Law enforcement is only a tool for punishment of offenders, it in no way "protects children" because the offense has already occurred.

Anecdotal example, but this is seems to be the opposite of wanting to "protect children": https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-06/high-risk-paedophile-...

This shows an ignorance of how law enforcement operates in this space. Sometimes it is retroactive as you say, but often it is preemptive. For example, cops sometimes go looking on social media platforms for people soliciting CSAM, strike up a relationship, and talk people who take the bait into a physical meeting, at which point they pull out the badge and a warrant and examine the target's phone for evidence of existing possession. Another approach when potential crimes are reported (eg by a parent who discovers someone attempting to seduce their kid) is to silently take over the victim's role in the conversation and lure the would-be predator into a meeting, at which point the cuffs come out.

Anecdotal example, but this is seems to be the opposite of wanting to "protect children"

Yes, but what of it? This is a fallacy of composition, which assumes that failures or perverse legal outcomes are all part of some twisted masterplan designed to strip away freedoms. It's just cope, like the arguments in the wake of mass shootings that they are all secretly engineered by the FBI, based on the fact that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies sometimes fail to act on warning signs that seem obvious with hindsight.

Regarding #2, I'm in no way conspiratorial about it, but it's a single data point in the opposite direction, which points to a lack of resources or a well thought out over-arching plan to solve the problem. None of that is conspiracy, it's reality, but it's also embarassing to 'policy', and should be pointed out as such. (I'm in no way saying they're trying to encourage, not at all).

Offenders only ever do it once?

What's interesting is that recently privacy advocates have thankfully also recognized that "think of the children" can be a legitimate argument, and have been using it to fight against horrible solutions. But we really have to move past this and find better solutions, it can't be this endless tit for tat as "both sides" wind up losing.

Well, I'd be curious to see how widespread CSAM is altogether, and especially how much WhatsApp, Messengers, and others are relevant for abusers. One thing I know about this topic is that the offenders are mostly close relatives. The thing I don't know, but intuitively, I'd not think that a close relative would take the risk of sending compromising messages on the smartphone of the victim. Not denying it never exists, but what are the numbers we are talking about? As neutral as I'm trying to think, it's very very hard to see a genuine intention into what the EU is doing

I don't have stats off the top of my head, but it's possible, albeit labor-intensive, to make some inferences. Many child porn cases are prosecuted at the federal level because electronic communications are a kind of interstate commerce. By digging through PACER and similar legal databases, it's not too hard to build a corpus of criminal complaints. The really labor intensive part (although ML and other methods help to shorten it) is parsing the legalistic documents to extract information about which platforms most easily facilitate contact and negotiations between peers (CSAM enthusiasts) and targets (unwary kids preyed upon by unscrupulous adults).

It might also be possible to extract information on prosecutions resulting from a report or fortuitous discovery of CSAM-related activity, and that involving sting operations by law enforcement.

It has always without exceptions been a moral panic encouraged and nurtured by established interests to support their urge for more and more control.

As big of a problem as CSAM may be, failing to acknowledging that tech can't be the sole solution has to be either a sign of malice or incompetence.