Apple urges Home Office to come clean on 'backdoor' letting officials snoop on YOUR phone

Apple has urged the Home Office to come clean over its request for the company to create a "backdoor" for officials to snoop on Britons' phones.

Human rights groups Liberty and Privacy International have joined the American tech giant in calling for a tribunal to remove a gag order which blocks the Government from confirming the order was made.

It is believed that Labour finally admitting the encryption order's existence could pave the way for public legal challenges to be made.

Yvette Cooper, then the Home Secretary, made the request to Apple last year, insisting the move could help authorities combat child abuse and terrorism.

The proposals - which were dropped by the Government amid fury in the States - would have handed powers to the British state to access iPhone user data, including photos and messages, if they were suspected of a crime.

It would have allowed officials to bypass even the most stringent protection features to access data stored on a device.

Apple refused to comply with the demand, and opted to scrap the “Advanced Data Protection” feature for iPhone users in Britain instead.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal - which probes complaints about the conduct of public bodies - is overseeing Apple's challenge against the Home Office.

Although the Home Office and Apple are banned from talking about the request under the gag order, its presence has been confirmed at the very highest levels of the American Government.

Vice President JD Vance is said to have been "personally involved in negotiating a deal" to force the Government to back down on the order.

Former US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also confirmed the existence of the "backdoor" request and said she had worked alongside Donald Trump and Mr Vance to ensure Americans' "constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected".

The restrictions placed on the Home Office and Apple discussing the order means that is likely the legal battle may be hidden away behind closed doors.

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The American company called for the restraints to be lifted at a hearing on Thursday, with Daniel Beard KC arguing it would allow “facts to be deployed in the open” and “advance the challenge in a meaningful way”.

Liberty and Privacy International representatives blasted the restrictions as "farcical" given the widespread knowledge of the request already in the public domain.

“There comes a point where a plea of ‘neither confirm nor deny’ is embarrassing and brings the administration of justice into disrepute,” Ben Jaffey KC said.

Neil Sheldon KC, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's lawyer, insisted that surveillance measures on devices protect Britons for possible terror attacks and keep children safe from abuse.

He told the tribunal: “It is inevitable that departures from ‘neither confirm nor deny’ weaken its effectiveness."

A Government spokesman previously said: "We have long had joint security and intelligence arrangements with the US to tackle the most serious threats such as terrorism and child sexual abuse, including the role played by fast-moving technology in enabling those threats.

"Those arrangements have long contained safeguards to protect privacy and sovereignty: for example, the Data Access Agreement includes critical safeguards to prevent the UK and US from targeting the data of each other’s citizens.

"We will continue to build on those arrangements, and we will also continue to maintain a strong security framework to ensure that we can continue to pursue terrorists and serious criminals operating in the UK.

"We will always take all actions necessary at the domestic level to keep UK citizens safe."

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