The fear was that Apple would be coerced to add in non-CSAM hashes to the hit list, much as Apple is now compromised fully in China. Thus any undesirable mater

The fear was that Apple would be coerced to add in non-CSAM hashes to the hit list, much as Apple is now compromised fully in China. Thus any undesirable material - a campaign poster, a meme, a video leak of classified info - would be yanked from customer devices and trigger this automated reporting flow. Apple already gives the Chinese government access to iCloud data for Chinese citizens. Being bullied into searching for eg anti-Xi material is a small jump. The other concern is that the hashes themselves are prone to false positives. This is true of the source hashes and concerns in the algorithm. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children data has been known to match on pictures of tricycles and monkeys (clearly not CSAM). Do now we are in a world of pushing automated child abuse charges against people because a faulty algorithm. The whole thing is just prone to abuse.