LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s government has issued a new order to Apple to create a “back door” into its cloud storage service, this time targeting only British users’ data, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
In August, Britain dropped a mandate for the iPhone maker to provide a “back door” that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American as well as British citizens, according to U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
U.S. lawmakers had raised concerns that the mandate could allow encrypted user data to be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian governments.
Apple, which has said it would never build a “back door” into its encrypted services or devices, appealed against the earlier order at the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the IPT confirmed in April.
A British government spokesperson said: “We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.
“We will always take all actions necessary at the domestic level to keep UK citizens safe.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle and Sarah Young in LondonEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Sarah Young)
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