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They already can decrypt iCloud photos, why else perform an on-device scan ? If not with the intention to scan all local contents ?

And the matching photo is uploaded upon match. So regardless the photo is uploaded. What's the point again of taking this further step?

That is an EXCELLENT question, fwiw.

They could have just had a local failure. I suspect there were a lot of arguments around this point - should they be making an attempt merely to prevent such content from their servers, or to detect/report behaviors which may be illegal and harmful.

> It does not scan arbitrary local content.

Yet.

Before it was "only content uploaded to iCloud is scanned" and now it's "photos are scanned on-device". That's frog boiling that tomorrow easily becomes "arbitrary files are scanned anywhere on the device".

Only photos being uploaded to iCloud are scanned on device for CE imagery. This is the alternative to having cloud storage having broad decryption ability to do scanning in-service (as say Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and Facebook do)

It also scans every photo that an iMessage user sends/receives.