Apple has announced it will offer users the ability to encrypt iCloud data on its servers, including backups, photos and notes. The new feature, called Advanced Data Protection, will prevent Apple from seeing contents stored on the cloud, and will make it impossible for the company to provide that content to law enforcement.
The service will be available in the United States before the end of the year, and will be opt-in, according to Apple. The company has previously encrypted a lot of data it stores on servers, but hasn’t made entire device backups, which include messages, contacts and other data, end-to-end encrypted.
The move is expected to please security advocates but upset law enforcement authorities. The lack of encryption of iCloud backups was previously seen as a weak point in the company’s privacy policy, and experts feared user data would be exposed if Apple servers were ever breached.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) welcomed the move. “We applaud Apple for listening to experts, child advocates, and users who want to protect their most sensitive data. Encryption is one of the most important tools we have for maintaining privacy and security online,” the group said.
The FBI has been less enthused by the announcement. In a statement on Wednesday the bureau said the new encryption would “hinder” its ability to “protect the American people from criminal acts,” the Wall Street Journal reported. In the past law enforcement has used the policy of not encrypting backups as a means to gather materials in investigations, despite Apple’s iMessage and devices being encrypted.
“At Apple, we are unwavering in our commitment to provide our users with the best data security in the world. We constantly identify and mitigate emerging threats to their personal data on device and in the cloud,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said in a statement.