Of course. Politicians and officials hate whistleblowers far more than pedophiles, and it's obvious this mechanism will be used to find future Chelsea Mannings and Reality Winners with better opsec to make examples out of them.
Australia demands that Apple augment CSAM detection so that every iPhone in the USA starts scanning for (and reporting back to Australia about) some other set of images. There's absolutely no scenario where Apple wouldn't walk out of the room laughing.
End of hypothetical.
Also, the Australians would require Apple to use the Australian version of the NCMEC operated by their government. Remember, Apple only has the fingerprints of the CSAM files, not the actual files themselves (only the NCMEC can legally hold them), so they have no way to check whether the Australians inserted the fingerprints for the Afghanistan Papers to the database at the behest of their US buddies.
I'd love to be convinced that this mechanism could be easily extended to any content at any time without it being totally obvious to the rest of us that it's being used that way.
If alongside this Apple rolled out the ability for them to initiate a scan on any phone for any thing (not a tool for mass surveillance but targeted surveillance) how would we know given Apples closed ecosystem?
This doesn't necessarily speak to the issue here but more to the Apple ethos in general, but I am curious.
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/14248736290037022...
To begin with, there's no prospect of this being done in secret. So we're talking about Apple complying to demands being made in public.
In the case of the EU, it would have to be passed into law in a way that makes equal demands upon all of Apple's competitors. And in that case, everyone must comply with the law irrespective of whether any existing CSAM detection apparatus was in place. (Thus it's a sheer cliff, not a slippery slope.)
If Saudi Arabia or Sudan tried to turn the screws, the business case for Apple is absolutely clear-cut: they would leave. It wouldn't even be up for debate. There would be far too much at risk globally than they'd ever hope to gain/retain in that domestic market from compliance. Not only would they never risk serious damage to their global reputation (something they'll be extremely sensitive to, as the last two weeks have taught them) it would represent a massive opportunity for Apple to earn weeks of free media coverage that aligns with their security narrative.