UK’s demand for Apple backdoor should not be heard in secret, says court

The U.K. government has lost its bid to keep secret the details of a surveillance order it brought against Apple, according to a newly released decision by the U.K. surveillance powers’ court.

The decision, posted on Monday by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London, means that parts of the legal case will be held in public, despite objections from the U.K. government.

In its ruling on Monday, the tribunal’s judges said they “do not accept that the revelation of the bare details of the case would be damaging to the public interest or prejudicial to national security.” This is the first public acknowledgement that the case exists, though specific details of the case were withheld.

Much of the “bare details” of the case reportedly relate to a U.K. legal demand ordering Apple to let U.K. authorities access the encrypted cloud data of any Apple customer anywhere in the world.

The Washington Post in February published leaked details of the legal demand, revealing the existence of the U.K.’s backdoor demand. Soon after, Apple said it could “no longer” offer Advanced Data Protection, which allows customers to encrypt their files in Apple’s cloud so that nobody other than the user can access them, to users in the United Kingdom.

Neither Apple nor the Home Office, which initiated the demand on behalf of the U.K. government, have so far commented on the specific legal case as it remains subject to U.K. national security rules, preventing even the existence of the case itself.

Following the order, Apple reportedly appealed the order to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The U.K. government responded by telling the court that national security would suffer if the nature of the case were made public.

Privacy and rights advocates, a coalition of news outlets, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, and senior intelligence officials in the Trump administration have all called for transparency around the legal hearings.

When contacted by TechCrunch, a spokesperson for the U.K. Home Office did not comment. A spokesperson for Apple did not immediately return a request for comment.

Apple previously told TechCrunch that the company has “never built a backdoor or master key” to any of its products or services and it “never will.”