Apple filed a new legal complaint last month with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, challenging the British government’s revised demand for access to encrypted iCloud backups belonging to UK users. It is the second major legal challenge Apple has filed against UK encryption orders, following the first in March 2025.
According to a court order reported by the Financial Times, the new complaint comes after the Home Office dropped its original, far broader demand, which had required Apple to create backdoor access to encrypted iCloud data for UK and US customers alike. That initial order triggered a diplomatic row with Washington and was subsequently withdrawn. The UK government then issued a new technical capability notice (TCN) to Apple last year, narrowing the scope to UK users only, which the Home Office appears to have believed would be a harder demand for Apple to contest.
Apple’s refusal to accept the revised order makes clear the company sees no meaningful distinction between a global backdoor and a national one. The IPT court notified Privacy International of Apple’s new complaint, suggesting the civil liberties organization may join or support the challenge as a third party.
The UK government’s push began in February 2025 with a secret order demanding Apple provide unrestricted access to encrypted iCloud content worldwide, an demand not previously seen in any democratic country. Apple’s response was to withdraw its Advanced Data Protection feature from the UK entirely rather than comply. Removing the feature meant Apple itself could no longer access users’ encrypted backups, which technically satisfied the letter of the original order while denying the government what it actually wanted. Apple’s broader resistance to government pressure over encrypted data access has a longer history than this dispute alone.
The Home Office came back with a narrower TCN in September 2025, demanding access specifically to the encrypted iCloud backups of British citizens. Apple’s new IPT complaint is its answer to that revised order.
Technical capability notices are issued under the Investigatory Powers Act, which the UK government says is necessary to investigate terrorism and child sexual abuse. Both Apple and the Home Office are legally barred from publicly discussing TCNs, so the specific legal arguments Apple is making in its complaint will likely remain confidential throughout the proceedings. Apple has pursued legal action on multiple fronts in 2025 and 2026, and this case sits among the more consequential ones for its users.
The UK government framed its revised demand as a reasonable compromise reached after US pressure. Apple’s decision to return to the IPT rather than quietly accept that framing is the clearest suggest that it views any compelled access to encrypted data as a line it will not cross, regardless of how narrowly the order is drawn.
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