But it’s still only cloud photos being scanned. The only photos on your device being scanned are ones that are being uploaded to the cloud. So again, what’s the practical difference?
There is none. I partly blame apple for putting these 3 distinct features into the same PR doc, news articles that are flat out wrong, and commenters for not reading the original source. Because it’s apple and privacy, people immediately lose all semblance of understanding it seems.
There are some valid slippery slope arguments to be made. But, the feature as described and implemented today actually increases privacy for CSAM scanning.
If the scan remained in the cloud, it could not be misused to spy on anything else but the uploads. But if it runs on the device and sends findings, it fits the definition of spyware.
When you use a cloud service, you must (should) be aware of the consequence of your files being stored on another computer on the internet.
Until now, your local files on your device were not scanned in an inscrutable manner.
This is a precedent.