14 ms·

I remember an Apple conference where Tim Cook personally assured us that Apple is fully committed to privacy, that everything is so secure because the iPhone is

by triska 5y ago

I remember an Apple conference where Tim Cook personally assured us that Apple is fully committed to privacy, that everything is so secure because the iPhone is so powerful that all necessary calculations can happen on the device itself, and that we are "not the product". I think the Apple CEO said some of this in the specific context of speech processing, yet it seemed a specific case of a general principle upheld by Apple. I bought an iPhone because the CEO seemed to be sincere in his commitment to privacy. What Apple has announced here seems to be a complete reversal from what I understood the CEO saying at the conference only a few years ago.

nerdponx 5y ago
The cynical take is that Apple was never committed to privacy in and of itself, but they are commited to privacy as long as it improves their competitive advantage, whether by marketing or by making sure that only Apple can extract value from its customers' data. Hanlon's razor does not apply to megacorporations that have enormous piles of cash and employ a large number of very smart people, who are either entirely unscrupulous or for whom scruples are worth less than their salaries. We probably aren't cynical enough. I am not arguing that we should always assume every change is always malicious towards users. But our index of suspicion should be high.
- hpen 5y ago
  I've always been convinced that Apple cared about privacy as a way of competitive advantage. I don't need them to be committed morally or ethically, I just need them to be serious about it because I will give them my money if they are.
  - philistine 5y ago
    Tim Cook looks like he believes in money, first and foremost. Anything goes second.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I’d say you’re spot on, but I can’t say why.
- duped 5y ago
  What competitive advantage does performing semantic hashing of my photos for law enforcement give apple
mtgx 5y ago
It's all been downhill since we heard that they stopped developing the e2e encrypted iCloud solution because it might upset the FBI even more.
Klonoar 5y ago
I think the EFF is probably doing good by calling attention to the issue, but let's... actually look at the feature before passing judgement, e.g: https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/1423382200880439298/photo/1 https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/1423382200880439298/ph... - It's run for Messages in cases where a child is potentially viewing material that's bad. - It's run _before upload to iCloud Photos_ - where it would've already been scanned anyway, as they've done for years (and as all other major companies do). To me this really doesn't seem that bad. Feels like a way to actually reach encrypted data all around while still meeting the expectations of lawmakers/regulators. Expansion of the tech would be something I'd be more concerned about, but considering the transparency of it I feel like there's some safety. https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ more info here as well.
- vimy 5y ago
  Teens are also children. Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. This is very creepy behavior from Apple. Edit: I'm talking about this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=...
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    > Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. Some people might disagree with you. There are people out there who are revolted by the "obviously okay" case of 2 fully-consenting teenagers sending each other nude pics, without any coercion, social pressure, etc. Not to mention all the gray areas and "obviously not okay" combinations of ages, circumstances, number of people involved, etc.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      It will be the parents who are deciding this - particularly if they are buying these phones. If parents don't like this feature, they can buy a lineage OS type phone. If parents do they will buy this type of phone for their kids.
dylan604 5y ago
It is secure, as long as you have nothing to hide. If you have no offending photos, then the data won't be uploaded! See, it's not nefarious at all! /s
JohnFen 5y ago
> because the CEO seemed to be sincere in his commitment to privacy. The sincerity of a company officer, even the CEO, should not factor into your assessment. Officers change over time (and individuals can change their stance over time), after all.
robertoandred 5y ago
Except the hashing and hash comparison are happening on the device itself.
- zionic 5y ago
  That’s even worse
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    Why?
    - pzo 5y ago
