"I have nothing to hide" - our readers react to Apple getting secret hearing in appeal against UK government

Apple’s appeal against the British Government to be heard in secret
The tech giant is fighting a request to build a back door into its encryption
We polled TechRadar users for their thoughts – here’s what you said

It looks likely Apple’s legal appeal against the UK government will be heard at a secret hearing at the High Court, the BBC reports, following Apple’s promise to ‘never build a back door.’

Apple recently pulled its end-to-end encryption service, Advanced Data Protection (ADP) from UK devices following an alleged request from the British government to build a backdoor into the encryption, which would allow access for law enforcement agencies.

As we await the result of the appeal, we asked our TechRadar readers their thoughts via our WhatsApp channel (if you’re interested, you can join here) – and the results might surprise you…

Results are in

When asked, “Would you want your government to have access” to private encrypted data, our readers voted overwhelmingly in favor of Apple’s decision, with 67% choosing the option “My data is private – I wouldn’t want my Government to have access”.

A small number of our readers (8%) said they had no issue with their government having a master key to their encryption, choosing the option, “I would not care as I have nothing to hide” – but a quarter of respondents felt law enforcement should have access only in extreme circumstances.

The US Director of National Intelligence called the request a ‘clear and egregious violation of American’s privacy and civil liberties’, since the request would have extraterritorial powers – sparking ‘grave concern’ not just for privacy, but for fears that this would “open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors”.

The tech giant’s appeal is due to be considered by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is an independent court with the power to investigate claims against the UK intelligence services.

“There is no easy answer to this conundrum,” said Matt Aldridge, Senior Principal Solutions Consultant at OpenText Cybersecurity.

“Either a system has “trust no one” end-to-end encryption or it doesn’t, there are no halfway houses here, so Apple are taking a pragmatic approach by removing the service for UK users, rather than effectively putting a backdoor into their systems which could impact the privacy of their over 1 billion other users around the world.”

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