You just said yourself that hash collisions don't matter as "because upon viewing the image that matched, if it's not csam, it doesn't matter" So when you say

You just said yourself that hash collisions don't matter as "because upon viewing the image that matched, if it's not csam, it doesn't matter" So when you say "a hash alone is meaningless, since in court there must be a presentation of evidence", you'd just present the image to court. The hash is the trigger to call the authorities they handle the rest And with a userbase the size of apple and people as pissy as reddit, you want to completely exclude a possibility of collisions or you'll get a repeat of the scenario we got in 2021