Edward Snowden's article earlier this week posited that some 80% of iPhone users leave auto-sync on for iCloud, meaning that there's about a 20% chance that the next thing you send over iMessage isn't encrypted.
Why is guesswork like that acceptable in a privacy tool? Furthermore, who actually believed that Apple couldn't read their messages? 'End-to-end' means very little when both ends are Apple-controlled.
It’s pretty simple. iMessage is relatively secure and most criminals, nation states etc, won’t be able to access your messages unless they have a legal means to do so.
If you need protection from a nation state that can force Apple to divulge content, such as the US, use something else such as signal.
It's included in iCloud backups, just not toggled to use end to end encrypted iCloud sync (in which case iCloud backups would back up the decryption key).
Why is guesswork like that acceptable in a privacy tool? Furthermore, who actually believed that Apple couldn't read their messages? 'End-to-end' means very little when both ends are Apple-controlled.