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The UK Online Safety Bill might force Apple to remove FaceTime and iMessage from its products sold in the country. The company argues this bill could harm users’ safety and compromise their privacy.
Apple has entered a legal battle with the UK government over an update that’s proposed to the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. The new amendment asks tech companies, like Apple and other manufacturers, to clear the app’s security features with the Home Office before releasing them to the public. Additionally, the government can ask for immediate disabling of security features in messaging services.
The UK government has now opened an eight-week consultation period for the proposed amendments to the IPA.
Apple threatens to pull FaceTime and iMessage from its products in the UK over Online Safety Bill
The problem with the bill is it undermines end-to-end encryption, which is an essential security measure of modern messaging services. Under the update, the Home Office can require messaging apps to scan content for potential child abuse cases because law enforcement can’t do so due to the encryption.
Asking to install a surveillance tech to search for potential child abuse material contradicts the nature of end-to-end encryption. The whole point of end-to-end encryption is that only the sender and recipient can see the exchanged messages.
So far, WhatsApp and Signal have opposed the bill. Signal even threatened to stop operating in the UK. Likewise, Apple says it will pull FaceTime and iMessage from the UK market if the government implements the bill.
The tech giant has sent a nine-page opposing letter to the government to highlight its main concerns. Apple’s concerns revolve around notifying the government of any changes to the app’s security features before releasing them to the public and taking immediate action to disable a feature upon receiving a request from the government.
Apple also argues that providing a backdoor to end-to-end encryption might have a negative impact on the products of non-UK-based companies sold globally.
The company added that it will not make country-specific changes to an app’s features as it can undermine user security. Additionally, making some changes requires issuing a software update, which notifies users of everything that has happened. Finally, the tech giant called the bill “a serious and direct threat to data security and information privacy.”