That’s what Federighi says in this interview. It’s only scanning photos that are about to be uploaded to iCloud. Otherwise photos aren’t scanned. Disable iCloud and there’s no scanning.
Still, I think Apple misjudged the whole cloud vs. device thing in this case. They’ve historically preached a lot about how everything should happen on the users device, not the cloud. I think that got myopic for them, and led them to this decision.
But in this case I think users would be much happier if Apple had just said “under pressure from law enforcement we are now scanning photos when they arrive at the iCloud data centers. If you don’t want scanning don’t use iCloud.” Because it’s not so much the scanning of uploaded photos that has people upset, it’s the fact that the scanning and phoning home is baked into the device itself.
Still, I think Apple misjudged the whole cloud vs. device thing in this case. They’ve historically preached a lot about how everything should happen on the users device, not the cloud. I think that got myopic for them, and led them to this decision.
But in this case I think users would be much happier if Apple had just said “under pressure from law enforcement we are now scanning photos when they arrive at the iCloud data centers. If you don’t want scanning don’t use iCloud.” Because it’s not so much the scanning of uploaded photos that has people upset, it’s the fact that the scanning and phoning home is baked into the device itself.