Apple warns Suella Braverman over ‘snooper’s charter’ crackdown

Proposals could see Britain take on a leading role in regulating global security technology

Apple has warned Suella Braverman that it would shut down apps such as FaceTime and iMessage in the UK rather than comply with an order to break encryption.

The iPhone maker has told the Home Office that it would refuse to build a secret backdoor into its apps as it labelled government plans to extend its surveillance powers “deeply troubling”.

“[The existing law] could be used to force a company like Apple, that would never build a backdoor, to publicly withdraw critical security features from the UK market, depriving UK users of these protections,” it said in a response to a Home Office consultation.

It warned that the Government’s plans to update its seven-year-old surveillance legislation would “create serious conflicts” with EU and US law and put a “worldwide gag order” on messaging apps.

The Home Office is consulting on changes to the Investigatory Powers Act – dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics – which was passed in 2016. 

The legislation allows the Home Office to issue encrypted messaging apps with notices forcing them to break the protections in cases where doing so could aid investigations such as into terrorism.

The new proposals include stricter requirements for encrypted messaging apps to inform the Home Office before making changes to their apps, the ability to serve orders on companies based overseas even if they do not have a UK subsidiary, and to secretly force messaging apps to comply with a government order before seeking approval from a judge.

Currently, messaging apps can refuse to comply with government orders while it appeals against them.

Apple, which has positioned itself as a champion of privacy, said: “It is deeply troubling that the Home Office is seeking power to issue what are effectively secret extra-judicial injunctions against emerging security technologies without any recourse by the service provider.”

It said the changes would “make the Home Office the de facto global arbiter of what level of data security and encryption are permissible” and that the new powers would “dramatically disrupt the global market for security technologies, putting users in the UK and around the world at greater risk”.

It added that the laws could conflict with overseas laws such as the European Union’s GDPR, the US CLOUD Act, and a data agreement between the US and the UK.

End-to-end encryption scrambles communications between two devices, meaning they cannot be read by people intercepting messages or even the messaging app itself. Providers say that it provides important privacy protections but the technology has been criticised by security services since it makes it more difficult to intercept criminals’ communications.

The existing Investigatory Powers Act allows the Home Secretary to order messaging providers to break encryption. The orders, known as Technical Capability Notices, are made in secret, and it is unclear if any have been made.

WhatsApp says it has never received a notice, and Apple’s insistence that it would not be able to comply with one suggests it has not either.

Apple opposed the Investigatory Powers Act before it became law in 2016. It rarely comments on UK policy, although has recently come out against measures in the Online Safety Bill that would also affect encryption, and has warned that upcoming competition legislation threatens innovation.

A Government spokesman said: “The first job of government is to keep the country safe and investigatory powers are an essential tool for protecting our citizens.

“We keep all legislation under review to ensure it is as strong as it can be and this consultation is part of that process – no decisions have yet been made.”