In response to a United Kingdom government consultation on access to kidnapped data on Apple devices, Cupertino has eliminated access to the function of advanced data protection encryption of the devices controlled by the United Kingdom.
“We have never created a back door or a master key for any of our products or services and we will never do it,” wrote an anonymous Apple representative in a statement sent by email to Techrepublic.
The United Kingdom wants the police to access data on individual devices, the sources claim
At the beginning of February, the Ministry of Interior invoked the 2016 Investigation Powers Law to request a way of accessing the encrypted data maintained under Apple's advanced data protection. The Washington Post gave the news based on anonymous sources, saying that the information was discussed in secret. The Law of Investigation Powers grants provisions of personnel for the application of the law and intelligence for the harvest of data. The United Kingdom government has not issued a statement confirming or denying the situation. To affirm that the government has invoked the act is in itself a criminal offense.
See: Apple has removed the applications without contact information for its developers from the EU Application Store to comply with the Digital Services Law.
According to the BBC, the Government would have to follow a legal process to access these data, and would probably use it to attack people who are already under investigation instead of broad areas of the population.
Advanced data protection is Apple's most rigorous privacy measure
The data stored under the protection of Apple's advanced data offers the highest level of protection provided by the company, maintaining the hidden information of Apple. Users must register for advanced data protection as an additional step in addition to Apple predetermined security measures. According to the initial article of the Washington Post, “the majority” of Apple devices users are not registered in the protection of advanced data.
If a UK user has not yet registered for the protection of advanced data, he cannot do it from February 21, Apple said. On the other hand, these users will see a message: “Apple can no longer offer advanced data protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users.”
Apple said existing users must disable the function manually to continue using ICLOUD. More orientation is presented for these users.
Other applications and end -to -end services and Apple end, such as the ICLOUD keychain, health, Imessage and Facetime, will not change.