      Because as other mentioned before its just few lines of code away to allow scanning any pictures that are not synced to any cloud. This just puts foundation for cheap, automatic mass surveillance. Imagine if you were hired to design mass surveillance system. What kind of technical problems you would have to face?: 1) Trillions of pictures of altogether huge MB of data would have to be send to your servers to analyze - this creates huge network badwidth 2) You would need huge computing power to analyze those 3) This would probably easy to be detected Apple solution would allow: 1) plausible deniability - it 'was just a bug that scanned all pictures instead of those that supposed to be in icloud' 2) cheap - using user cpu/gpu and smaller user bandwidth just to send hashes 3) less suspicions than having completely unknown process/daemon in the background because rolled as part of 'protect the children' campain 4) rolled out to one of the most popular mobile phone in US that has locked bootloader and OS cannot be downgraded, etc.
      - cturhan 5y ago
        Great explanation. It’s Apple way of decentralized image analysis with very little server cost and this is the most amazing idea I’ve seen for mass surveillance
avnigo 5y ago
I’m still waiting on iCloud backup encryption they promised a while back. There were reports that they scrapped those plans because the FBI told them to, but nothing official announced since 2019 on this.
- minsc__and__boo 5y ago
  Yet Apple gave access to all the chinese user iCloud data to the Chinese government, including messages, emails, pictures, etc. NYT Daily had an episode where they talked about how the CCP is getting Apple to bend it's commitment to privacy: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/podcasts/the-daily/apple-china-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/podcasts/the-daily/apple-...
- rudian 5y ago
  Last I heard on HN was that it was scrapped entirely as a consequence of some event I don’t remember. I hope someone has a better memory than I do.
cronix 5y ago
As soon as Cook became CEO, he let the NSA's Prism program into Apple. Everything since then has been a fucking lie. > Andrew Stone, who worked with Jobs for nearly 25 years, told the site Cult of Mac last week that Steve Jobs resisted letting Apple be part of PRISM, a surveillance program that gives the NSA access to records of major Internet companies. His comments come amid speculation that Jobs resisted cooperating. “Steve Jobs would’ve rather died than give into that,” Stone told the site. > According to leaked NSA slides about PRISM, Apple was the last tech behemoth to join the secret program — in October 2012, a year after Jobs died. Apple has said that it first heard about PRISM on June 6 of this year, when asked about it by reporters. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-nsa-steve-jobs_n_3461323 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-nsa-steve-jobs_n_346132... I mean, maybe they didn't call it "PRISM" when talking about it with Cook, so it could technically be true that they didn't hear of PRISM until media stories. Everyone knows the spy agency goes around telling all of their project code names to companies they're trying to compromise. Hello, sir. We're here to talk to you about our top secret surveillance program we like to call PRISM where we intercept and store communications of everyone. Would you like to join? MS did. So did Google. Don't you want to be in our select cool club?
anonuser123456 5y ago
Not really. This only applies to photos uploaded to iCloud. And photos uploaded to iCloud (and Google drive etc.) are already scanned on server for CP. Apple is moving that process from on server to on phone in a way that protects your privacy better than current standards. In the current system, all your photos are available to Apple unencrypted. In the new system, nothing will be visible to apple unless you upload N images with database hits. From those N tokens, Apple is then able to decrypt your content. So when this feature lands, it improves your privacy relative to today.
- taxyovio 5y ago
  Do you have any references for your remarks on the current situation where all iCloud photos are scanned on the server side?
  - anonuser123456 5y ago
    https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-content/ https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-co...
- rantwasp 5y ago
  nah. this is not how trust works. if Apple does stuff like this, I stop trusting Apple. Binary. Trust of No Trust. Who is to say once they start doing this they will not extend their capabilities and monitor everything on the device? This is the direction we’re heading in. For me this is my last iphone. And probably my last mac. the hardware is nice, shiny ams usable but you cannot do shit like this after you sell everyone on privacy. What would a company that cares about privacy do? you don’t scan any of my things without explaining why and getting my consent. That’s privacy
  - anonuser123456 5y ago
    They are literally telling you what they do with full disclosure, and have engineered a system to give you _more_ privacy than you have on any existing cloud photo provider today. If you don't want to use cloud photo services because you don't like the implications, they are very upfront; disable iCloud photos. But every major cloud photo hosting service is doing this already on your images. What you are missing is the behind the scenes pressure for DOJ, FBI and congress. Apple is trying their best to thread the needle, providing as much privacy as possible while plausibly covering their bases so congress won't pass onerous and privacy stripping laws.
