Here's my take on this<p>I think this was Apple calling the US government's bluff. I don't think they ever wanted to do anything like this because they know it destroys their claims of superior privacy. I think they have internal plans to roll out E2E iCloud encryption so that in addition to not being able to provide law enforcement the code to unlock any phone, they also won't be able to help law enforcement decrypt anything stored in iCloud, including those phone backups. So Apple sees the incoming fight where government cries foul to the public, making the same tried and true "think of the children" arguments, saying now all pedophiles will be free to save their CSAM on Apple servers. It's the government's way to try to get the public against Apple on this, and this is how Apple neuters that argument.<p>But I don't think anyone in the government really cares about the CSAM. What they really want is backdoor access to the devices for the high-value targets that they actually care about, or just to make their jobs a lot easier in other investigations, but that's a lot harder to sell to the public. Look at Facebook alone. They made 20 MILLION CSAM reports last year ALONE. That number was astounding to me. I haven't heard anyone discuss the sheer numbers yet. Think about that for a second. That's one company, making 55,000 CSAM reports PER DAY. The equivalent of a medium sized city being reported for CSAM materials every day! I don't know how many people work in government handling those reports, but I'd imagine the process of taking in reports, evaluating them, forwarding them to appropriate authorities, and then making arrests is not one that can possibly be automated away to deal with that kind of volume. And Apple would generate at least as many reports as Facebook I'd imagine, not to mention all the other sources of CSAM reports that are out there. Do we really think there's anyone in law enforcement who is saying "oh gee, if only we had an ADDITIONAL 55,000 CSAM reports coming in PER DAY then we'd really be able to get a handle on the problem." If anything, that just provides even more noise, making it harder to find real signals.<p>So now that they've shown they're willing to call law enforcement's bluff, I think law enforcement predictably has now said to them ok, it's not really about the CSAM, we still want backdoor access for other reasons, and now Apple is reevaluating their response.<p>The issue for Apple though is that even if they're legally allowed to say no to law enforcement requests to open up backdoors, they're probably being extorted by law enforcement threatening to come down on them for antitrust issues if they don't go along with it. Smaller companies that don't have antitrust issues to worry about would be able to put up a much more resilient fight.