But would they? We know the NSA has pressured other secure services into installing a back door or decrypting certain communications on demand, and there’s no reason to think they haven’t shown up at Apple’s doorstep asking for the same thing. Because such requests are top secret, the company wouldn’t be able to tell us if that was happening.

Apple disputed the findings, issuing a statement to All Things D saying that iMessage was “not architected” to allow this, and that it would have to “re-engineer” the system to do so. NBC News contacted the company for further technical details, but an Apple representative only state they “don’t have anything to add” to their existing comments.

If you trust Apple, you can carry on as before, knowing that your messages are safe from malicious hackers, and that Apple will almost certainly not look at your messages for any reason short of a court order. But if you don’t trust Apple, you can “over-encrypt” your messages, essentially putting them in code yourself before giving them to iMessage to encode — like putting a lock on your lock.