According to Apple. and For Now. Patriot Act was only for terrorists. Apple makes concessions for China. Creating this technology, makes it very easy for China to go, "Look at all photos, always". If they only want to scan stuff on iCloud Photos, no worries, just implement on it on their end. This tech does not need to exist in that case.
> Microsoft scans everything.
Everything uploaded to the Cloud. The Cloud bit is fairly important here. That's me, willingly, putting information on their property. Perfectly acceptable and fine for them to ensure that it's nothing unethical.
However, someone else snooping through your drawers looking for something to pin on you is not private, nor the same as checking their own property.
By your definition of "everything", both Microsoft and Apple scan "everything". (Or Apple will, after this new system is rolled out.)
If you turn off iCloud Photos, nothing is scanned.
Microsoft scans everything.
>The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr...