Representatives of the British law enforcement agencies issued Apple a secret order to create a backdor, which will open law enforcement agencies access to materials posted by any Apple user around the world on the cloud resources of the company. It is reported by Washington Post with reference to informed sources.
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The secret order of the British authorities issued in January requires Apple to provide the special services with the full opportunity to view the encrypted materials of the company’s users – simple assistance to the manufacturer in hacking specific accounts is not enough. A document of this kind does not have precedents in large democratic countries, the publication notes, and if the requirement of the authorities is fulfilled, this will become a crushing defeat for technological companies, which have been fighting for several years to not be weapons in the hands of governments directed against their own people users.
Apple probably will not violate a promise about maintaining the confidentiality of users around the world, sources are considered, but it will stop offering British users an encrypted cloud storage. But such a concession to Great Britain will not satisfy – the country’s authorities insist on access to Apple resources through a backdor to obtain user data around the world, including the United States.
The document was awarded to representatives of the company in the Administration of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Great Britain – “Notification of Technical Opportunity” prescribes that the company provides the authorities with requested access in accordance with the “Law on the Plenipotions of the Investigation” in the country since 2016. This law allows law enforcement agencies to force the company to provide assistance when it is necessary to collect evidence. The law, known as the “Spy Charter”, provides for criminal prosecution even for the disclosure that the authorities generally put forward such a requirement. Apple may appeal the requirement in the secret technical commission, which will consider arguments with the execution of the requirements, and in court, which can evaluate the proportionality of the request to the needs of the government. But while the appeal procedure lasts, Apple is not freed from the execution of the order.
The companies reported that such a requirement may arise in March last year – then it answered the British parliament: “There are no reasons why the Great Britain government should have authority to decide for citizens [in total] the world, whether they can use the advantages of protection that arose from the through encryption “. “We do not give comments on operational issues, including, for example, confirmation or refutation of the existence of any such notifications,” the representative of the British Ministry of Internal Affairs said the day before.
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The administration of the previous US President Joe Biden and the leadership of the structures responsible for national security issues has monitored this issue since the UK first reported that it might demand such access, and Apple said that she would refuse. The administration of the new head of the White House Donald Trump (Donald Trump) and reconnaissance structures refused to comment. Apple will be forbidden to even notify consumers that the advanced encryption of its systems no longer ensures complete safety, the source said.
We are talking about cloud storage, which only has access to the user – even Apple itself is deprived of it. The company began to unfold the Advanced Data Protection Advanced Data Protection function – it tried to do this a few years earlier, but could not do during the first presidential term Trump, who accused Apple of not helping the persecution of “killers, drug trafficks and other cruel criminal elements “. Now this function is available in the USA and other countries. By default, it is disabled, and most iPhone and Mac users do not include it – the service provides improved protection against hacking and makes the traditional methods that law enforcement agencies are useless to access photographs, messages and other materials. American law enforcement agencies often, without the knowledge of users, present Apple orders for a search, which contains the ICLUD storage and backup copies.
Security officials around the world are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction, that encryption is used in consumer communications today – only conversations on telephone lines that in the United States can listen to without a court decision. The FBI and the British law enforcement agencies, in particular, stated that encryption plays into the hands of terrorists and persons guilty of cruelty with children. Technological companies are against the abolition of encryption: a person, in their opinion, has the right to confidentiality in personal communication, and loopholes for law enforcement agencies can be used by cybercriminals and authoritarian regimes.
Most electronic messages are encrypted to one degree or another, because on the way from the sender to the addressee they go through private communication systems; At the same time, service providers, for example, owners of e-mail services or Internet providers at the request of law enforcement agencies can provide such a correspondence in the original form. But more and more, through encryption is used, in which only its participants have access to correspondence materials. Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook✴ Messenger, as well as Apple Imessage and Facetime, say the presence of through encryption. Reserve copies of such correspondence in the cloud are usually not encrypted, but not in the case of Apple Advanced Data Protection.
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Apple always emphasized that confidentiality is the strength of the company and its services. Since 2018, reserve copies of these Android devices have been encrypted by default, and Google, responsible for this project, insists that there are no backdors in its ecosystem. “Google cannot access the data of Android reserve copies with through encryption even if there is a legal order,” says the company representative of Ed Fernandez. Meta✴ launched the encryption of the backups of WhatsApp, and the company’s website says that it will not implement backdors or intentionally weaken the architecture of services.
If the British authorities gain access to encrypted data, other countries may also require the same – based on this, Apple will be easier not to obey such requirements, but refuse to provide such services. In 2022, British officials condemned Apple’s plans for strengthening the encryption funds – they supposedly should not “interfere with efforts to capture the perpetrators in the most serious crimes.” The Ministry of Internal Affairs provided the Apple draft order on Backdor, and it was a signal for legislators and the public about what was waiting ahead.
Last March, Apple said in the British parliament that she had never built Backdorov into their products, and if the country’s government continues to insist, the company will be forced to “publicly withdraw critical security functions from the UK market, having deprived British users of these protective equipment.” The company then said that the application of the law against through encryption tools will contradict the decision of the European Court of Human Rights and violate the right to inviolability of private life in Europe.
In the United States, the struggle of the authorities with technological companies seeking to protect consumer confidentiality until it has faded into the background – now the country is trying to cope with large -scale cyber attacks to the country’s telephone networks that was deployed by Chinese hackers. To counteract the threat, the American special services issued recommendations in which they indicated the need to ensure the encryption of telephone traffic “to the maximum possible degree”. The initiative was supported in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but not in the UK.