The U.K. government\u2019s secret order to Apple demanding it backdoor the end-to-end encrypted version of its iCloud storage service has now been challenged by two civil rights groups, Liberty and Privacy International, which filed complaints Thursday. They called the order \u201cunacceptable and disproportionate\u201d and warned of \u201cglobal consequences\u201d as the access order is thought to extend to non-U.K. users too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pair, along with two named individuals \u2014 Privacy International\u2019s executive director Gus Hosein and the civil liberties advocate Ben Wizner \u2014 have instructed law firm Leigh Day to challenge Home Department Secretary of State Yvette Cooper\u2019s decision to serve Apple with a technical capability notice (TCN) under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA). The existence of the secret order only emerged via press reports last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrivacy International and Liberty fear this TCN, or similar TCNs in the future, could be used to undermine end-to-end encryption essential to the protection of privacy and free expression,\u201d they wrote in a press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple has already filed a legal challenge to the TCN \u2014 and its appeal is due to be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the body that oversees complaints against U.K. intelligence agencies. Both civil rights groups, Hosein, and Wizner contend that they are direct victims of the government\u2019s TCN decision and are asked for their complaints to be joined to Apple\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are also calling for the case to be heard in public, rather than behind closed doors \u2014 joining earlier calls from privacy rights groups. The IPT hearing is thought to be scheduled for Friday, March 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.K. government\u2019s secret order to Apple demanding it backdoor the end-to-end encrypted version of its iCloud storage service has now been challenged by two civil rights groups, Liberty and Privacy International, which filed complaints Thursday. They called the order \u201cunacceptable and disproportionate\u201d and warned of \u201cglobal consequences\u201d as the access order is thought to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}