At first sight, this is a rather strange story. The key points seem to be:
- The UK government demanded that Apple provide the right to access data which is currently protected by its optional Advanced Data Protection (ADP) service.
- Since Apple themselves cannot currently do this, it would have involved creating a ‘back door’ and Apple have publicly stated that they would never do this or provide a master key to any of their products.
- Apple’s response was to block ADP in the UK for new users, and threaten to withdraw it from existing users.
The US government seems to have got involved, since they were not informed that the UK was planning this move.
BBC Tech has a good write up at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo and for a US perspective, Steve Gibson’s Security Now! show notes make interesting reading grc.com/sn/sn-1014-notes.pdf.