Apple’s UK Privacy Fight Is Noble But Shortsighted
If the tech giant hopes that killing encryption will cause public upset and deter other governments, it’s probably wrong.
Apple’s gamble about how much customers care about privacy in its fight with the UK over encryption may backfire.
Photographer: Leon Neal/Getty Images EuropeApple Inc.’s tensions with the UK over encryption finally reached breaking point last week. Rather than submit to the government’s demands to create a backdoor to customer data, the iPhone maker instead killed end-to-end encryption for all British customers of iCloud. It's a principled gamble that seems to rely on public outrage, but Apple may discover that privacy matters more in marketing than in reality for its customers.
For those unfamiliar, data that is end-to-end encrypted can’t be accessed by anyone, not even Apple, except the holder of the encryption keys, in this case the iCloud customer. It’s the gold standard for securing data in banking and by many online services. But the UK has for several years been making an unreasonable push for special access to penetrate this security layer, arguing that it’s needed to help its intelligence agencies stop terrorists and for prosecutors to secure criminal convictions.