That's entire memo sounds completely tone deaf and delusional.
It's shocking to me that they don't even acklowege the critisms and fully ignore them. It would be one thing if they said that the potential implications are worth it, but they don't even acklowege them.
...which is ultimately what they are going to try to do: label those who oppose this feature as being supporters of child abuse. It's a classic "if you're not with us, you're against us" argument.
If by "They" you mean Apple, then they did not. As noted by jsnell, and properly attributed in the linked article, it was written by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
It's true that if you retweet someone else's message, then you are not the original author of the message. But Apple leadership vetted the letter and passed it around staff, hoping that their employees would find it as "incredibly motivating" as they did.
The Apple VP did say the NCMEC note was incredibly motivating though. And he could have distanced himself from that part. Or told the NCMEC director he'd love to share her note with the staff if she removed the disrespect.
It's shocking to me that they don't even acklowege the critisms and fully ignore them. It would be one thing if they said that the potential implications are worth it, but they don't even acklowege them.