PI Apple TCN Challenge
Our challenge to both the lawfulness and the secrecy of the legal regime governing Technical Capability Notices following the apparent use of one by the UK Home Office to require Apple to maintain the capability to provide access to all data stored on iCloud.
- Photo by Adrian Raudaschl on Unsplash
Court: Investigatory Powers Tribunal
Case No: IPT/25/83/CH
Status: Open
In February 2025, the Washington Post reported that the UK Government had issued Apple with a legal requirement to maintain the capability to provide access to any data stored on its iCloud system by Apple users anywhere in the world.
This requirement appears to have been made via a 'Technical Capability Notice' (TCN) under s253 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA). The legal regime governing notices under the IPA is highly secretive: TCNs (and other similar notices) are not made public, and recipients of them are under gagging orders not to release information about them. Despite this, developments have been widely reported on by different news outlets and commented on by politicians and encryption experts from across the world.
A few weeks after news of the notice was first leaked, Apple announced that they were withdrawing the availability of their 'Advanced Data Protection' (ADP) service for new users in the UK (those already using ADP were given "a period of time to disable the feature themselves to keep using their iCloud account"). ADP remained available to users everywhere else in the world.
Reports later emerged that Apple were to appeal the notice and that a secret hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) was scheduled for 14 March 2025.
Ahead of that secret hearing, we made two submissions to the IPT - together with Liberty and two individual claimants:
- Firstly, seeking for the hearing on Apple's claims to be held in public given (a) the degree of public interest in the matter and (b) the wide media reporting making any claims of secrecy irrelevant.
- Secondly, a separate complaint disputing the lawfulness, necessity and secrecy of the purported Apple TCN and the legal regime underpinning TCNs in general.
On 7 April 2025, the IPT issued a public judgment that summarised its findings following the hearing. The full judgment containing the details of the Tribunal's reasoning was only made available to Apple and the Home Office. However, the public judgment revealed that Apple had made a complaint to the IPT "raising issues as to the Secretary of State's powers to make Technical Capability Notices under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016." The UK Government claimed that it would be "contrary to the public interest" for any information about the case to be in the public domain, but the Tribunal disagreed, revealing this bare bones description and leaving open the door to making further information public, citing established principles of open justice.
The judgment also acknowledged PI and its co-claimants' separate complaints and invited the parties to make submissions as to further case management. It did not, however, make any decision about the openness of future proceedings under either Apple's case, or under the complaint submitted by PI and others.
On 23 July 2025, after case management submissions from all parties and an application from WhatsApp to intervene in both Apple's case and PI and its co-claimant's case, the Tribunal issued a case management order. The Tribunal directed the UK Government to agree "assumed facts" with Apple which are to form the basis of a seven day hearing to be scheduled in early 2026. By proceeding on assumed facts, the Tribunal intends to hear as much as possible of Apple's and PI's claims in open. The Tribunal refused WhatsApp's application to intervene.
