tl;dr Common criminals go with default security settings. This is about to get even worse for law enforcement. To date, iCloud backup still offers a way for la

tl;dr Common criminals go with default security settings. This is about to get even worse for law enforcement. To date, iCloud backup still offers a way for law enforcement to access data with a warrant. However that is about to change. Apple is about to roll out iMessages on iCloud, which sounds innocuous, but actually will premiere a major step forward in security: end-to-end encrypted data in the cloud by default. This is huuuuuge. The thing that has been holding back E2EE as the default is that it has sacrificed recoverability. That is, it has required a strong password, which is easy to forget, and if you forget it, no one can help you. So it's something you had to opt into. Not a default. Now, Apple has created a backup solution that -- get this -- removes the need for a strong password. Sounds crazy, right? All you need to remember is your iPhone passcode. Obviously, this is brute forceable and can't secure your cloud data... Except yes it can. They've implemented hardware security modules that prevent brute forcing. Then they destroyed the signing key for the HSM firmware. Neat.[1] So, iMessages are going to transition to this, which probably means they won't be in the iCloud backup, and thus not available to law enforcement. And then it's probably just a matter of time until the whole backup is secured with E2EE. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U