In an open letter to Britain's Government Communication Headquarters,... 47 signatories,... including Apple and Google ,have jointly urged the U.K. cybersecurity agency to abandon its plans to "eavesdrop".
This comes as intelligence officials at GCHQ proposed a way they believed law enforcement could access end-to-end encrypted communications,... without undermining the privacy, security or confidence of other users,... a practice known as "ghost protocol".
However, critics say it's impossible for the practice to be done without seriously breaching user security and trust.
In 2015 and 2016,... Apple, one of the signatories of the open letter,... took a stand over data privacy in a widely publicized standoff with the FBI.