While I didn’t agree with Apple’s approach, there is a subtle but IMHO critical nuance that is often forgotten about the client side scanning. It was only generating fingerprint material which Apple could decrypt and scan, alongside original images sent E2E encrypted to Apple servers. If the image wasn’t sent to Apple, the fingerprint wasn’t either.

And the reporting was still gated through Apple employees; there was no mechanism for the government to expand the scope without Apple’s knowledge.

I understand that people don’t like the idea of their personal hardware being complicit in treachery, but when considered from a purely functional perspective, apple’s proposal was no different to what Google and others were already doing.