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Apple Just Disabled Clearview AI's iPhone App for Breaking Rules on Distribution
- koolba 7y agoThe violation is using the enterprise app distribution platform for customers. It’s similar to what Facebook was busted for.
- javagram 7y agoWould Apple allow this to be placed into the App Store? (IMO, they should) It seems like a lot of companies are apparently using the developer program as an end-run around App Store review. In the case of a tool like this it seems like the obvious solution would be to use Android phones for police officers, etc. so they can use apps without needing to get Apple to review and approve them.
- ericlewis 7y agothey would allow it, even behind a login. but you would need to provide them a way to probe this work.
- jimmaswell 7y agoApple has to grope into the internals of your backend to allow an app that uses an API? Edit: Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone.
- sp332 7y agoThey could use TestFlight to distribute apps that are not on the public App Store. Not the Developer Enterprise program.
- jjeaff 7y agoTestFlight is limited to 10,000 testers per app.
- Aachen 7y agoThat's still a lot of law enforcement officers (or worse) looking people up if Clearview was limited by that. As far as I'm concerned this sort of power belongs with an agency that only takes orders from a judge in each of the ~198 countries we have on earth. You don't want Joe Cop abusing this for whatever they please. If this sort of thing should even be legal in the first place (I think in Europe the last word has yet to be had).
- dathinab 7y agoProblem is they don't _only_ sell to law enforcement. As far as I know, they sell to anyone which pays well and don't go public about using it. I.e. I wouldn't be surprised if some questionable agencies focused around dodgy detective work or "discrediting" PR work. Heck I also wouldn't be surprised if he literally (but probably unknowingly) sold it to organized crime for which it quite valuable for tracking down witnesses which need to be pressured into keeping silent or some other bullshit usage. I mean that is one of the major problems with the whole think: It's not a government/state controlled database only used by law enforcement. (Which still would be a problem but a bit less).
- scarface74 7y agoAnd you just Joe Judge not to just rubber stamp what Joe Cop wants?
- saghm 7y agoCould they get around this by just making a different "app" per customer, with the same code but a different name (or whatever is used as a unique I'd)?
- evanjd 7y agoNope. 4.3 Spam Don’t create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app. If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and provide the variations using in-app purchase. From: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spam https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa...
- morpheuskafka 7y agoOnly if they comply with App Store rules (the ban on unfinished apps notwithstanding of course), submit "major" new builds for review as well as the initial build, and do not use the program in place of the App Store (i.e. there must be an eventual goal for the app to leave beta and go live. Otherwise, they would be violating the ToS and can be removed from that as well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wellthisisgreat 7y agowhat a wonderful gentleman the founder of that company is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That
- toiletfuneral 7y agoThis can’t be serious: “ It emerged from stealth mode in late 2017 and was linked to far right/alt-right supporters such as Chuck Johnson, Mike Cernovich, Douglass Mackey, and Paul Nehlen.[8] Clearview AI received investments from Peter Thiel” Chuck Johnson is the Holocaust denier who shits his pants in public and Cernovich is the pizzagate MRA right? Wtf
- adaisadais 7y agoSlightly fallacious (ad hominem) but might be allowable here haha.
- taywrobel 7y agoLinking to someone’s Wikipedia is ad hominem now?
- wellthisisgreat 7y agowhen linking to a wikipedia page without quotes looks like ad-hominem lol :)
- ryanlol 7y ago> Slightly fallacious (ad hominem) What kind of a person talks like this? This isn’t elementary school debate club.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago“He was unsuccessful in early ventures to create social media applications after the advent of Apple's iPhone. In 2009, he created HappyAppy and ViddyHo, a phishing application or computer worm that spammed a users' contacts. Ton-That was sought by the police when this worm spread in 2009.” Wow. Every entity that contracts with this firm has been grossly negligent.
