The encryption wars have reached a fever pitch, and the most contentious battle is not happening in the United States, where much of the action has been in the past — like the government’s efforts to restrict exports of encryption software until the 1990s and the FBI’s standoff with Apple in 2016. It’s in the United Kingdom, where the government has reportedly ordered Apple to give officials blanket access to iCloud users’ encrypted backups. And the order allegedly didn’t just apply to UK users — it demanded backdoor access for users worldwide. 

The secret order, first reported by The Washington Post, was issued in January under the auspices of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. Apple’s compliance or refusal will have ramifications far beyond the UK, potentially making users less safe and signaling to other governments that they, too, can seek backdoor access — a way of bypassing encryption — to users’ information via legislation.

“Simply put, the message the UK government is sending is that its own citizens cannot expect its government to respect their privacy, and that it is willing to put their security at risk from all manner of bad actors like …

Read the full story at The Verge.