Issues in any other Apple software will not send the police on you. Why would you install a software on your desktop/laptop that is designed to snitch on you, you would need to get some advantage or be forced by some law.
For now I see only disadvantages but please let me know of any real advantage and not speculation
Disadvantages:
- closed software with hidden db can't be trusted, so as a user you will always have a doubt that some non CP images are in the db(Apple always collaborates with governments)
- bugs in this stuff will cause you big problems(we seen in the past how false accusation destroyed peoples life) and we also seen bad actors abusing this kind of stuff.
- this is also clearly a beginning, now that Apple has the capability then even if they were saints a judge could force them to add new hashes, change the configs etc.
2. It’s one thing to rely on proprietary services like Find My or Siri. It’s another thing to rely on a secret server-side app that has the power to destroy your life.
Now, I don’t trust them anymore.
Now apple is getting a local client side scanning tool ready. Interesting timing.
It could also happen that you lose your phone and "a human" finds it and randomly puts in the correct passcode on the first try and visually inspects your personal images. In fact, that seems vastly more likely [1].
[1] About 4% of smartphones are lost or stolen every year [https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/consumer/family-safety/almost-5... ], but make it just 1/1000, so 1e-3. Then a 6 digit passcode, 1e-6, so we're at 1e-9 per year, or 1000x as likely as being falsely flagged, assuming Apple's numbers (which can easily be achieved by calibrating the threshold).
