> What am I missing? The fact that this is not how security on iPhones works at all. There are unencrypted partitions of the storage yes, which means the devi

> What am I missing? The fact that this is not how security on iPhones works at all. There are unencrypted partitions of the storage yes, which means the device can boot into iOS without any user password, but the ones containing user data are encrypted and an OS update can at best remove the limit on how fast or how many times you can attempt to unlock the user data (or rather the Secure Enclave which stores the actual key for the user data). Sure, if you have a 4-6 digit PIN code this is then quickly unlocked in that scenario you're talking about, but if you have an alphanumeric password you can make that attack completely infeasible. Bottom line is there is no way for Apple to make a version of iOS that completely bypasses encryption, encryption doesn't work like that. They could, I guess, make a version which silently checks if it's host devices serial number is in a certain list provided by e.g. law enforcement, and then silently removes the SEP encryption, IF the user unlocks the device AFTER that software is installed. But they would have to secretly add this code to the normal iOS releases which would severely compromise their customers data en masse if they did it this way, or create a way to push a specific build over the air to a specific device (which actually doesn't sound that far-fetched honestly, now that I'm thinking about it), without alerting the user that they are installing a backdoor for law enforcement. I don't think that's feasible either way, because it would quickly come out that they've done that and once the cat's out of the bag they are losing big bucks, and would be criminals will simply stop installing updates on their iPhones.