Not exact matches. Hashes. Hashes that were quickly show to have collisions that the company brushed off.
On page 10 of the paper I linked though, they state that they assume a false collision probability of 1/million, which is more conservative than the 3 in 100 million false collisions they saw in their tests. The way they chose 30 as the threshold is based on the safeguarding assumption that everyone's photo library is larger than the actual largest library. This is safeguarding because the more photos you have, the more likely you are to have collisions. Copying from my previous comment, we can compute their photo library size assumption by solving for N in this equation: 1/trillion = 1 - sum_{k=0}^{29} of (N choose k) (1 - p)^k p^(N - k), where p is 1/million (the probability of a false collision).
With Google you can be absolutely sure that their intent is to eat all your personal information and data for short-term profit. With Apple it was "just" a stupid attempt at legal (over?) compliance.
Want to update Google maps home/work addresses? Too bad, requires web/app tracking enabled.
That "web and app tracking" applies to apps both on iOS and Android. The difference is that Android gives you more choice about what services you use.
Its not the law enforcement that's the main issue, but various greedy 3-letter agencies who are already well known to have ambition to have profile on every person in this world (not unlike Facebook but for different purposes).
This is not privacy anymore no matter how you bend it, it has been cancelled and Apple realizes this very well. And it still doesn't care. Literally the only serious selling point for many new buyers not invested in ecosystems, blowing it off with a nice double barreled shotgun shot.
I don't trust them not to jump to conclusions with a 256x256 (the exact quoted resolution escapes me at the moment) image at their disposal.
And you can either choose between (a) someone having to see your photos or (b) relying on an automated but imperfect process. You have to pick one.
Good, descent people, waking up screaming, cold shakes, permanently damaged from what they could not unsee.
You couldn't pay me enough to go through images of such sickness.
Outside of all the yes/no, on/off phone stuff, how are they going to hire, and keep staffed, a department of people having to look at this stuff.
How are they going to insure it?!
