They are literally telling you what they do with full disclosure, and have engineered a system to give you _more_ privacy than you have on any existing cloud photo provider today.
If you don't want to use cloud photo services because you don't like the implications, they are very upfront; disable iCloud photos. But every major cloud photo hosting service is doing this already on your images.
What you are missing is the behind the scenes pressure for DOJ, FBI and congress. Apple is trying their best to thread the needle, providing as much privacy as possible while plausibly covering their bases so congress won't pass onerous and privacy stripping laws.
> Apple is trying their best to thread the needle, providing as much privacy as possible while plausibly covering their bases so congress won't pass onerous and privacy stripping laws.
There is the problem right there. How can you tell that Apple is doing their best to preserve privacy vs doing their best to server their own interests?
If congress passes laws, those laws are in the open and we have a whole process dedicated to passing new laws. Here is something you maybe did not consider: passing those laws would be hard impossible without basically sacrificing any political capital the washed up political class still has in today's US (have you noticed how even the smallest issues is a big political issue and how congress doesn't seem to get much done nowadays?)
The 2nd part is that not the DOJ, FBI, NSA doing their job is the problem. The problem is mass surveillance. The same mass surveillance we have been subjected to keeps getting expanded to the point you will no longer be able to think anything else except what's approved by the people in power (if you think the thought police is a ridiculous concept, we are definitely heading that way).
Apple's shtick was that they cared about privacy. If they didn't do that dog and pony show maybe I would have written this off as "corporations being corporations". Now they don't get that.
> If you don't want to use cloud photo services because you don't like the implications, they are very upfront; disable iCloud photos.
You don't seem to get it. It's not about some fucking photos. Who cares. It's about what this open the door to. And about how this is going to be abused and expanded by "law enforcement".
In a world where you have shit like Pegasus and mass surveillance, you are one API call away from going to jail without even knowing what triggered it and being able to defend yourself. Probable cause? Fuck that. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent.
If you don't want to use cloud photo services because you don't like the implications, they are very upfront; disable iCloud photos. But every major cloud photo hosting service is doing this already on your images.
What you are missing is the behind the scenes pressure for DOJ, FBI and congress. Apple is trying their best to thread the needle, providing as much privacy as possible while plausibly covering their bases so congress won't pass onerous and privacy stripping laws.