It could possibly be a hoax. To me though it (using iCloud) might as well be an invitation to the NSA to go to iCloud for one-stop data shopping instead of having to pilfer through all the millions of individual data sources out there. Much cheaper.
The government is ticked off at Apple because they refuse to play ball with the government's various surveillance programs, or even let them look at the data that is stored in the iCloud, even with a search warrant, now. Apple itself cannot decipher users' data. They simply do not have the keys. The users' keep their own keys.
Someone gets it.