UK’s technology department according to the report. “The Home Office is basically going to have to back down.”

    The Home Office sent Apple a “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act demanding it provide British law enforcement and security services with backdoor access to its customers’ encrypted data. Rather than comply, Apple withdrew its Advanced Data Protection system that provides end-to-end encryption from the U.K. and issued a statement saying, “we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.” It is now challenging the order before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which hears complaints against the security services.

    Last month, Meta-owned WhatsApp joined Apple in its appeal in a rare instance of cooperation between the tech rivals.

    In October, while still a senator, Vance denounced as “crazy” the idea of “creating a backdoor in our own technology networks,” on the Tom Dillon podcast.

    Read more: Apple Appeals €500 Million EU Antitrust Fine Over App Store Restrictions

    “One of the challenges for the tech partnerships we’re working on is the encryption issue,” one of the officials told the FT. “It’s a big red line in the US—they don’t want us messing with their tech companies.”

    The dispute with Apple comes as the U.K. government of Keir Starmer is pursuing an aggressive AI strategy and is seeking to position the U.K. as friendly territory for U.S. technology companies. President Trump has sharply criticized the U.K. government’s demand, calling it “something… that you hear about with China,” and telling Starmer in February, “You can’t do this.”

    The officials who spoke to the FT accused the Home Office of handling the situation poorly and has now backed itself into a corner.  “It’s a problem of the Home Office’s own making, and they’re working on a way around it now,” one official said.

    So far, however, the Home Office has not blinked. It is continuing to pursue its case against Apple before the tribunal. Its lawyers discussed the next legal steps earlier this month, reflecting division within the government over how best to proceed, according to the report.

    A third senior British official said the UK government was reluctant to push “anything that looks to the US vice-president like a free-speech issue.”