Comment by everfree

Without Advanced Data Protection, your data is still encrypted at rest, it's just that Apple safeguards the encryption key. The purpose of ADP is to remove control of this key from Apple, so that it's impossible for Apple to leak your data to any third party, even if they are compelled to.

So to me, backdoor encryption seems like it defeats the whole point of ADP, no? But if not - even if there is some tiny marginal benefit - cryptography is extremely expensive to get right. It's doubtful that it makes financial sense to Apple to develop a new encryption workflow for a single country for very slight security benefits.

And it still wouldn't be complying with the UK's demands anyways. The UK demanded access to accounts worldwide. If Apple is going to be non-compliant, then they might as well be non-compliant the easy way.