It&#x27;s important to emphasize something: iCloud will always be &quot;backdoored&quot;, by design, and backing up to iCloud is what most users should and will be doing.<p>The reason iCloud data will always be accessible by Apple, and thus governments, is not because Apple wants to make it accessible to governments. It&#x27;s so that Apple can offer customers the very important feature of accessing their own data if they forget or otherwise don&#x27;t have the password. That is an essential feature, and why this aspect will never change.<p>When someone passes away, for example, it would be a terrible compounding tragedy if all their photos from their whole life passed away along with them, because they didn&#x27;t tell anyone their password or where they kept the backup key. So Apple wants and needs to provide an alternative way to recover the account. (For example, they will provide access to a deceased person&#x27;s account if their spouse can obtain a court order proving the death and relationship.)<p>Harvard recent published a paper (called &quot;Don&#x27;t Panic&quot;) that essentially states the same.[1] Governments shouldn&#x27;t &quot;panic&quot; because in most cases, consumers will not be exclusively using unbreakable encryption, because it has tradeoffs that aren&#x27;t always desirable.<p>And the reason why most consumer should be backing up to iCloud is similar: that&#x27;s how you prevent the tragedy of losing your data if you lose your phone.<p>Just something to keep in mind when discussing the &quot;going dark&quot; and &quot;unhackable&quot; news items.<p>It is worth noting however that people who do &quot;have something to hide&quot; from governments probably won&#x27;t be using iCloud, if they know what they&#x27;re doing. Then again if they know what they&#x27;re doing, they wouldn&#x27;t use anything that is backdoored anyway. So the naive criminals will still probably be hackable, and that&#x27;s about all we can hope for.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cyber.law.harvard.edu&#x2F;pubrelease&#x2F;dont-panic&#x2F;Dont_Panic_Making_Progress_on_Going_Dark_Debate.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cyber.law.harvard.edu&#x2F;pubrelease&#x2F;dont-panic&#x2F;Dont_Pan...</a>