hellwig :
I think the discussion of end-to-end encrypted messaging might be misleading. Presumably Apple cannot store the un-encrypted messages, can it? I assume it has to be storing encrypted messages, and presumably that's just raw data Apple (and the FBI, hackers, etc...) will never be able to do anything with (without dedicating a lot of processing power to decrypt).
That's a weird statement. If Apple can't delete files without decrypting them first, how can Apple send those files back to the phone?
I can only imagine how weird of an exchange that would be...
iPhone: "iCloud, give me file 42!"
iCloud: "Here you go, file 42."
iPhone: "iCloud, delete file 42!"
iCloud: "Ok, deleting file 42."
* 30 days later *
iPhone: "Well, did you delete it?"
iCloud: "Wait, I'm still decrypting it."