Realistically we are talking about FISA here, so in theory if the FBI gets a FISA court order to gather "All of the Apple account data" for a non-us person, Apple would either hand over the encrypted data OR just omit that....
Based on the stance Apple is taking here, its reasonable to assume they would do the same in the US (disable the feature if USG asked for a backdoor or attempted to compel them to decrypt)
I think it's more likely that Apple would challenge it in US courts and prevail. Certainly a legal battle worth waging, unlike in the UK.
Eventually the US government withdrew their demand.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption...
It's good that Apple refused them, but I wouldn't count that as evidence that the data is secure from the US government.
Apple's legal argument that the government's demand that they insert a backdoor into iOS was tantamount to compelled speech (in violation of the first amendment) was going over a little too well in court.
The Feds will often find an excuse to drop cases that would set a precedent they want to avoid.
I don't think messages should ever leave the device, if you want to migrate to a different device this could be covered by that user flow directly. Maybe you want to sync media like photos or videos shared on a group chat and I'm fine with that compromise but I see more risks than benefits on backing up messages on the cloud, no matter if it's encrypted or not.
Know your threat model and what actions your trying to defend against.
Typical humans need trusted vendors that put in actual effort to make themselves blind to your personal data.
If the US is willing to build an entire data center in Outback Australia to allow warrantless access to US citizen data, why wouldn’t they be forcing WhatsApp backups to be unlockable?
Here a country that has no ties with most of apple's customers is just butting in and claiming access to all of them.
So what's next. Are we also giving access to everyone's data to Russia? Iran?
Totally agree. Having this discussion so US centred just makes us miss the forest for the trees. Apart from data owned by US citizens, my impression is that data stored in the US is fair game for three letter agencies, and I really doubt most companies would spend more than five minutes agreeing with law enforcement if asked for full access to their database on non-US nationals.
Also, remember that WhatsApp is the go-to app for communication in most of the world outside the US. And although it's end-to-end encrypted, it's always nudging you to back up your data to Google or Apple storage. I can't think of a better target for US intelligence to get a glimpse of conversations about their targets in real time, without needing to hack each individual phone. If WhatsApp were a Chinese app, this conversation about E2E and backup restrictions would have happened a long time ago. It's the same on how TikTok algorithm suddenly had a strong influence on steering public opinion and instead of fixing the game we banned the player.