According to 9to5Mac, Apple has confirmed that it's already been scanning iCloud Mail for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and has been doing so since 2019. What it has not been doing is scanning iCloud Photos or iCloud backups, which sent the internet into a frenzy when it announced its intent to begin doing so.

The news has leaked out of emails which are part of an antitrust court case. It revealed that Apple confirmed  that it has been scanning outgoing and incoming iCloud Mail for CSAM attachments since 2019. Email is not encrypted, so scanning attachments as mail passes through Apple servers would be a trivial task.

Apple also indicated that it was doing some limited scanning of other data, but would not say what that was, except to suggest that it was on a tiny scale. It said that the "other data" does not include iCloud backups.

It is unclear at this point what Apple did if it found kiddie porn in an Apple fanboy’s inbox.  So far there does not appear to have been any cases were a person has been dragged to court about kiddle porn found on Apple servers.  The question now is, if finding kiddie porn was so important then why were the police not notified and what happened to the paedophiles who were found to have been sending it?

It is likely that the coppers will now want to see Apple’s files on these cases.