This comment assumes that Apple does a lot of heavy lifting to exonerate individuals who are found with CSAM beyond just reporting them to law enforcement.
Of course metadata could exonerate someone who is a victim in a case like this. The question is will it ever see the light of day?
The negative PR from a false accusation would be expensive. On top of the judgement itself, and you know that Apple has deep enough pockets that someone will be looking for a big score.
Also known as a 20 line script which checks the last modified date for a bunch of recently uploaded files and validates the IP address against the recently known list.
The code to extract metadata is easy. I’m talking more about whether or not there is a deliberate process in place to actually write the code, run the checks and provide all available metadata and context to law enforcement. Apple has not indicated that process exists, thus far.
Of course metadata could exonerate someone who is a victim in a case like this. The question is will it ever see the light of day?