The UK government is continuing its bid to access Apple's user data, this time with a demand to routinely access iCloud backups of its citizenry.

In August, the UK government seemingly backed down from its backdoor access mandate, apparently dropping the initiative against user data held by Apple. A month later, and it seems to be trying a different attack vector.

A new UK Home Office order issued in early September demands that Apple makes a way for officials to access encrypted cloud backups, according to a report on Wednesday from Financial Times.

While previous requests caused diplomatic disagreements between the US and UK governments, the new request tries to be more careful. This time, the order specifies that it should only apply to data from British citizens.

Apple's stance has always been that weakening encryption in one area, weakens it worldwide.

Neither Apple nor the Home Office provided comments on the matter. This is in part due to commentary about the UK Investigatory Powers Act's Technical Capability Notices (TCNs) being legally restricted.

U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard claimed in August that the U.S. had worked with partners in the UK to drop the backdoor mandate. It seems that the UK wasn't entirely truthful to Gabbard on giving in on the project.

A persistent privacy worry

The current round of encryption demands from the UK followed after the 2024 revamp of the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act. It gave the government the authority to secretly compel Apple into breaking end-to-end encryption so that it could access data via a backdoor.

The request was fought against by the US, complete with bipartisan protests, due to the worldwide access element. For its part, Apple couldn't publicly comment directly about it, but advised it had switched off end-to-end encryption by disabling Advanced Data Protection in the UK.

Effectively, the UK got what it wanted, but it faced considerable blowback from the US. A hint of this was delivered in February 2025, when the US Intelligence Services said they were considering a reduction or a full stop on sharing data with the UK.

The timing of the new discovery is apt, since it follows after a visit by President Donald Trump to the UK. Trump had previously compared the request from the UK to being similar to enacting Chinese state surveillance.