[mrweasel]

That actually make it more okay with me. Apple can't have child pornography on their servers, that would be illegal. However, the fact that they are doing the scanning one the device could indicate that they don't have the ability to do the scans in iCloud. Presumably they can't read even read the images once stored in iCloud, so they have to do it on the device.

I don't know if that's the reason, but seems like a reasonable guess.

[shawnz]

Apple actually isn't legally liable for what users upload until it's reported to them. And they are capable of doing the scanning server-side, since iCloud doesn't use end-to-end encryption.

[tyingq]

> since iCloud doesn't use end-to-end encryption

Interesting. They say they do, seemingly for many things, though not all[1]. Do you have more info?

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

[shawnz]

You are right that some specific features on iCloud do have end-to-end encryption (only those listed under "End-to-end encrypted data" on this page).

But the majority of users' sensitive data is not included in that set of features. For example the Photos (what's being affected here), Drive, and Backup features don't use it. Note that any encryption keys backed up using iCloud Backup are therefore effectively not end-to-end protected either.

Somewhat misleadingly, this page indicates those features use encryption both "in transit" and "at rest", but Apple controls the encryption keys in those cases, so they are actually not end-to-end encrypted.

Here is a report indicating that scanning is already happening on the server side: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-...

Here is a report about how the FBI specifically pressured them against adding end-to-end encryption to iCloud backups: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...