&gt; from the perspective of Apple, as nothing more than a ribbon, as Apple already has &quot;unfettered access to [your] data&quot;<p>No! Since iOS8 Apple intentionally encrypts the user&#x27;s data on the phone in a way that even they don&#x27;t have access to them.<p>They have access to the hardware, to be able to reconfigure it, but not the encrypted data on the phone. Because the data is encrypted, intentionally so.<p>And they have access to the iCloud backup data and they gave that data to the FBI. Then FBI actually locked their access to the phone by changing the iCloud password.