The public opinion being in favour of detecting CSAM does not necessarily mean the public opinion is in favour of sending all your photos to GCHQ to check if they're CSAM.

Given that according to the last question on that survey the public also overwhelmingly (~90%!) supports holding senior managers personally accountable and punishable by law should firms fail to comply I think it's fair to say they want authorities to have the ability to enforce these measures. The GCHQ has nothing to do with it.

If you ask people "Should CSAM be caught?" they'll say "yes" because, duh.

If you ask people "Should phones scan their files for CSAM?" a good part will say "yes" because it doesn't sound like it affects anyone outside of child pornographers.

If you ask people "Should phones send your photos to GCHQ to check if they're CSAM?" most people will say "no".

If you ask people "Should phones send your photos to GCHQ to check if they're CSAM, and should we send Apple executives to prison if they don't make their phones do this?" most people will still say "no".

Maybe not, but even the more mild option of Apple/Google doing a local scan of the device, and then secretly sending some sort of result to Apple/Google to take some action, is also pretty awful from a privacy perspective.

Isn’t that basically the plan Apple had, and scrapped, to scan for CSAM on device?

The problem with all of this is that these poll questions don't leave room to allow people to understand the implications and consequences of taking one of the positions.

Let's say the question was written something like this:

> Do you believe it should or should not become a legal requirement for the following to scan messages and posts on their platforms for child sexual abuse, even if such scanning would also compromise the security and privacy of all law-abiding users of the platform?

I obviously can't say for certain, but I think that 60% and 79% would drop, at least some substantial amount. Even if the "should not" positions wouldn't go up, I think it would muddy the waters enough that many new people would fall into the "don't know" camp.

The problem is that the polling just presents these questions to evoke a "oh, obviously I'd want this, to protect the children!" sort of reaction. The "but think of the children!" thing is almost a joke or cliche at this point, but it is disturbingly effective at shutting off people's critical thinking, causing them to agree with whatever the argument is. On top of that, media reporting around these issues never gives the pro-privacy angle enough consideration. And even when it does, it's usually in small "nerdy" publications that most people don't read. I'm also of the opinion that many people just can't and won't understand, adopting the fallacious "if I've done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide" position.