You have a point but I have doubts that any organisation on the planet has the capability/willingness/resources to surgically remove data from historical backup

You have a point but I have doubts that any organisation on the planet has the capability/willingness/resources to surgically remove data from historical backups. I think its more likely that no backups exist, or that, say, no backups exist past X days in the past. Or worse, that backups exist, but they have been found to be unrestorable.