samstave 5y ago
Don't worry - you can trust ALL of these guys: https://i.imgur.com/z3JeRgk.jpg https://i.imgur.com/z3JeRgk.jpg
ksec 5y ago
Tim Cook doesn't Lie. I think he convinced himself what he said wasn't lying. That Apple and himself are so righteous. Which is actually worst, because that mentality filters through from Top to Bottom. And it is showing in their marketing and PR messages. He is also doing exactly Steve Jobs's last advice to him, Do the right thing. Except "the right thing" is so ambiguous it may turn out to be one of the worst advice. My biggest turning point was Tim Cook flat out lying on the Apple case against Qualcomm. Double Dipping? Qualcomm patents being more than double than all the other six combined? And the tactics they used in court which was vastly different to Apple vs Samsung's case. And yes, they lost. ( Or settled ) That is the same with privacy. They simplifies their PR message as tracking = evil. Tracking is invading your privacy. Which is all good. But at the same time Apple is tracking you, everything you do on Apple Music, Apple TV+, App Store and even Apple Card. ( They only promise not to sell your Data to third party, they still have some of those Data. ). What that means is that only Apple is allowed to track you, but anyone else doing it are against privacy? What Apple really meant by the word Privacy then is that Data should not be sold to third parties. But no, they intentionally keep it unclear and created a war on Data Collection while they are doing it. And you now have people flat out claiming Apple doesn't collect any Data. Then there is a war on Ads. Which was so bad the Ad industry pushes back and Tim Cook had to issue a mild statement saying they are not against Ads, only targeted Ads. What? Once you start questioning all of his motives, and find concrete evidence that he is lying, along with all the facts from court case of how Apple has long term plans to destroy other companies, they all line up and shape how you view Tim Cook's Apple. And it isn't pretty. And that is speaking from an Apple fan for longer than two decade.
dilap 5y ago
There was a funny, tiny thing that happened a few years back that made me think Tim Cook is a liar. It was back when Apple had just introduced the (now-abandoned) Force Touch feature (i.e., pressure sensitive touch, since abandoned, since it turns out pushing hard on an unyielding surface is not very pleasant or useful). To showcase the capability, Apple had updated many of its apps with new force-touch features. One of which was mail: if you pushed just right on the subject line of a message, you'd get a tiny, unscrollable popout preview of its contents. It was totally useless: it took just as much time to force touch to see the preview as just normally tapping to view the message, and the results were less useful. It was also fairly fiddly: if you didn't press hard enough, you didn't get the preview; if you pressed too hard, it would open into the full email anyway. So Tim Cook, demoing the feature, said a funny thing. He said, "It's great, I use it all the time." Which maybe, just maybe, is true, but personally I don't believe, not for a second. So since then, I've had Tim down in my book as basically a big liar.
- boardwaalk 5y ago
  If that's your bar for labeling someone a big liar, I surely don't wanna know ya. I actually use this feature pretty regularly in Safari, even if it's a long press rather than force touch now.
  - dilap 5y ago
    Web is different; he was talking about email. Maybe I should go watch the clip again, but I remember it as seeming quite transparently untrue. Anyway, it's not surprising to me that Apple is not living up to its lofty rhetoric around privacy.
nonbirithm 5y ago
What I want to know is why they decided to implement this. Are Apple just trying to appear virtuous and took action independently? Or was this done at someone else's request? For all the rhetoric about privacy coming from Apple, I feel that such an extreme measure would surely cause complaints from anyone deeply invested in privacy. And maybe they're just using words like "significant privacy benefits compared to previous techniques" to make it sound reasonable to the average user who's not that invested in privacy.
blakeinate 5y ago
This year I purchased my first iPhone since the 3G, after today I am starting to regret that decision. At this point, I can only hope Linux on mobile picks up steam.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
So you mean the company that was part of PRISM, that has unfair business practices and a bully as a founder was not really the world savior their marketting speach said they were ? I'm in shock. Multi-billion dollars company usually never lies to make money! And power grabbing entities have such a neat track record in human history. Not to mention nobody saw that coming and told repeatadly one should not get locked into such a closed and proprietary ecosystem in the first place. I mean, dang, this serial killer was such a nice guy. The dead babies in the basements were weird but appart from that he was a stellar neighbour.

