Apple’s UK run-in: Privacy may matter less to its customers than it thinks

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Apple’s tensions with the UK over encryption finally reached breaking point last week. Rather than submit to the government’s demand for a backdoor to customer data, the iPhone maker instead killed end-to-end encryption for all British customers of iCloud.

It’s a principled gamble that seems to rely on public outrage, but Apple may discover that privacy matters more in marketing than in reality for its customers. For those unfamiliar, data that is end-to-end encrypted can’t be accessed by anyone, not even Apple, except the holder of the encryption keys (in this case the iCloud customer). This is the gold standard for securing data in banking and many online services.

But the UK has for several years been making an unreasonable push for special access to penetrate this security layer on the argument that it’s needed to help its intelligence agencies stop terrorists and for prosecutors to secure criminal convictions. If it didn’t comply with the order, made under Britain’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016—also known as the ‘Snoopers’ Charter’—Apple faced the threat of criminal charges and financial penalties. But the ‘backdoor’ London wants would create a portal that can be exploited just as much by the bad guys as the good guys.

That’s why Apple has repeatedly resisted efforts by US authorities trying to investigate crimes and even mass murders to break into the encrypted iPhones of alleged perpetrators. “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 has consistently said. Now, Apple is effectively telling the UK: ‘Fine.