Apple and Privacy Groups Tell UK Tribunal: Stop Denying You Ordered an iCloud Backdoor

Since Britain's Home Office secretly ordered Apple in January 2025 to build backdoor access into encrypted iCloud data worldwide, the case has moved from a closed-door tribunal room to open argument in a London courtroom, even as the government still won't say the order exists.

At a hearing Thursday at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), lawyers for Apple and for campaign groups Liberty and Privacy International told the panel that the government's policy of neither confirming nor denying the order, known as a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), has become untenable. Ben Jaffey KC, representing Privacy International and Liberty, called the government's position "farcical," according to Reuters. "The horse has long bolted," he told the tribunal, arguing the order is already public knowledge because U.S. officials and unnamed UK government sources have both confirmed it to reporters.

Apple's lawyer, Daniel Beard KC, made a similar argument, saying dropping the secrecy would let "facts to be deployed in the open" and let the case "advance the challenge in a meaningful way," according to MacTech's account of the hearing.

What's Actually Being Fought Over

The underlying dispute goes back to a Washington Post report that Britain's Home Office issued a TCN to Apple in January 2025 demanding blanket access to encrypted iCloud backups for users worldwide, not just in the UK. Apple refused to build the backdoor and instead pulled its Advanced Data Protection feature, which enables end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups, from new UK users starting in February 2025. Apple has said publicly: "We have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products and services and never will."

In April 2025, judges rejected the government's attempt to keep even the basic existence of Apple's legal challenge secret, ruling that disclosure would not harm national security, according to 9to5Mac. Months later, the government dropped the demand for access to data belonging to users outside the UK, which multiple outlets, including 9to5Mac and Computer Weekly, attribute to pressure from the Trump administration.

That didn't end the matter. The government then issued a second, narrower TCN targeting only UK Apple customers. The exact timing of that second order is reported inconsistently across sources: Computer Weekly says it arrived in October 2025, while Reuters, in reporting picked up by the Economic Times, says the second notice was issued in July. Neither the Home Office nor Apple has publicly clarified the date, which is itself consistent with the government's refusal to discuss TCNs of any kind.

The Government's Case for Secrecy

Neil Sheldon, the government's lawyer, told the tribunal Thursday that abandoning the neither-confirm-nor-deny policy would go beyond just the Apple case. Any shift, he argued, "would provide material assistance to hostile actors" who could use disclosures to map which companies are subject to TCNs and which aren't, according to the Economic Times. The government relies on covert technical demands as an investigative tool, and the operational-security concern deserves serious consideration.

Jaffey and Beard both argued that the specific fact in dispute here, whether Apple received a TCN at all, has already leaked repeatedly. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted about the original order on X in August 2025 in a post that drew more than three million views. President Trump has publicly referenced the demand as well. UK government sources have separately confirmed the order's existence to the Times of London, per Computer Weekly's reporting. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers even sent a letter to the IPT's president in March 2025 demanding the tribunal "remove the cloak of secrecy."

Whether that pattern of leaks and political commentary legally obligates a government agency to formally confirm a classified order is a separate question from whether the fact is already known. That's the question the tribunal actually has to decide.

What Happens Next

The IPT will issue a ruling on the neither-confirm-nor-deny question at a later date, according to both the Economic Times and Ground News' summary of the hearing. A full hearing on the merits of the underlying Technical Capability Notice itself isn't expected until sometime in 2027. Until then, Apple's Advanced Data Protection remains unavailable to UK users, and the Home Office's official position remains that it can neither confirm nor deny any of this ever happened.

Separately this week, Apple picked up an unrelated legal headache. The U.S. International Trade Commission voted September 15 to open Section 337 investigation No. 337-TA-1521, naming Apple, Samsung, and Google as respondents in a patent dispute brought by audio tech firm BoomCloud 360 over spatial audio and crosstalk cancellation technology, according to Tech Times. That case, which could theoretically threaten import bans on iPhones, Galaxy phones, and Pixel devices, is a separate proceeding from the UK encryption fight and carries its own multi-year timeline, with a final ITC ruling not expected before early 2028.