Judge Says U.K Hearing Over Compromising iCloud Encryption Must Be Public ⇥ bbc.com

Tom Singleton and Liv McMahon, BBC News:

The government argued it would damage national security if the nature of the legal action and the parties to it were made public — what are known as the “bare details of the case”.

In a ruling published on Monday morning, the tribunal rejected that request — pointing to the extensive media reporting of the row and highlighting the legal principle of open justice.

“It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place,” it states.

The public copy of the ruling (PDF) is kind of funny to read because of the secrecy rules around the technical capability notice. Presumably, this judge would know whether Apple had been issued this demand, but cannot say so. They therefore extensively refer to media reporting about the demand; in response to a request from U.S. lawmakers, they write of “discuss[ing] an alleged technical capability notice”, emphasis my own.

Ultimately, this decision is a rare bit of good news in the world of secret orders and demands to compromise encryption. At least we will know something about how it all goes down, even if it is buried in the language of hypotheticals and non-denials.