Two senior British government officials have said the UK may have to retreat from its demand that US tech giant Apple gives it backdoor access to secure customer data, in order to avoid a clash with Washington.

The officials have told the Financial Times that senior figures at the White House, including vice-President JD Vance, are unhappy with the UK government’s demand, and the situation could potentially have an impact on deals in the tech sector between the two countries.

In January this year the UK Home Office had asked Apple to give it access to encrypted customer data which is stored on Apple’s cloud storage services. Initially, the government neither confirmed nor denied this, but it was widely reported that the demand for access had to do with matters of national security.

But Apple refused the demand, and announced in February it will withdraw its cloud storage encryption services from the UK market, a decision that took many by surprise.

“Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users, and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” the company said in a statement.

The ADP service “protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices,” Apple’s statement said.

Badly handled

“The Home Office is basically going to have to back down,” one of the two senior officials has told the FT, adding that the matter has annoyed senior figures in Washington and needs a resolution.

The official said data encryption was a red line for Washington and that it didn’t want anyone to mess around with US tech companies.

“It’s a problem of the Home Office’s own making, and they’re working on a way around it now,” another UK government official was quoted saying.

They added that the government had handled the situation badly from the beginning, and that it had its back against the wall now. Apple has since withdrew its ADP services from the UK and has challenged the Home Office’s order at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. WhatsApp, another US tech giant, told the BBC in June this year it was joining and supporting Apple’s challenge against the UK government at the Tribunal.

The demand has drawn criticism from data privacy campaigners, tech experts and other corners. Prof Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert at Surrey University, called it a “very disappointing development”. He told the BBC: “All the UK government has achieved is to weaken online security and privacy for UK-based users.”