This week, the UK put the entire world at risk. I understand that may sound like alarmist hyperbole, but follow me. To understand, we have to go back to 2016, a year that I like to describe as “the year the world got collectively blackout drunk and decided to call our ex.” A lot of wild stuff happened that year – especially in the UK – so one thing that might’ve slipped under the radar was the passing of a little law called the Investigatory Powers Act. This law would later go on to be nicknamed “The Snooper’s Charter” by critics, and it allowed the UK to dramatically expand their electronic surveillance powers. How dramatically, you might ask? Two weeks ago, Apple was ordered to insert an encryption backdoor (more on that in a moment) into iCloud. And they weren’t allowed to publicly disclose it. And also even if they wanted to fight it, they’d still have to comply while the courts considered their appeal.

Yeah. That dramatically.

The thing is, Apple has made it abundantly clear in no uncertain terms that they will refuse any request by any government to knowingly insert backdoors into their software. So in light of their inability to fight this request, Apple simply decided to remove iCloud encryption entirely for UK users.