- cantrevealname 7y ago> Apple Developer Enterprise Program should only be used to distribute apps within a company. As much as I dislike the privacy invasive things that Clearview is doing, I don’t like Apple’s power to ban people from running whatever software they want if they’re not using the App Store or asking for endorsement or review by Apple. If you’re distributing your software privately and independently of Apple (i.e., not through the App Store), then you should be able to do whatever you want. We don’t want a world where car companies get to disable your car if you carried something in your car that they didn’t like.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DenisM 7y agoSome people like their orderly walled gardens, some don’t like them. You may not like the iPhone but I don’t see why you want to deny that to others? Surely they can decide for themselves.
- moojd 7y agoHow does having the ability to personally opt out of the walled garden prevent others from staying in the garden? You may not want to opt out of the garden but I don't see why you would want to deny that the others? Surely they can decide for themselves.
- chadcmulligan 7y agowell, I can see an argument against this. Non tech user sees an app they want, they download it, app says you have to do this and this, OK the user says, and they've just opened their phone to everything. This has already been abused with simple things like location and microphone, with people giving apps access to everything. I think the current solution is sub optimal, but I like having the security on my iPhone to download anything and be fairly confident it won't send all my details to some credit acrd number collecting hacker.
- DenisM 7y agoI have to wonder - what did they expect? Apple will drop the ban-hammer just as soon as the target becomes visible. It’s open knowledge. If you’re a growing company it’s only a matter of time before you grow large enough to attract their attention.
- threeseed 7y agoApple bans smaller apps and companies all the time. You just don't hear about it. In this case it is as clear cut as you can get.
- yalogin 7y agoUnfortunately Clearview is like an invasive pest that is out of control in the wild. Apple removing from their store is not going to dent it.
- saagarjha 7y agoThe complaint was that this app was being distributed outside of the store, which is against the terms of the Enterprise developer agreement.
- dathinab 7y agoIt's nice, but very dangerous. I think Clearview AI should have been "taken down" by the government based on reasonable laws (which I guess don't exist). I don't think Apple/Google/Amazone or any other company should need to find ways to "punish" a bad actor. Nor should they be allowed to do so as this is a abuse of power and a intervention into politics and moral aspects companies should not do. Nor feel the need to do so. (I mean who decides what constitutes as a "bad actor"). But then we live in times where the Goverment fail to protect their people (at least in cyberspace). Sometimes even repeatedly try to endanger their people (e.g. some of the anti crypto laws). And most importantly increasingly fail to represent the values of large parts of the population. So I guess it's now the new normal that companies openly (ab-)use their power to push (or hinder) certain thinks which should fall into the area of country governance. Honestly not really anything new, but sad nevertheless.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- karlkatzke 7y agoBut the government is the main customer of Clearview AI, so why would the government remove it’s own access to a tool?
- newscracker 7y ago> I don't think Apple/Google/Amazone or any other company should need to find ways to "punish" a bad actor. Nor should they be allowed to do so as this is a abuse of power and a intervention into politics and moral aspects companies should not do. Nor feel the need to do so. (I mean who decides what constitutes as a "bad actor"). Apple didn’t take any kind of moral decision here. It just enforced its policy for distribution of apps, just like it did for Facebook and Google last year. The decision is not about whether Clearview’s app or service is a threat to society or privacy.
- ogre_codes 7y agoExactly. A fair number of companies try to use enterprise certificates as a way around Apple's App Store restrictions. The big question is why this company didn't just distribute the software through the App Store. Is it a violation of Apple's App Store policies?
- newscracker 7y agoWhile people are debating whether Apple should have the power to revoke certificates and disable such apps, I for one am glad that in the instances where this has been made public, they’ve all been shady apps meant to mislead and abuse people with a broader aim to subvert human society itself. Look at the previous well known cases about this same decision — Facebook tracking people’s every move with a “VPN” software, and Google doing the same (though on a smaller scale) with its own “VPN” app. These apps and app makers knew about the restrictions on the App Store, and yet they proceeded to bypass it through the enterprise program because the app makers (or those specific teams) and the apps are shady end-to-end. AFAIK, both Facebook and Google pulled the offending apps and decided not to go ahead with them on iOS. But they did continue (again AFAIK) with those on Android. While we can hope that such bad publicity helps expose such massive threats to people around the world, there’s not much that can actually be done without regulation.
