In a bid to boost its surveillance efforts, the UK Government's Home Office reportedly requested a ‘backdoor’ be built into Apple’s end-to-end encryption to allow law enforcement agencies access to user data.

Apple says it will stop offering an advanced data security option for British users after the government reportedly demanded that the company provide backdoor access for any data those users have stored in the cloud.

Security officials argue that encryption hinders criminal investigations, while tech firms defend it as essential to user privacy.