Their actions speak louder than their words.

And their actions show that they aren’t likely to do any of the scary things they are being accused of.

That’s the point - people keep claiming some nefarious slippery slope, which is of course in the realm of possibility, but is not actually happening.

Apple stores user iCloud backups and their encryption keys on Chinese government-controlled servers in China, and gives the Chinese government full access to those servers. And routinely grants the US government warrantless access to those same backups in the US.

So what actions are you referring to that show they won't do any of those scary things?

Right, so presumably you’d agree that the people who are saying that CSAM detection is a problem because China might abuse it are just being silly, right?

As for the US government having access to the backups, that’s required by law.

You can always make the paranoid case that Apple wants to do this because they are somehow lying about their values, or you can make the case that their hand has been forced.

You could also note that they promised to implement e2e backups but haven’t yet, and this is rumored to be because the FBI asked them not to.

If you assume that Apple is doing this stuff because they want to, then of course you’ll see this next move as just another bad thing they are doing.

If on the other hand you consider that they don’t want to do these things but are being forced to until they have a better option, then you can look at this move as a way to get out of a double bind.

Now they can turn on e2e without being accused of creating a safe haven for pedophiles.

Both pathways are plausible, but given the investment in privacy Apple has been making and the consistency with which they state their values and boundaries, I don’t think they want to be creating backdoors.

> As for the US government having access to the backups, that’s required by law.

This is a false statement. Google's android backups are end to end encrypted.

It’s not a false statement.

Encrypted or not, Google will give the backups to the government, along with any keys they have.

I agree that there would be more protection against the government if the backups were encrypted, and I hope this is still Apple’s plan.

Google on the other hand, has been scanning photos for CSAM all along, and collects a massive trove of behavioral data from android and every one of their other properties including search history, all of which are also available to the government.