So some underpaid contractor reviewing "visual derivatives" that may or may not be CSAM completely prevents governments from misusing this in your mind?

Considering how high profile and incredibly sensitive this is, I doubt they will hire an underpaid contractor. It's the opposite of app review, where the volume is very high but the stakes are low.

Facebook hires underpaid and poorly treated contractors to moderate exactly this same kind of content. I see no reason to believe Apple will be any different, particularly a few months from now when the general public's attention has shifted to other matters (assuming they're even paying attention right now. I don't think the interests of HN are necessarily representative of the general public..)

In China, iCloud is run by the government.

It's actually not, but even if it were, that would be yet another reason CSAM scanning is completely irrelevant for government spying.

Any spying really. It's much easier to just look at the images themselves.

> It's actually not

It's Joe Wong's joke, that it's like peeing in the snow in a dark winter night, while there is a difference but it's really hard to tell.