Comment by troad
4 days ago
Agreed. And for a less contrived example, people may have photos of political protests that they attended (and the faces of others present), screenshots that include sensitive messages, subversive acts, etc.
It's worth noting though that it's now possible to opt in to iCloud Photo e2ee with "Advanced Data Protection". [0]
iCloud Photo e2ee still shares hashes of the plaintext with Apple, which means they can see the full list of everyone who has certain files, even if they all have e2ee enabled. They can see who had it first, and who got it later, and which sets of iCloud users have which unique files. It effectively leaks a social graph.
It’s also not available in China.
Interesting, good to know.