- saagarjha 7y ago> they’ve all been shady apps As nice as it is to see these apps be pulled, I would be more comforted if Apple were applying their rules uniformly instead of going after companies after the supposedly shady behavior makes the press.
- cwyers 7y agoHow else was it supposed to work in this case? The whole point of the story is that Clearview was bypassing Apple's review process by using a signing key meant for distributing an app _internally_ to distribute the app to third parties outside of the store. Apple couldn't know about the misbehavior prior to disclosure because the whole point was to keep Clearview outside of their review process.
- saagarjha 7y agoThere are a number of easy-to-find examples where Apple is currently not revoking certificates.
- kristianc 7y agoBy definition, didn’t most news ‘Just’ happen?
- technick 7y agoGoogle needs to follow in these foot steps and remove it from Android phones.
- tekmaven 7y ago> Will Strafach, the founder and CEO of Guardian Firewall, an iOS security app, said he doesn't see any way Clearview can remedy its situation with Apple given the startup's clear flouting of the rules. A web app can do this easily.
- dzhiurgis 7y agoWeb apps on iOS is "a decision tree where at every step you loose". I love web apps, but still haven't used a single real PWA on iOS.
- tekmaven 7y agoWe're talking about an image upload and search results. If apple won't allow it, this is the only possible step where you can win.
- willstrafach 7y agoSpecifically, I was asked about how Clearview can make their iOS app available again.
- sjg007 7y agoWell it could become a progressive web app.. can u grant camera access to one? U for sure can upload a photo right?
- wayneftw 7y agoI wonder what Apple would do if someone created a corporation to distribute apps with the enterprise license and every time they want to distribute the app, the corporation would make the potential user a member of the corporation first. I mean this is all just legal bullshit preventing us from using our own devices the way that we want right? Why not use the same bullshit back against them… I don’t have a dog in the fight between Clearview and Apple or law-enforcement’s use of AI. I’m just irked by this particular restriction on Apple devices. You just can’t really have a mobile presence without addressing Apple and even if they don’t have a technical monopoly, it annoys me that they still have this level of control over the market.
- JiNCMG 7y agoThey don't control the market they control their environment and that might affect the market.
- lacker 7y agoApple can and does change the rules of the App Store at any time. If someone created a corporation with the specific goal of circumventing this rule, I would expect Apple to simply change the wording of the rule to prevent this sort of workaround.
- sixstringtheory 7y agoApple can yank your enterprise certs if they feel you’re abusing them, too. They did it to Facebook last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19035834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19035834
- chendragon 7y agoPeople DO do this. This is how things like iPhone Cake/AppCake work (and all the other "alternate" app stores). They register up a bunch of enterprise certs under some weird innocent sounding names, like "Global English Education Co.Ltd" or something, and use the certs to sign apps.
- harrisonjackson 7y agoCan't they just skin the app and license it to these companies? They just need an enterprise account for each company (or police force or whatever) to distribute the app internally. If anything this just enables them to charge more assuming they've proven out the capabilities and the ROI. Then each company can distribute it as their own app internally - all within the guidelines of the enterprise TOS. If just skinning it isn't enough then they can create an SDK and have then consult each company to develop its own app that uses this SDK as part of it. It isn't like Apple restricts enterprise app from using other services and APIs within their own apps. I don't think the TOS are particularly unfair or hard to work within in this case.
- cydmax 7y agoThis is the solution I would recommend to ClearView to stay in business. Either they don’t have the expertise to distribute enterprise apps or their clients are not capable of maintaining a MDM software and an Apple Enterprise Account. The latter really bugs me though. It implies that e.g. police officers can install any software on their work devices if they wanted too, which might endanger citizens because of possible data leaks by device loss or hacks. With a MDM you can wipe sensitive data remotely and separate private data from work relevant data. We distribute our business apps as unsigned xcarchives and our clients resign them with their Enterprise Certificates and Provisioning Profile and this can distribute them as they like.