by triska 5y ago

nerdponx 5y ago

The cynical take is that Apple was never committed to privacy in and of itself, but they are commited to privacy as long as it improves their competitive advantage, whether by marketing or by making sure that only Apple can extract value from its customers' data. Hanlon's razor does not apply to megacorporations that have enormous piles of cash and employ a large number of very smart people, who are either entirely unscrupulous or for whom scruples are worth less than their salaries. We probably aren't cynical enough. I am not arguing that we should always assume every change is always malicious towards users. But our index of suspicion should be high.

hpen 5y ago
I've always been convinced that Apple cared about privacy as a way of competitive advantage. I don't need them to be committed morally or ethically, I just need them to be serious about it because I will give them my money if they are.
- philistine 5y ago
  Tim Cook looks like he believes in money, first and foremost. Anything goes second.
withinboredom 5y ago
I’d say you’re spot on, but I can’t say why.
duped 5y ago
What competitive advantage does performing semantic hashing of my photos for law enforcement give apple

mtgx 5y ago

It's all been downhill since we heard that they stopped developing the e2e encrypted iCloud solution because it might upset the FBI even more.

Klonoar 5y ago

I think the EFF is probably doing good by calling attention to the issue, but let's... actually look at the feature before passing judgement, e.g: https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/1423382200880439298/photo/1 https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/1423382200880439298/ph... - It's run for Messages in cases where a child is potentially viewing material that's bad. - It's run _before upload to iCloud Photos_ - where it would've already been scanned anyway, as they've done for years (and as all other major companies do). To me this really doesn't seem that bad. Feels like a way to actually reach encrypted data all around while still meeting the expectations of lawmakers/regulators. Expansion of the tech would be something I'd be more concerned about, but considering the transparency of it I feel like there's some safety. https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ more info here as well.

vimy 5y ago
Teens are also children. Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. This is very creepy behavior from Apple. Edit: I'm talking about this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=...
- nerdponx 5y ago
  > Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. Some people might disagree with you. There are people out there who are revolted by the "obviously okay" case of 2 fully-consenting teenagers sending each other nude pics, without any coercion, social pressure, etc. Not to mention all the gray areas and "obviously not okay" combinations of ages, circumstances, number of people involved, etc.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    It will be the parents who are deciding this - particularly if they are buying these phones. If parents don't like this feature, they can buy a lineage OS type phone. If parents do they will buy this type of phone for their kids.

dylan604 5y ago

It is secure, as long as you have nothing to hide. If you have no offending photos, then the data won't be uploaded! See, it's not nefarious at all! /s

JohnFen 5y ago

> because the CEO seemed to be sincere in his commitment to privacy. The sincerity of a company officer, even the CEO, should not factor into your assessment. Officers change over time (and individuals can change their stance over time), after all.

robertoandred 5y ago

Except the hashing and hash comparison are happening on the device itself.

zionic 5y ago
That’s even worse
- robertoandred 5y ago
  Why?
  - pzo 5y ago
    Because as other mentioned before its just few lines of code away to allow scanning any pictures that are not synced to any cloud. This just puts foundation for cheap, automatic mass surveillance. Imagine if you were hired to design mass surveillance system. What kind of technical problems you would have to face?: 1) Trillions of pictures of altogether huge MB of data would have to be send to your servers to analyze - this creates huge network badwidth 2) You would need huge computing power to analyze those 3) This would probably easy to be detected Apple solution would allow: 1) plausible deniability - it 'was just a bug that scanned all pictures instead of those that supposed to be in icloud' 2) cheap - using user cpu/gpu and smaller user bandwidth just to send hashes 3) less suspicions than having completely unknown process/daemon in the background because rolled as part of 'protect the children' campain 4) rolled out to one of the most popular mobile phone in US that has locked bootloader and OS cannot be downgraded, etc.
    - cturhan 5y ago
      Great explanation. It’s Apple way of decentralized image analysis with very little server cost and this is the most amazing idea I’ve seen for mass surveillance

avnigo 5y ago

I’m still waiting on iCloud backup encryption they promised a while back. There were reports that they scrapped those plans because the FBI told them to, but nothing official announced since 2019 on this.

minsc__and__boo 5y ago
Yet Apple gave access to all the chinese user iCloud data to the Chinese government, including messages, emails, pictures, etc. NYT Daily had an episode where they talked about how the CCP is getting Apple to bend it's commitment to privacy: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/podcasts/the-daily/apple-china-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/podcasts/the-daily/apple-...
rudian 5y ago
Last I heard on HN was that it was scrapped entirely as a consequence of some event I don’t remember. I hope someone has a better memory than I do.

cronix 5y ago

As soon as Cook became CEO, he let the NSA's Prism program into Apple. Everything since then has been a fucking lie. > Andrew Stone, who worked with Jobs for nearly 25 years, told the site Cult of Mac last week that Steve Jobs resisted letting Apple be part of PRISM, a surveillance program that gives the NSA access to records of major Internet companies. His comments come amid speculation that Jobs resisted cooperating. “Steve Jobs would’ve rather died than give into that,” Stone told the site. > According to leaked NSA slides about PRISM, Apple was the last tech behemoth to join the secret program — in October 2012, a year after Jobs died. Apple has said that it first heard about PRISM on June 6 of this year, when asked about it by reporters. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-nsa-steve-jobs_n_3461323 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-nsa-steve-jobs_n_346132... I mean, maybe they didn't call it "PRISM" when talking about it with Cook, so it could technically be true that they didn't hear of PRISM until media stories. Everyone knows the spy agency goes around telling all of their project code names to companies they're trying to compromise. Hello, sir. We're here to talk to you about our top secret surveillance program we like to call PRISM where we intercept and store communications of everyone. Would you like to join? MS did. So did Google. Don't you want to be in our select cool club?

