[int_19h]

The precedent established by Google et al is that it's okay to scan things that are physically in their data centers. It's far from ideal, but at least it's somewhat common sense in that if you give your data to strangers, they can do unsavory things with it.

The precedent now established by Apple is that it's okay to scan things that are physically in possession of the user. Furthermore, they claim that they can do it without actually violating privacy (which is false, given that there's a manual verification step).

[shuckles]

The precedent established by Apple, narrowly read, is it’s ok to scan data that the user is choosing to store in your data center. As you pointed out, this is at least partly a legal matter, and I’m sure their lawyers - the same ones who wrote their response in Apple vs. FBI I’d imagine - enumerated the scope or lack thereof.

Apple’s claim, further, is that this approach is more privacy-preserving than one which requires your cloud provider to run undisclosed algorithms on your plaintext photo library. They don’t say this is not “violating privacy,” nor would that be a well-defined claim without a lot of additional nuance.