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A court has confirmed for the first time the existence of a legal battle between Apple and the UK government, which has demanded the iPhone-maker provide access to its most secure cloud storage systems.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal on Monday rejected an attempt by the government to keep secret the “bare details” of the litigation after privacy and media groups, including the Financial Times, pushed for transparency.
“We do not accept the revelation of the bare details of the case would be damaging to the public interest or prejudicial to national security,” the court said in a short public version of a longer private judgment.
The UK’s Home Office in January issued Apple a “technical capability notice”, which demanded the California-based company provide access to iPhone backups, the FT previously reported. Apple launched a legal challenge at the IPT the following month.
The litigation is ongoing. The Home Office is yet to file a defence, according to the IPT’s ruling on Monday. The full details and circumstances of the notice are still unknown.
The Home Office had asked the tribunal to keep secret the details of the case, including the names of the parties, arguing that revealing the information would be “damaging to national security”.
Apple had opposed the secrecy request, the ruling on Monday by Judges Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Johnson showed.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling but referred back to a previous statement: “As we have said many times before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”
The company earlier this year pulled its iCloud Advanced Data Protection system from the UK as a result of the Home Office’s access request.
UK media organisations, including the FT, and campaign groups Liberty, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch made submissions to the IPT that the case should not be heard in private.
Rebecca Vincent, interim director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said on Monday: “The Home Office’s order to break encryption represents a massive attack on the privacy rights of millions of British Apple users, which is a matter of significant public interest and must not be considered behind closed doors.
“We will keep campaigning to protect privacy rights in the face of these and other threats to encryption — as once it is broken for anyone, it is broken for everyone.”
The Home Office said it did not comment on legal proceedings nor operational matters, including confirming or denying the existence of individual notices.
It added that “technical capability notices” themselves do provide access to data and that relevant targeted warrants and authorisations must also be in place.
“The government believes both in protecting privacy and in ensuring that the most serious crimes and terror threats can be investigated or stopped. Let us be clear: any suggestion that this is a binary choice between public safety and privacy is incorrect. We can, and must, have both,” it said.
