[mcintyre1994]

In particular Apple provide photo backups and (speculation) may be doing something server side to allow continuity features around text messaging from other devices.

This is getting into speculation about their role in Prism but I'm wondering how the iCloud encryption actually works. They say everything is encrypted while stored [0] but it's not clear (or I haven't found) whether that's using a key derived from the password or something Apple control. Either way I'm not entirely sure there's any way to stop Apple getting it if they're told to given the lack of transparency.

[0] http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4865