I'm upvoting you because that's excellent link I hadn't seen before. However, it does tend to confirm what I was saying: the policies and procedures of syncing

I'm upvoting you because that's excellent link I hadn't seen before. However, it does tend to confirm what I was saying: the policies and procedures of syncing are so damn complicated. It also confirms that your photos and notes are typically not encrypted in a way that prevents Apple from reading them. I.e., Apple can read them unless you are (a) running iOS 16.2 or greater, and (b) you have "chosen to enable Advanced Data Protection".