The public is wary of UK government surveillance powers that require technology companies to build “backdoors’ to access encrypted communications, according to a poll of 2,000 people in the UK by a Washington-based advocacy group.
Only 12% of those surveyed believe the government should be able to issue secret orders to tech companies to allow government access to their private data, according to the poll commissioned by the Center for Democracy and Technology, which campaigns for strict independent oversight of government surveillance.
Conducted after the UK government issued a secret order to Apple to access end-to-end encrypted data stored by users on the Apple iCloud, the poll suggests the UK public believes there should be greater transparency over the use of government surveillance powers.
Over 90% of the people questioned said they should have a right to have private conversations online and 87% agreed that the government should have a legal obligation to tell people if their private conversations have been accessed.
Tom Bowman, policy counsel for security and surveillance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said the British public find it “intolerable” that the UK can issue secret orders to tech companies without individuals ever being told that their communications have been targeted.
“If there is a warrant process in place that notifies the user, or at least provides an opportunity to challenge it, that would satisfy a lot of the pushback we are seeing in polling,” he said.
Governments and law enforcement agencies, including the National Crime Agency, Europol and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partners, have campaigned against the use of end-to-end encryption, with the UK government singling out plans by Meta to introduce end-to-end encrypted messaging on Facebook.
Tech companies also face pressure under the UK’s Online Safety Act to restrict the distribution of illegal or harmful material, which privacy campaigners say could discourage their use of encryption to protect customers’ data.
The poll was conducted in April 2026, following revelations that the UK government had issued a secret order against Apple requiring it to provide the capability to access end-to-end encrypted data and messages stored by its customers on iCloud.
A leak to the Washington Post in February 2025 revealed that the UK had issued a secret technical capability notice (TCN) targeting users of Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) service anywhere in the world.
ADP, an optional service, allows Apple customers to encrypt data and messages stored on iCloud with their own encryption keys, making it impossible for Apple or anyone else without access to those keys to decrypt and read them.
The order would have made it possible for UK law enforcement agencies to apply for a warrant, which must be approved by an independent judicial commissioner, to obtain Apple users’ end-to-end encrypted data from iCloud.
Rather than comply, Apple withdrew its ADP service from the UK. It said in a statement: “As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”
The order sparked a diplomatic furore, with protests from the US president’s senior advisor on intelligence and security, Tulsi Gabbard, and US lawmakers, who complained that the UK’s actions would violate the privacy of American citizens and weaken cyber security.
Members of the British public surveyed in a poll oppose unhindered access to encrypted communications.
