It’s that third party doctrine that is so convenient when acquiring information otherwise requiring a warrant to obtain.

It's right up there with Wickard v. Filburn in terms of SCOTUS screw-ups.

Acting as a agent, used to anyway, mean the 4th amendment attached to the company

if they WERE NOT acting as an agent then the 4th would not apply. I think they way they get around that is not do not report to the FBI but instead to NCMEC a "non-profit"

> I think they way they get around that is not do not report to the FBI but instead to NCMEC a "non-profit"

No. The courts have already explicitly rejected the entity that NCMEC is a private entity. NCMEC can only handle child porn via special legislative permission and is 99% funded by the government.

The searches here are lawful because Apple searches out of their own free will and commercial interest and when there is something detected their employees search your private communications (which the EULA permits).

This is also why Apple must review the matches before reporting them-- if they just matched an NCMEC database and blindly forwarded then to NCMEC then it would be the NCMEC conducting the search and a warrant would be required.

Reporting to the government doesn't make you a government agent, doing the search at the direction of the government does.

If a private citizen, on their own initiative, searches your house, finds contraband, and reports it to the government, they may be guilty of a variety of torts and crimes (both civil and criminal trespass, among others, are possibilities), there is no fourth amendment violation.

If a police officer asks them to do it, though, there is a different story.

who in turn reports to the government?

No, the Fourth Amendment applies to private actors acting on behalf of the government.

> No, the Fourth Amendment applies to private actors acting on behalf of the government.

It applies to private actors acting as agents of the government, it doesn't apply to private actors who for private reasons not directed by the government conduct searches and report suspicious results to the government (other property and privacy laws might, though.)

So the 4th Amendment doesn't cover Apple voluntarily inducing their devices to check for CSAM prior to cloud upload.

But the 4th Amendment would cover Apple being forced to modify their system to scan for anything else the Government has told them to.

That's correct. If the government asked them to do it, then it would require a warrant to conduct the search.

Why stop there? Instead of getting pesky warrants to search apartments, the government could just contract the landlord to do the search for them. After all, the landlord owns the property and ownership trumps every other consideration in libertarian fantasy-land.