for privacy purposes that advanced encryption on the iPhone is now completely useless as long as iCloud backup is on.

I kind of wish people could pull back from the anti-government circlejerk long enough to rationally evaluate how big of a problem it actually is for them in their day-to-day life, and to consider other areas besides that where privacy measures matter.

The likelihood of the government specifically asking Apple for MY iCloud backups is insanely lower than the likelihood that someone steals my phone and tries to get data off of it, or that the cops pull me over and confiscate my phone. In the former situation, the person who stole my phone can't do almost anything with it now, and they can't access Apple's servers, so my cloud backup is both safe and a convenient way of restoring my device when I get a replacement. In the latter scenario, the cops don't have a 24/7 hotline to Apple, so if they confiscate my device I can just go home and erase the backups from Apple's server (or just not really give a shit because the chances of them really trying to decrypt my phone are right around zero since I am not a 1337 h@x0R that is going to get arrested for cybercrime or whatever). But the cops still couldn't just access my device files willy-nilly on their shitty little in-house systems, they would have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get the data from Apple.

Just because a security feature doesn't stop the US Federal Government from fucking with you doesn't mean it's not useful. Most normal people aren't battling the FBI/CIA on a regular basis, but normal people get their phones stolen or lost (or surreptitiously accessed by friends/family/lovers, etc.) all the time.