>All of this also points to the complete absurdity of this mass hysteria: it is insane to ruin someone’s life just because they have a picture on their device. It is just thoughtcrime, at this point.
But it happened, some guy was falsely accursed because someone made a typo in an Ip address, he lost his job and he was forcefully kept away from his wife and children.
>Seriously, if a government is after you, they will get you regardless of the content of your phone
That is false, for example before 1989 listening to a certain radio station was illegal here in Romania but the government could not ask the guys the made the radio to give them a list with all people that listened to this radio station.
Your claim is that the govberment knows my name and what I did they can fuck me up, that is true but this imnplies the gov already knows and has the proof, in this case without the file scanner they won't know I own political/religions materials that is illegal but after the file scanner runs and reports me , only then I am on the gov list.
I hope is clear, tech makes the job of the bad gov easy, so in this case you as a random user you gai nothing from your device scanning for CSAM but many lose from this, the question is why if you gain nothing and this can be done with a simple iCloud scan? (because for sure it will be extended to private messages and documents)