How much authority should democratic governments have to “snoop” on citizens’ online data and communications? The UK government has used new legal powers to demand that Apple create a “back door” enabling law enforcement bodies to access users’ encrypted data uploaded to the cloud. Apple has responded instead by withdrawing from Britain its most secure cloud storage service — which uses end-to-end encryption that Apple says means even it cannot access the data.
Britain is not alone. Sweden’s government wants encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp to open a similar back door. Signal is threatening to leave Sweden if this becomes law. The cases amount to the biggest confrontation yet between western governments’ understandable desire to police crimes such as terrorism and child sex abuse online, and the gold-standard encryption now widely used to protect user privacy in messaging apps and the cloud.
Both cases echo the battle when the FBI tried to compel Apple to help it break into an iPhone used by a terrorist in a California shooting in 2015. Apple said if it created an iPhone back door for the FBI, malicious actors might discover it and use it to crack other phones. A hacking firm eventually unlocked the phone for the FBI, ending the stand-off.