Abstract:
This brief essay is written to question and perhaps help popularise a potential legal argument against the openly authoritarian UK Labour government and any similar regime. The UK Government recently coerced Apple into removing Advanced Data Protection from their services in the UK. This removes end-to-end encryption which entails mass system vulnerability to hackers and allows the UK Government legal access to iCloud data when a warrant is obtained. I appeal to Extended Mind Theory as articulated by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their essay ‘The Extended Mind’. I argue that one can prescribe to EMT and furthermore, if EMT is true then such encrypted data is functionally equivalent to extended cognition. This means that allowing any personally unauthorised third-party to access an agent’s encrypted data is akin to forced cognitive intrusion and an invasion into an individual’s mental privacy.
Introduction
With the death throes of the woke mind virus echoing and reverberating around the developed world, there is one place where free speech, censorship, and political prisoners of conscience are still held under lock and key. Keir Starmer’s Labour Government and his two tier judicial and legislative system have recently set a new legal and digital precedent. The Iron hand of Starmer’s communistic and authoritarian brand of Government, demanded that Apple build a backdoor into its encrypted system data for the Government to access when legally required. Rather than cave in entirely to this demand Apple spat out its famous pip and removed its Advanced Data Protection service [ADP] thereby ending its end-to-end encryption in the UK region and effectively surrendering its secure marketing edge in the UK. This is another colossal blunder and just another falling domino initiated by the Labour Government.
Furthermore, it seems a failure in Apple’s creative legal strategy and a further embarrassment for the UK on the world’s stage. With the rise of AI and our seeming total dependence on digital services used both offline and online in everyday life, we seem to be naught more than androids and cyborgs in everything but residual self-image, emotiveness, flesh and blood and name. It seems the question of cognitive privacy, in other words, the right to control one’s own thoughts and mental extensions has taken on new urgency. This short essay argues that Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ Extended Mind Theory (EMT) provides a framework for perhaps legally defending encryption as a form of cognitive extension, making forced or coerced decryption an unlawful intrusion into an individual’s mental privacy.
The Extended Mind Theory and Digital Cognition
EMT posits that cognition is not confined to the biological brain but extends into external objects, tools, and digital systems. A simple example is a notebook used by an agent with memory impairment, similar to Guy Pierce’s character in the movie Memento. This notebook, like a calculator, functions as part of the agent’s cognitive process, much like internal memory. In our digital era and on the precipice of Advanced General Intelligence, an argument can surely be made that cloud storage, encrypted backups, and AI-driven artifacts serve a cognitive role. The thrust of the EMT thesis can be concisely summed up by its advocates, Andy Clark and David Chalmers as follows:
“If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.” – The Extended Mind (p. 8)
Thus, the argument would be that for many individuals, encrypted data, such as private notes, saved messages, passwords, and personal reflections function as an externalised memory system. If it becomes the status quo to accept EMT as a popular descriptive reality– a naturally emergent cognitive consequence and legitimate conceptual framework between humanity and machine, then accessing a person’s cloud storage [which should be encrypted] is functionally equivalent and analogous to compelling an agent under duress to reveal their private thoughts. This entails that encryption is partially a humanitarian ethical issue and should be considered a human right, framed as a form of extended cognitive privacy.
Legal Protections for Cognitive Privacy
Under UK and international law, several fundamental legal rights could already be seen to protect cognitive privacy, all of which are now undermined by the government’s demand for backdoor encryption access and the removal of ADP these legal rights are as follows:
1. Right to Private Life (Article 8 ECHR) – Personal data, including stored thoughts and private documents, falls under the right to privacy. Just as the state cannot force an individual to reveal their thoughts, it should not be able to compel or coerce access to encrypted digital cognition.
2. Right Against Self-Incrimination (Article 6 ECHR) – The principle that individuals should not be forced to provide evidence against themselves applies to external memory. If encrypted data is an extension of an individual’s cognition, compelling access violates this fundamental protection.
3. Property & Intellectual Rights (UK GDPR & Common Law Protections) – Personal writings, reflections, and stored digital content are intellectual property. Just as private diaries are protected from unwarranted intrusion, so too should encrypted digital storage.
Government Overreach and the Proportionality Principle
The UK Supreme Court has emphasized that state actions must meet the necessity and proportionality test (R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017]). The demand for backdoor encryption access fails this test on three key grounds:
Lack of Necessity – The government has not demonstrated that mass weakening of encryption is the least intrusive method to achieve national security aims. Laser targeted warrants, rather than universal demands of all userdata would be more appropriate.
Overbreadth – The policy does not distinguish between genuine security threats and the everyday privacy rights of millions of citizens.
Security Risks – Weakening encryption makes all users more vulnerable to cybercrime, not just those under government investigation.
Conclusion: A New Legal Frontier for Cognitive Rights
If externalised cognition were to be legally recognised, then encryption is not just a security feature but a human rights issue. The UK government’s demand for backdoor access and Apple’s removal of ADP in response to this demand has set a dangerous precedent detrimental to cognitive privacy, compromising self-incrimination protections, and violates the fundamental right to personal security.
Apple and other tech companies should collectively band together and work to popularise this argument, changing the debate from corporate resistance to a fundamental defense of cognitive liberty with a parry and thrust into the heart of the woke mind virus. If privacy in the digital age is to be preserved, the legal system must acknowledge that our minds now extend beyond the limits of our brains and skull, integrating and interfacing with our beloved and loathed devices, across the sea of ether nebulously enveloped in our cloud storage and cognitive encryption.