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Apple says in the latest revision of its page on government information requests:

On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode. Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.

Sure enough, the company also updated its Legal Process Guidelines (PDF) to reflect the increase in user privacy:

For all devices running iOS 8.0 and later versions, Apple will no longer be performing iOS data extractions as the data sought will be encrypted and Apple will not possess the encryption key.

This is obviously good news for people concerned about the amount of our data swishing around in the binary ocean, ripe for government fishing expeditions.

However, it’s also worth noting the overwhelming majority, 93 percent, of law enforcement requests to Apple are made at the behest of the customer themselves, usually in the case of a lost or stolen device.

You can find more information about what Apple discloses to law enforcement at its transparency reports page.