Also the difference here compared to the scenarios you've mentioned above is that Apple has walked pretty far. All it would take is to make the verification happen on all local files irrespective of its being uploaded to iCloud or not. Then any government can provide their own hashes to apple to keep track of. Apple won't have any idea what those hashes actually mean
No company can defend you from your government.
"All it would take"...
That is the slippery slope. If a government is going to say "that's a nice looking hashing system you have there, now we need you to..." they could as easily -- more easily -- have said "that's a nice filesystem you have there, we need you to...".
Hashing files and comparing them against a list is literally a college grad afternoon project. There is absolutely nothing in Apple's announcement that empowers any government anywhere in any meaningful way at all. It is only fear-mongering (or simply raw factual errors as seen throughout this discussion) that makes it seem like it does.
Right. Exactly. Any country in the world can mandate that Apple do anything they want (any of the slippery slope mandates), and Apple can comply or withdraw from the market. If any country wanted to demand that Apple compare all files against a ban list, they could have done that in 2007, or any year since. There is zero technical barrier and it would be a trivial task.
The point is that this development moves the bar infinitesimally. I would argue not at all. Fearmongering that depends upon "Well what if..." didn't actually think it through very well.
I guess this is where I differ with you. No government was able to preassure apple to implement a complete client side verification till now but who knows how things will be now that they have a system in place that can be easily modified.
Anyways I hope your prediction turns out right. I live in a place where privacy laws don't really exist. The last thing I want is any system that can be easily exploited by authorities to crush dissent.