The Home Secretary Makes History—Online Privacy Dismantled
Labour MP Yvette Cooper's bid for total digital control pays off.
Apple has removed Advanced Data Protection (ADP) for UK users after a legally binding order from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. This marks the first time Apple has ever stripped an encryption feature from any market.
Earlier this month, the Labour government demanded that Apple weaken its encryption and give them access to users’ iCloud data. The order, issued under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016—dubbed the Snooper’s Charter—was not a standard data request. It was a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), forcing Apple to build a permanent backdoor for government access.
Starmer and Cooper already had legal channels to access user data with a warrant. But that wasn’t enough. They wanted preemptive, unrestricted access.
Now, UK users' iCloud data is no longer end-to-end encrypted. Every message, photo, password, document, and financial record stored on iCloud is fully accessible to Apple, the UK government, and potentially any foreign state with access to Apple’s systems.
Commentators have warned of the catastrophic implications. By forcing Apple to hold a decryption key, they’ve created a single point of failure. If Apple’s systems are hacked or compromised, users’ private data could fall into the hands of cybercriminals, rogue insiders, or even hostile foreign governments.
In December 2023, a study commissioned by Apple revealed that over 2.6 billion personal records had been compromised in various data breaches over the previous two years.
Put simply, Apple users in the UK now have significantly less protection, all because a surveillance/censorship-thirsty Home Secretary wanted permanent access to our encrypted data.
This is the same Yvette Cooper who launched a “rapid review of extremist ideologies,” including online activity that “undermines democracy”. She has repeatedly claimed online “misinformation” fuels real-world violence and even reclassified misogyny as a form of “extremism”.
Her crackdown was followed by some of the most aggressive speech-related prosecutions in modern British history after the Southport child murders.
The backlash has already spilled over into the US. Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Andy Biggs have called for the Trump administration to intervene. In a letter to US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, they warned that if the UK does not reverse its decision, the US should reconsider intelligence-sharing and cybersecurity cooperation.
The fear is that breaches could affect officials from other countries living and working in the UK—who now have no guarantee their data is safe.
To make matters worse, the Investigatory Powers Act makes it illegal for Apple to even disclose the existence of such demands. So we won’t know what they’ve gained access to or when.
With the loss of such protections, Starmer and Cooper haven’t just opened the door to hackers—they’ve effectively built the kind of surveillance system authoritarian regimes would only dream of.
A direct assault on privacy and security—all rubber-stamped by free speech-apathetic Labour.
Caroline Farrow—a woman who was arrested in front of her whole family during dinner and had her devices seized by police for posting transgender-critical comments online—hauntingly remarked:
This won't be used to combat terrorism. I literally had to surrender all access to my devices or face jail, like Tommy Robinson has. I knew I was innocent and had nothing to hide. They went through my hard drives, my emails, my photos, my messages. I still feel violated.
If the police are captured by ideology, they will take whatever they find and try to use it against you. Apple's ending of our privacy should worry us all. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.
Do you think if things stay the way they are our best days are ahead of us?
Are you going to sit down and watch as our media/government officials push for yet more invasive, authoritarian, censorious policy?
If you want to do something today to help change that, you can opt for a paid subscription and help citizen journalists like me attempting to stop it…
This is a disgraceful decision in keeping with Labour's command and control ideology. The US should stop all support for the UK, in terms of military, intelligence or whatever else they offer until this and other anti privacy methods have been rectified. In the meantime we should all ask Yvette Cooper if we can go through her phone, or does this transparency only go one way!
I don't think Yvette Cooper or Keir Starmer understand how modern technology works so I don't think they have any clue about what they have done. They want to be able to snoop on what people say to each other and tech companies haven't let them. So they've introduced a law without understanding what that means. Let's be honest, does anyone know how their TV works, let alone their mobile phone?!
Presumably, the "dodgy" people will stop using Apple, the "concerned" people will stop using Apple and the "not bothered/nothing to hide/nothing to fear" will carry on until the police knock at their door because they used an unacceptable term in an online chat to a friend.