JollyRoger

This ‘privacy invasion’ by Apple which you effectively describe as petty, is the equivalent of a door manufacturer implementing some technology into the front door you purchased for your house so they can easily send in a robot to scan your personal belongings for any child sex imagery.

No. A much better analogy is that iCloud is like a storage locker. Rather than rummaging through the entire contents of your locker after you've already placed things in it, Apple is checking to see if individual items you place in it are illegal as you add items to it. Apple is doing the check at the door rather than inside of the locker so that they don't have to access whatever is already sitting in your locker. And the check Apple does is an automated test so that no Apple employee has access to see the item you are placing in the locker unless your locker fails over 30 or so tests for illegal material. Only then can an Apple employee verify that the matching items are in fact illegal material. And only items that are verified to be illegal are forwarded to authorities. This is all done at expense by Apple to preserve your privacy.