&quot;As the Ninth Circuit put it in a case interpreting technical assistance in a different context, private companies&#x27; obligations to assist the government have “not extended to circumstances in which there is a complete disruption of a service they offer to a customer as part of their business.”<p>It wasn&#x27;t the case with Lavabit; there is obviously some point at which businesses are expected to properly architect their encryption solutions in order to comply with lawful search warrants. Would have been nice for the article to raise that counter-point and maybe try to address where exactly the line is drawn?<p>The point is Lavabit wasn&#x27;t an &#x27;All Writs&#x27; issue, if you get a search warrant against the company for data held by the company (e.g. the unencrypted iCloud backup) then it&#x27;s a completely different expectation of compliance.<p>Does this or the WaPo article address if Apple possessed an iCloud backup of the device?