This article is re-posted from the website of the Libertarian Alliance, which gives a blanket permission to do so, subject to certain provisions. The original article can be found at https://libertarianism.uk/2025/09/03/a-small-victory-in-a-losing-war-the-uk-government-retreats-on-encryption/
The British Government has quietly abandoned its demand that Apple build a backdoor into its encrypted communications platforms. This is not a sign of principle or enlightenment. It is a tactical retreat, forced by the sheer impracticality of enforcing a law that no technology company with global ambitions would obey. But the retreat is real, and it is welcome. As Intelligent CISO reports:
“The UK Government has confirmed that it will not immediately enforce its demand for Apple to scan user devices for harmful content, effectively backing down from one of the most controversial aspects of its Online Safety Act.”
This is a victory, however small, for privacy, for freedom, and for the idea that citizens are not the property of the state. We should celebrate it with both caution and contempt. Caution, because the Government will be back. Contempt, because the very demand was a disgrace.
In February, I wrote an article titled The British Government’s War on Encryption: Protecting Pedophiles, Spies, and Itself. In it, I argued that the true motive behind the encryption crackdown had little to do with child safety and everything to do with silencing dissent and criminalising opposition.
The same regime that ignored grooming gangs for decades, that covered up rape in Rotherham, and that now funds drag queens to lecture children on kink play, cannot pretend to care about child safety. Its priorities lie elsewhere.
The Online Safety Act gave Ofcom the power to demand that encrypted messaging services like Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage insert secret backdoors so that messages could be scanned for prohibited content.
It would have made Britain a global outlier — a country in which secure messaging was no longer secure. It would have driven companies to exit the UK market or to fight back in court. Apple chose the second option. And for now, it has won.
What is extraordinary is not the victory, but how close we came to defeat. For years, the British Government — Labour and Conservative alike — has moved in lockstep towards digital authoritarianism.
It is not the totalitarianism of 1984, where Big Brother watches your every move from a telescreen. It is more like the soft digital totalitarianism of 2025, where everything is tracked and nudged and shadowbanned, where your digital wallet can be suspended if you say the wrong thing, and where every online interaction is monitored “for your own safety”.
The justification is always the same. Terrorism. Child abuse. Misinformation. Extremism. Words that mean whatever the Home Office wants them to mean. As the recent counter-extremism review shows, even claiming that there is a two-tier policing system may now be labelled “extreme”. As if noticing that BLM rioters are treated better than lockdown protesters is the same thing as inciting terrorism.
The encryption battle was supposed to be the final blow against privacy. Once messages were open to inspection, no dissident could speak freely. No whistleblower could expose corruption. No friend could speak to another without wondering if a machine was scanning their thoughts. Britain would be safe — not from crime or terror, but from its own people.
That it did not happen this year is not due to any love of liberty in Whitehall. It is because Apple, Signal, and others said “No”. They refused to compromise the security of their global users to satisfy the neurotic demands of a parochial surveillance state. Signal even threatened to leave the UK market entirely. Apple said it would disable FaceTime and iMessage rather than comply. This resistance, not Parliamentary courage, is what saved us.
But the danger has not passed. The Online Safety Act still exists. Ofcom still has the authority. The Government has merely said it will not “immediately enforce” the most extreme provisions. That is not a repeal. That is a pause.
We must also understand the larger context. Britain is not a free country. It is a managed democracy run by a technocratic class that despises the native population. It censors speech, polices thought, and persecutes dissent. The abandonment of the Apple backdoor demand is a rare crack in the wall, not the fall of the prison.
Encryption matters because it is the last line of defence. You can be deplatformed from PayPal, banned from Twitter, censored on YouTube, and still retain your dignity if you can speak freely to those you trust. Lose that, and all that remains is silence.
To those who say, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, I say this: The people who most want to watch you are not the people you should trust. The paedophile with a badge, the corrupt MP with something to hide, the civil servant who dreams of thought control — these are the people who hate encryption. These are the people who have lost.
Let them lose more often. Let them be afraid. And let us never forget that they will be back. Our job is not to rest. It is to build, to strengthen, and to make our communications so private that not even the spies in GCHQ can break them.
In the meantime, thank you, Apple. And thank you, Signal. You have done more for freedom in this country than Parliament has in a decade.
But this is one battle. The war goes on.
