I felt a little peace of mind seeing the responses here, especially about the software being disabled if iCloud photos is disabled. This response is odd though:

I felt a little peace of mind seeing the responses here, especially about the software being disabled if iCloud photos is disabled. This response is odd though: > Well first, that is launching only for US, iCloud accounts, and so the hypotheticals seem to bring up generic countries or other countries that aren’t the US when they speak in that way, and the therefore it seems to be the case that people agree US law doesn’t offer these kinds of capabilities to our government. Apple's already said they're going to launch this in other countries - it doesn't seem hypothetical. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/06/apple-says-any-expansion-of-csam-detection-outside-of-the-us-will-occur-on-a-per-country-basis/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/06/apple-says-any-expansion-of-c... I sense Apple's scrambling to respond to people's valid concerns. They should have just spent a few more weeks working on the PR before announcing this, anticipating people's attachment to their privacy, and maybe offering users a benefit to this more invasive system - like true E2EE for photos, backups, and drive files.