One thing everyone has to realize:
you do not own your data in the Cloud.
Yes, you heard me right.
When you upload your data to any cloud service, including iCloud, the data for that sits on that provider's servers, putting them in possession of it. So when any federal entity investigating you or any person, they do not require a warrant to access your data there, because since the data is owned by a 3rd party, that 3rd party is not privy to that warrant, so only a subpoena from a clerk of the court is needed.
Oh, PSA: Any lawyer is a clerk of the court. They can create their own subpoena and execute it (it does not need to be signed off by the court), and delivered to that 3rd party for whatever purposes are listed in that subpoena, including providing any and all data needed for their investigation. They do not need to go directly to you for that. A report was done on this and posted in PRSI about it roughly 8 years ago:
Could government agents really get access to all your private data in less than a minute? Experts say no but warn we are moving in that direction.
www.npr.org
How that is relevant here: if such abusive photos or worse is located on Apple's servers, Apple could possibly be charged with the harboring of such photos, putting them in legal liability, along with being subpoenaed to answer questions about who uploaded those pictures, when, etc. Then the investigators could go after the person that did it. In the end, Apple gets dinged on legal charges, as well as the uploader. Apple is looking at how to get out of those legal issues with this.
Again, I'm not saying whether it is morally or ethically right or wrong, but they also are looking after themselves with this.
BL.