A dispute over how much the British state can compel technology companies to reveal about their compliance with secret surveillance orders has reached the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, where Apple, Privacy International and Liberty are challenging the confidentiality that surrounds a Technical Capability Notice reportedly issued by the Home Office. The proceedings, which include two individual claimants alongside the civil liberties groups, turn less on the underlying order than on whether the public is entitled to know it exists at all. A substantive hearing has been listed for December 2026, with Apple's own full hearing thought unlikely before 2027.
The Order at the Centre of the Case
Technical Capability Notices are issued under Section 253 of the Investigatory Powers Act and carry strict statutory restrictions on disclosure. The government is reported to have required Apple to preserve a capability to access encrypted iCloud data, a demand that would sit uneasily with the company's stated position that it will not build backdoors or master keys into its products. Reports of the requirement first surfaced in 2025. Apple subsequently withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature from new UK users; that option stores encryption keys only on a user's own device, leaving the company itself unable to reach the data.
A Fight Over Secrecy, Not Just Substance
Much of the argument concerns the regime's "neither confirm nor deny" posture. Ben Jaffey KC told the tribunal that the government's refusal to acknowledge basic facts had become "farcical", given how much has already been reported. For the government, Neil Sheldon countered that moving away from that secrecy could create "national-security risks". Privacy International and Liberty, whose challenge is recorded under case number IPT/25/83/CH, contend that the Technical Capability Notice framework lacks transparency and adequate safeguards, and that citizens cannot test the lawfulness of powers whose very use is concealed.
How the Proceedings Have Unfolded
The litigation has not followed a single track. Apple's first set of proceedings ended after the circumstances changed, before a renewed challenge was brought in 2026. The tribunal has already had to grapple with how open its own process can be, having earlier resisted keeping the matter entirely behind closed doors. The coming hearings are expected to address both the procedural question of disclosure and the wider legality of the powers said to be in play.
Wider Implications for Encryption and In-House Counsel
The case reaches well beyond a single company. Its outcome will shape how far the UK can require providers of end-to-end encrypted services to alter their technical systems, and how much of that pressure can remain hidden from users and shareholders. A ruling that narrows the secrecy regime would give the public and the market greater visibility of state demands; one that upholds it would confirm that compliance can be compelled in silence. For in-house counsel at technology firms, the dispute is a reminder that surveillance obligations may arrive as confidential notices that cannot be openly discussed, complicating disclosure to boards, regulators and customers. It also sharpens a strategic tension between honouring security commitments made to users and meeting legal duties imposed by a single jurisdiction, a conflict that global providers of encrypted services will increasingly have to price into their product and governance decisions.
