I am an Apple ecosystem lifetime participant. I have recovery and legacy contacts. What I would love is for those contacts to have the encryption key(s) for my data shared with them so they can provide me with recovery options if needed, but Apple cannot.
Certainly, nation state actors could pursue those people to obtain access to key material, but that is a different hill to climb than simply sending requests to Apple, especially for contacts outside of the jurisdiction or nation state reach. Perhaps Shamir's secret sharing would be a component of such an option (you need X out of Y trusted contacts to recover, 2 out of 3 for easy mode, 3 out of 5 for hard mode).
Certainly, nation state actors could pursue those people to obtain access to key material, but that is a different hill to climb than simply sending requests to Apple, especially for contacts outside of the jurisdiction or nation state reach. Perhaps Shamir's secret sharing would be a component of such an option (you need X out of Y trusted contacts to recover, 2 out of 3 for easy mode, 3 out of 5 for hard mode).