[zmmmmm]

> But hey, if these garbage clientside filtering of image uploads is enough security theatre to keep governments satisfied, I say let them have it.

The thing to be wary of is that they may be intended to be useless. Their purpose is not to work, but to establish the precedent / principle that invasion of privacy is warranted / justified / accepted / needed. This then sets the stage for later saying "we now want to outlaw encryption completely because the previous methods that are already [accepted / justified / needed] are not working". So for the ultimate aims of their proponents, it's better if they don't work than if they do.

If you want to see it in action you can look to Australia where it is exactly this argument being employed: ie - police have always had surveillence capability for telephone calls, so new powers that inject interception capability into the OS layer of phones are just re-establishing something already accepted, not introducing something new.