> My guess about this whole debacle is that - with pressure from the government to scan their cloud storage - that this is the alternate scenario to avoid givin

> My guess about this whole debacle is that - with pressure from the government to scan their cloud storage - that this is the alternate scenario to avoid giving up (or being forced to) the "encryption" guarantees of their cloud. This is exactly the case. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/senate-judiciary-committee-wants-everyone-know-its-concerned-about-encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/senate-judiciary-commi... > I'm not sure what technical process they have in place to "only decrypt with valid law enforcement requests" or allow account rescue, but it seems likely that not just any employee can view whatever they want, before or after this system. They have master keys that can be used to decrypt almost everything you upload. They can be compelled to decrypt and turn over information on anyone. Another (unsourced) comment in this thread indicated they do so 30,000 times per year. The new encryption scheme will effectively stop this for photos, and no doubt other files in the future. Apple's side will begin using shared key encryption, which will require ALL ~31 keys to decrypt the offending images. The decryption keys are only generated on-device, and only from a hash that results from a CSAM match. The other photos, simply won't have the decryption keys generated, so they don't even exist. As an interesting side note, this means that a person who surpasses the CSAM threshold will still only reveal the images that actually match the CSAM database. Every other image, including those that have CSAM unknown to authorities remain encrypted. This is hardly a big win for the big scary government. They now have far less ability to search for evidence of any other crimes. You could upload video of your bank robbery to iCloud, and as long as your personal device remains secure, nobody will know.