Apple has filed a complaint with the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal over a government technical capability notice — a secret legal order compelling access to user data, including data that is encrypted.
This is the second such notice. The first was issued in January 2025, and the sequence since is worth laying out, because the individual headlines have made it look more resolved than it is.
The sequence
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | UK issues a secret technical capability notice to Apple |
| Feb 2025 | Reported publicly; critics call it a global emergency |
| Feb–Mar 2025 | Apple withdraws Advanced Data Protection for UK users |
| Mar 2025 | Apple challenges the order; IPT refuses the Home Office's attempt to hear the case in secret |
| Aug 2025 | UK drops the order following US civil-liberties pushback; the US spy chief confirms it |
| Oct 2025 | UK tries again |
| Aug 2026 | Apple files a complaint with the IPT over the latest notice |
The August 2025 resolution was widely read as the end of it. It was not. It was the end of the first notice.
What is actually being demanded
The technical detail matters, because "backdoor" is doing a lot of work in the coverage.
Advanced Data Protection makes iCloud backups end-to-end encrypted — the keys sit with the customer, and Apple cannot read the contents. That is the property the order collides with.
An order to provide access to ADP-protected backups is not a request for data Apple holds. It is a request that Apple change the system so the data becomes readable, because in the current design there is nothing to hand over.
And the reported scope was not limited to UK users. The demand was framed as access to cloud-stored data of Apple customers worldwide — one government's order reaching accounts in every other jurisdiction.
Apple's answer the first time was to remove the feature
When the first notice landed, Apple did not build a mechanism. It turned Advanced Data Protection off for UK users.
That response is the clearest statement of the company's position: if the choice is between weakening end-to-end encryption and not offering it in a market, it will not offer it. UK users lost a security feature, and Apple avoided building the thing it says cannot be built safely.
The argument underneath is not new and does not depend on trusting Apple: a mechanism that lets one government read encrypted backups is a mechanism, and mechanisms do not check passports. Whoever finds it, or is later granted it, gets the same access.
Why the secrecy fight mattered
One of the more consequential rulings came early. The IPT refused the Home Office's attempt to keep the case secret.
That is procedurally significant. Technical capability notices are secret by design — a company receiving one is generally barred from disclosing it, which means the public cannot know their government has demanded a capability, and cannot object to something they are not told about.
A public hearing does not decide the substance. It does mean the substance can be argued about.
What to watch
- Whether ADP returns to the UK. That is the observable signal on whether the second notice is resolved.
- Whether the second case stays public. The precedent was set once; it is not automatic.
- Whether the US intervenes again. American pressure ended the first notice, which makes this less a UK-Apple dispute than a question about whose rules apply to a global service.
- Whether other governments follow. The reason this matters beyond Britain is precedent. A working template for compelling access to end-to-end encrypted data does not stay in one country.
The structural point
This is the same question sitting under the EU's DMA enforcement and India's DPDP regime, in a harder form: a global service, a national rule, and no mechanism for reconciling them except one side giving way.
With market conduct there is usually a compromise available — change a default, add a screen, pay a fine. With encryption there is not. Either the data is readable by someone other than the user or it is not, and there is no version that is a bit readable for one government.
