Perhaps this is essentially more lawfare against a party antagonistic to the political aims of Washington players. We know that our national (as well as state) law enforcement entities have been alleging for more than a decade now that Apple's encryption practices stymie their efforts to catch "bad guys." What better way to put back room pressure on a company.
This is a false narrative. iPhones back up full message history and all photos by default in a non-e2ee fashion that is easily readable by both Apple and the government unless the user and everyone they message with specifically opts into e2ee (which approximately nobody has, even in tech circles).
There is no “going dark” issue on iOS platforms. Apple has played ball in full with the USG on that front. In fact, Android backups are e2ee so the government can get more data from Apple on iPhone users than they can get from Google for Android users.
Apple has option to enable e2ee on backups now. It sort of defeats the purpose of backup though because if you lose device you lose the backup (assuming you only have one device and didn’t setup recovery keys off device)
