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They can’t decrypt the safety vouchers, which contain low resolution versions of your image until the conditions are met … which makes no sense as they have access to the cleartext full resolution image right there.

Unless of course this is a precursor to an E2E encrypted iCloud wherein Apple does not have the ability to decrypt your images server side. I don’t see how this design makes sense unless that’s the next step

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> … which makes no sense as they have access to the cleartext full resolution image right there

They have no access. It is end-to-end encrypted with new system. That is the whole point of on-device scanning. It is not next step, it is already there.

It works if the photos are encrypted such that Apple can’t access them. Hence the wonky design.

They haven’t announced that photos will be E2E encrypted.

They did… just read the specs. There are many pdf:s on the bottom. They failed the PR truly.

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

That’s not my interpretation of the first party descriptions of the CSAM system. Clearly it works if photos are encrypted; nothing implies they’re using that capability yet.

If that were the case, this would not merely be a PR mess but PR malpractice of an entirely other, novel kind.

The system is complicated, especially the PSI paper. But it is clear, that it is designed to run on encrypted images, there is choice to run without it.

So it doesn't mention that anything is actually E2E encrypted right now, does it?

It does if you try to understand that system. CSAM scan on-device won’t work at all without that encryption part.