Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2025/02/22/apple-disables-advanced-data-protection-in-the-uk/
In the face of an unprecedented secret demand by the government of the United Kingdom to provide backdoor access to all iCloud data worldwide, Apple stood firm. Instead, the company disabled UK customers’ ability to turn on Advanced Data Protection (ADP), a feature added to iCloud in late 2022 (see “Apple’s Advanced Data Protection Gives You More Keys to iCloud Data,” 8 December 2022). ADP provides end-to-end encryption using device-based keys for most iCloud data other than email, contact, and calendar data due to the need to interoperate with external services. Apple will eventually disable ADP for all UK customers, though the process may be fraught.
The addition of ADP provided a powerful bulwark against unwanted access to private information stored on Apple’s servers. While all iCloud data is encrypted using keys that Apple possesses, it was vulnerable to government requests for data that the company could not refuse under local law. By using end-to-end encryption, ADP puts data beyond Apple’s ability to decrypt it—the company would have to build an intentional hole into the encryption system Apple could exploit to break the chain of user custody of our own data.
Apple released a carefully worded statement:
Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature. ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices. We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before. Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. 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.
The UK government’s actions have not been announced but were alleged two weeks ago in reporting by the Washington Post and others. The UK Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, known by those who oppose it as the “Snoopers’ Charter,” lets the government demand companies assist in providing access to electronic information for investigations. The law also makes it a criminal offense for any company asked by the government for such information to disclose the request.
A similar provision appears in the USA/Patriot Act, which dramatically expanded the US government’s ability to spy domestically on its own citizens, something that had previously been curtailed in various ways because of the potential for abuse.
Apple’s statement carefully sidesteps the cause of its actions while revealing that it has made changes to available features. This resembles efforts that took place after the Patriot Act when some sites and organizations posted “warrant canary” pages, which indicated that no Patriot Act warrant had been received. They would remove such a page if a warrant was presented, providing “negative knowledge”—interested parties would use page-update trackers to be notified when such pages were removed. Apple included such a warrant canary in a 2013 transparency report; it disappeared in subsequent reports.
While Apple can prevent people in the UK new to ADP from enabling it, disabling the feature for existing users will be more complicated because it requires a device-based action to retrieve the encryption key and decrypt the data. No one knows how many users in the UK have enabled ADP. But I would expect that all of them will shortly receive an email that says access to ADP is ending in the United Kingdom and that they must follow a manual process to remove ADP by a given date, or their access to all iCloud information will be disabled until they comply.
If you live anywhere else in the world, consider enabling ADP now. There’s a reason the UK government is allegedly afraid of it. An infinitesimal amount of all personal data in the world relates to criminal acts—and some of that data is defined as criminal in contravention of international norms of human rights and freedom of expression. Politicians and governments, for uninformed or malicious reasons, want access to everything, violating your privacy and turning every bit into a potential way to accuse people of criminality.
ADP has a significant drawback: Apple cannot help you recover your data due to forgetfulness or catastrophe. You must make sure you never lose all your devices, that you generate and securely store a Recovery Key, and that you appoint trusted people as Recovery Contacts. ADP may cause you to fear losing your data, but it’s a sure way to lock it behind a wall so secure that no government can batter it down. The only question is whether Apple will be permitted to keep offering the features in countries other than the UK.