· This was largely anticipated and helps smooth the way to the new EU adequacy decisions for the UK being adopted in the coming weeks.
· Unlike the U.S. Administration, the EU has had a much more muted reaction to the UK Home Office’s purported attempt to build a “backdoor” to Apple’s end-to-end encrypted services. The EDPB has broken cover and characterized the UK’s demands of Apple as a “significant development that merits attention,” with an expectation that the European Commission address it explicitly.
o The debates surrounding the parameters of lawful and effective access to data, for the purposes of law enforcement and national security, are at a high point, especially with EU Chat Control and CSAM legislative policy initiatives swirling. Happenings in the UK might prove a stalking horse for debates in Brussels and elsewhere.
· There’s somewhat of an irony with the continued EU scrutiny into the UK’s reformed data protection rulebook, which has moved, albeit fairly modestly, away from the EU GDPR. That irony is that the European Commission is itself considering whether and how to revise the GDPR, with proposals that might go further in departing from the status quo than the UK went.
