Back in 2016 there was a standoff between the FBI and Apple over gaining access to a locked phone. The phone belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook one half of a terrorist duo that carried out an attack which killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Farook was killed in a shootout with police. The FBI recovered Farook's phone and got a search warrant to search it but couldn't crack the password. It was only a 4-digit password but the phone was designed to erase itself after 10 failed attempts.

The NSA attempted to crack the phone and failed. The FBI asked Apple for help, i.e. creating a replacement operating system that could be unlocked and Apple refused. And at this point the FBI actually got a court order to force Apple to assist them whether it wanted to do so or not. This was probably going to result in a major court battle but then a 3rd party came forward and suggested it could help the FBI crack the phone. It worked and the court battle never happened.

At the time, I was very irritated with Apple for refusing to help the FBI find out what was on the terrorist's phone. He was dead and the FBI had a search warrant. Plus it was possible there were other terrorists who could be identified by examining the phone before they acted. I thought their refusal was shameful.

Jump forward nine years and I find myself very much on the other side of an argument taking place in the UK. Apple has secretly been asked by the UK government to provide a back door to the encrypted information on all iPhones including those belonging to Americans.

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies...

The office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence, the people said.

This request itself is secret so it hasn't been published but the gist seems to be that the UK isn't asking for the potential to view encrypted material after presenting Apple with a warrant. They are just asking Apple to open everything to them, anything they decide to look at for whatever reason anywhere in the world. Apple wouldn't even be able to warn people this was happening.

One of the people briefed on the situation, a consultant advising the United States on encryption matters, said Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security. The person deemed it shocking that the U.K. government was demanding Apple’s help to spy on non-British users without their governments’ knowledge. A former White House security adviser confirmed the existence of the British order.

Something like 150 million Americans own iPhones. Most don't use the encrypted cloud service under discussion but that still means there are probably millions who do. Why in the world should a foreign government, even a friendly one, be given access to all of that data?

The story ends by noting the irony that at the same time the UK is demanding this unprecedented access, America's Cyber Defense Agency and the NSA are jointly warning Americans about how to keep Chinese hackers out of their networks. Canada, New Zealand and Australia all endorsed those recommendations but the UK did not.

It's not clear how this can be resolved. Apple could choose not to store any encrypted data in the UK but the "technical capability notice" isn't limited to the UK so that probably won't be enough. What needs to happen here is President Trump should tell the UK to stuff it. If they need access to a suspected terrorist's data, they can get a warrant. They should not get a secret window to everyone's data all the time.