> Apple has been, as part of their privacy initiatives, trying to do as much as possible on the device. That's how they have been defining privacy to themselves internally. Then someone said "can we do something about CSAM" [...]
As a separate issue, many people in the company certainly do care about privacy, and that may go all the way to to Tim Cook. Who knows.
What is much more important to Apple the company, though, is making money. Governments have been hounding them for years about letting them spy on users. And they have painted themselves into a bit of a corner, by having the most secure phones.
Now the government comes to them with an offer they can't refuse, cloaked in child porn motivations. I believe many (most?) of the people involved are sincere. It's clear they have tried to make the least invasive system that still does what the government wants.
But that's not good enough in the crazy connected cyber-world we find ourselves in today.
Apple doesn't have a motivation to do this themselves. But they will do what they calculate they need to do.