The worst thing about it is that CP possession is a strict liability crime in most jurisdictions. Meaning that prosecution doesn't have to prove intent - if they can find it on your machine, you're guilty regardless of how it got there.

But for any serious charge you need indisputable evidence, and usually lots of it, usually the threshold is quite high.. But in the United States the system is insane so I could be wrong

All the evidence required is that it is there.

Does not matter if someone else put it there without your knowledge. Or maybe it matters, but then it's on you (for all intents and purposes) to prove that it was without your knowledges.

The punishment for strict liability is much lower than for the same act with intent.

It's still essentially a death sentence if you are innocent.

In criminal law you must be aware of an item for it to be under your possession. If someone plants illegal content on your computer, and you are unaware, you aren't legally in possession.

"Typically in criminal law, the defendant's awareness of what he is doing would not negate a strict liability mens rea (for example, being in possession of drugs will typically result in criminal liability, regardless of whether the defendant knows that he is in possession of the drugs)."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_liability

Note the word 'typically'.

The purpose of strict liability in possession is to prevent the defense that someone does not know the legal status of an item in their possession. It does NOT prevent the defense that someone does not _know_ something to be in their possession.

For example, it is not a defense to have drugs and claim "but I didn't know they were illegal". It is a defense to claim "I did not know they were there."

In drug cases with actual possession, it is difficult to support a defense of "I didn't know they were there", which is why charges typically result in criminal liability. They drugs were physically on you, and unless you have evidence that someone planted them, it is unlikely you could establish reasonable doubt.

But in cases of electronic material for networked devices, there is most certainly an affirmative defense to counter actual possession and constructive possession. Computer devices are hacked all the time, and network & device logs exist. For example, if a prosecutor agrees to the fact that a defendant had no knowledge of the material, a judge would toss the case and a jury would not convict you. The law is not meant to pedantically convict you of non-crimes.

Yeah it wasn't meant to be an analogy. For example consider a real murder video, is its posession illegal and does it mean its owner should be a murder suspect?

You are still falling into the same line of thinking here. The person isn't arrested because we assume they are a molester. They are arrested for possessing illegal material. Your argument here really sounds like you are suggesting that CP should be legal and it is the action of molesting that should be illegal. I don't think you would find many people who agree with that. Society has decided both are separate crimes and while there is likely large overlap, overlap is not required to be charged for either crime individually.

> Society has decided both are separate crimes

Actually it's legislators and the courts that come up with these laws and they are complicated. The question is if these laws reduce child abuse or simply increase spying, and in the end what is the acceptable balance between these two.

Legislators are a proxy for society. Do you believe that if you polled the US that any sizable portion of the country would be in support of legalizing CP?

If you polled the population, chances are they'd support torture, rape and execution as punishment for abusers.

The real crime is child abuse. Material related to that is also illegal because it presumably creates demand for the abuse. Whether that's actually true I don't know.

In liberal democracies legislators also protect fundamental rights from the whims of the majority.

> if you polled the US that any sizable portion

No, but they also would agree to that they should have an option to keep their data privately. Maybe the public should be polled about this tradeoff?

For example the case of virtual CP has an interesting legal history https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center...

>No, but they also wouldn't consent to having no option left to record their thoughts privately. Maybe the public should be polled about this tradeoff?

It is fine if this is your argument, but you don't have to wrap this argument in with the very legality of CP. You can acknowledge something is and should be a crime while also being against these type of automated dragnets to find people guilty of said crime.

> something is and should be a crime while also being against these type of automated

But there is a clear tradeoff between the two so saying that would be a useless platitude. If we really see the internet as an extension of our vocal chords, then we should have individual rights to it, especially considering the fact that the internet infrastructure is not provided by the governments themselves, only the spying is.

I don't know what to say to you if you consider someone voicing opposition to this move by Apple as a "useless platitude" if they don't also believe that we have a constitutional right to post CP on the internet.