Once the tool exists, they’ll add whatever features governments in major economies tell them to or they’ll be forced into adding them.
All this said, I don’t blame Apple alone here and I have mixed feelings about it still - as I really do believe in their fight against CSAM. I just don’t think this is the magic solution to solving CSAM while preserving an innocent user’s right to privacy that they’re selling it as.
I’m also certain there are engineers who worked on this system who also share these concerns.
I also feel it's important to note that every major image host is doing the same thing Apple is doing, but server-side on unencrypted images. What Apple is planning to implement is, out of context, an improvement; in the same way that Google's FLoC is an improvement over ad tracking based on third-party cookies. Get a trusted client to cooperate in some smaller act of self-surveillance and we don't need the server to do full take.
That being said, I don't think we even need to rely on governments threatening Apple into doing surveillance. The scanning scheme relies on paying human moderators to basically look at CSAM all day and check if it's a valid match. Big tech moderation is already understaffed and overworked as is - so it's almost certain that the people involved will just forward everything as their sanity degrades. Apple will almost certainly wind up accidentally or unknowingly forwarding along bogus CSAM reports, no coercion required.
This is the biggest worry. Apple essentially waved their hand in their FAQ and said something to the effect of they’d never do something like that.
Yes you would. You’ll get called to congress and told in no uncertain terms what you’re expected to do, you’ll say no, the law will be changed, then the gentleman in a suit that people don’t say no to will call to your nice headquarters for you to walk him through his shiny new surveillance tools.