The UK can’t keep its encryption battle with Apple secret, court says

The UK won’t be able to keep its fight with Apple over end-to-end encryption secret after all. As reported by the BBC, tribunal judges on Monday rejected the government’s request to keep details of the battle private, saying: “It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place.” The story started in February, when the UK government secretly ordered Apple to create a backdoor into iCloud encryption. Instead of complying with that order, Apple chose to remove its Advanced Data Protection feature in the UK. Other categories of iCloud data, however, remain end-to-end encrypted, such as passwords, health data, payment information, iMessage, and FaceTime. Throughout all of this, Apple has been unable to publicly address the UK’s demands under the rule of the law. Apple took to the courts to file a complaint to the Powers Tribunal, seeking to challenge the UK’s order that it break en ... Read full article.