I think there might be misunderstanding about what exactly is "encrypted" and how. The comment 3 or 4 levels above says: > The same "vulnerability" of being ab

I think there might be misunderstanding about what exactly is "encrypted" and how. The comment 3 or 4 levels above says: > The same "vulnerability" of being able to respond to legal requests for iCloud data that exists in China exists everywhere else in the world. And an article on Apple's site [1] confirms that most data in the cloud are "encrypted", but without E2E encryption, possibly in a reversible way. That article also notes that while messages are E2E encrypted, a cloud backup might contain a key to decrypt them: > Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. So it is possible that the data on the phone are encrypted, the data in transit are encrypted, the data in the cloud are encrypted for every user in the world, but the cloud operator has the encryption keys for some of the encrypted data: Chinese operator for data of Chinese users and Apple for everyone else. This doesn't contradict neither with Apple's statement nor with the article nor with that comment above. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303