(Bloomberg) -- A court has blocked a British government attempt to keep secret a legal case over its demand to access Apple Inc. user data in a victory for privacy advocates.
The UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that handles cases related to government surveillance, said the authorities’ efforts were a “fundamental interference with the principle of open justice” in a ruling issued on Monday.
The development comes after it emerged in January that the British government had served Apple with a demand to circumvent encryption that the company uses to secure user data stored in its cloud services.
Apple challenged the request, while taking the unprecedented step of removing its advanced data protection feature for its British users. The government had sought to keep details about the demand — and Apple’s challenge of it — from being publicly disclosed.
Apple has regularly clashed with governments over encryption features that can make it difficult for law enforcement to access devices produced by the company. The world’s most valuable company last year criticized UK surveillance powers as “unprecedented overreach” by the government.
Targeted investigatory powers are needed to keep pace with technological changes, a spokesperson for the UK’s Home Office said in a statement, while declining to comment on the Apple case.
“Unilateral moves which prevent investigations into terrorism or serious child abuse put public safety at grave risk,” the spokesperson said. “These powers are purely about preventing serious crime and pursuing criminals, and do not affect our commitment to free speech.”
An Apple spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple previously said that it was “gravely disappointed” that it had to remove its advanced data protection feature for customers in the UK.
Lord Justice Rabinder Singh and Justice Jeremy Johnson, two of the Tribunal’s judges, on Monday publicly confirmed the existence of the case for the first time. They wrote that it would have been “a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place.”
Several media organizations and human rights groups have also challenged the government’s demand of Apple, which the Tribunal said it would consider separately. “It may well be possible for some or all future hearings to incorporate a public element,” the judges wrote.
“Executive decisions affecting the privacy and security of billions of people globally should be open to legal challenge in the most transparent way possible,” Ioannis Kouvakas, senior legal officer and assistant general counsel for Privacy International, said in a statement. “We will be moving forward with our complaint.”
(Updates with Home Office comment from sixth paragraph.)
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