Opinion The UK government’s attempts to worm into Apple’s core end-to-end encryption were set back last week when the country’s Home Office failed in its bid to keep them secret on national security grounds.

Or so we think: the whole business has been massively obfuscated by that special blend of state secrecy and legal gaggery that characterizes an official attempt to do something we really need to know about without telling us. Sooner or later, that scent escapes the kitchen and we know something’s cooking. 

In this case, although nobody actually involved would or could say anything, privacy campaigners and journalists got wind that the UK’s Home Office had issued a secret demand that Apple put a back door into its top level none-but-you-and-God iCloud secrecy. Rather than comply, Apple yanked the capability from British users, an action far more eloquent than a press release. It also – we think – appealed the original order. We only think this, because any such appeal can also be secret if the Home Secretary says it should be, and a special independent tribunal agrees with them. 

Last week, the tribunal decided this was a bad idea, denying the official request for a secret court. The tribunal also said it didn’t want to say no because it really likes the Home Office (the UK version of Homeland Security), which says a lot about its independence and the weakness of the government’s case. As this case will rest on two impossible things, 1) that any backdoor can be kept secret and 2) that state cybersecurity guarding it will be perfect, sinking our teeth into that nugget of truth will be tasty. 

Which is good. Secret courts have no place in a democracy. They are officially excused because of cases involving official secrets that would be compromised if produced in open court. But if the case is that the defendant has compromised that information, then it’s already compromised, presumably to the very people the secret court is trying to keep in the dark. Otherwise, make the c