UK Technical Capability Notice splits iCloud Advanced Data Protection access from February 2025

The Washington Post reported on 7 February 2025 that UK authorities issued a Technical Capability Notice requiring Apple to retain access capability to iCloud data encrypted under Advanced Data Protection. The notice, authorized under sections of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, compels maintenance of technical access without public disclosure. Apple responded by closing new ADP enrollments for UK accounts while preserving the feature for prior users, creating an encryption tier split documented in user reports and Apple support pages.

Investigatory Powers Act 2016 records and Judicial Commissioner oversight documents show TCNs must demonstrate technical feasibility and proportionality before approval. Apple’s prior public statements from 2016 and 2021 affirmed no backdoors in iCloud encryption. The resulting policy leaves pre-2025 UK ADP users with 14 additional encrypted data categories including iCloud Photos and Notes while post-2025 users remain on standard server-side encryption accessible via warrant.

Operational impact appears within account migration and device reset flows. UK residents who restore devices or create new Apple IDs after the cutoff lose ADP eligibility without relocation or account jurisdiction change. This produces measurable divergence in data protection levels between otherwise identical device populations, confirmed by Apple’s region-specific feature flags.

Apple has not issued public timelines for restoring parity. Existing ADP users retain the setting unless they disable it, but new activations remain blocked pending resolution of the notice terms.