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The UK is under heavy pressure from US officials to abandon its push for a backdoor into encrypted iCloud storage and backups, the Financial Times reports.
The demand was reportedly made earlier this year through a secret order, possibly for law enforcement purposes, and the Trump administration isn't happy about it. The issue popped up repeatedly in recent tech partnership talks, and if the UK doesn't scale back its push, it could jeopardize future tech agreements with the US, two UK officials tell the FT.
"This is something that the vice-president [JD Vance] is very annoyed about and which needs to be resolved… The Home Office is basically going to have to back down," said one official. "It's a big red line in the US—they don't want us messing with their tech companies," said the other.
Though the request was made secretly, Apple effectively made it public in February when it rolled back its Advanced Data Protection feature and filed a complaint to block it in the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal. "As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will," Apple said at the time.
The UK's Home Office is the equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security, but its demand to view all encrypted material, not just that of a particular account, is unprecedented for any democracy, The Washington Post noted earlier this year.
That said, lawyers for the Home Office are still fighting Apple's complaint at the tribunal and trying to find a way to get the request sanctioned, the FT reports.