anonuser123456 5y ago

Not really. This only applies to photos uploaded to iCloud. And photos uploaded to iCloud (and Google drive etc.) are already scanned on server for CP. Apple is moving that process from on server to on phone in a way that protects your privacy better than current standards. In the current system, all your photos are available to Apple unencrypted. In the new system, nothing will be visible to apple unless you upload N images with database hits. From those N tokens, Apple is then able to decrypt your content. So when this feature lands, it improves your privacy relative to today.

taxyovio 5y ago
Do you have any references for your remarks on the current situation where all iCloud photos are scanned on the server side?
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-content/ https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-co...
rantwasp 5y ago
nah. this is not how trust works. if Apple does stuff like this, I stop trusting Apple. Binary. Trust of No Trust. Who is to say once they start doing this they will not extend their capabilities and monitor everything on the device? This is the direction we’re heading in. For me this is my last iphone. And probably my last mac. the hardware is nice, shiny ams usable but you cannot do shit like this after you sell everyone on privacy. What would a company that cares about privacy do? you don’t scan any of my things without explaining why and getting my consent. That’s privacy
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  They are literally telling you what they do with full disclosure, and have engineered a system to give you _more_ privacy than you have on any existing cloud photo provider today. If you don't want to use cloud photo services because you don't like the implications, they are very upfront; disable iCloud photos. But every major cloud photo hosting service is doing this already on your images. What you are missing is the behind the scenes pressure for DOJ, FBI and congress. Apple is trying their best to thread the needle, providing as much privacy as possible while plausibly covering their bases so congress won't pass onerous and privacy stripping laws.

samstave 5y ago

Don't worry - you can trust ALL of these guys: https://i.imgur.com/z3JeRgk.jpg https://i.imgur.com/z3JeRgk.jpg

ksec 5y ago

Tim Cook doesn't Lie. I think he convinced himself what he said wasn't lying. That Apple and himself are so righteous. Which is actually worst, because that mentality filters through from Top to Bottom. And it is showing in their marketing and PR messages. He is also doing exactly Steve Jobs's last advice to him, Do the right thing. Except "the right thing" is so ambiguous it may turn out to be one of the worst advice. My biggest turning point was Tim Cook flat out lying on the Apple case against Qualcomm. Double Dipping? Qualcomm patents being more than double than all the other six combined? And the tactics they used in court which was vastly different to Apple vs Samsung's case. And yes, they lost. ( Or settled ) That is the same with privacy. They simplifies their PR message as tracking = evil. Tracking is invading your privacy. Which is all good. But at the same time Apple is tracking you, everything you do on Apple Music, Apple TV+, App Store and even Apple Card. ( They only promise not to sell your Data to third party, they still have some of those Data. ). What that means is that only Apple is allowed to track you, but anyone else doing it are against privacy? What Apple really meant by the word Privacy then is that Data should not be sold to third parties. But no, they intentionally keep it unclear and created a war on Data Collection while they are doing it. And you now have people flat out claiming Apple doesn't collect any Data. Then there is a war on Ads. Which was so bad the Ad industry pushes back and Tim Cook had to issue a mild statement saying they are not against Ads, only targeted Ads. What? Once you start questioning all of his motives, and find concrete evidence that he is lying, along with all the facts from court case of how Apple has long term plans to destroy other companies, they all line up and shape how you view Tim Cook's Apple. And it isn't pretty. And that is speaking from an Apple fan for longer than two decade.

dilap 5y ago

There was a funny, tiny thing that happened a few years back that made me think Tim Cook is a liar. It was back when Apple had just introduced the (now-abandoned) Force Touch feature (i.e., pressure sensitive touch, since abandoned, since it turns out pushing hard on an unyielding surface is not very pleasant or useful). To showcase the capability, Apple had updated many of its apps with new force-touch features. One of which was mail: if you pushed just right on the subject line of a message, you'd get a tiny, unscrollable popout preview of its contents. It was totally useless: it took just as much time to force touch to see the preview as just normally tapping to view the message, and the results were less useful. It was also fairly fiddly: if you didn't press hard enough, you didn't get the preview; if you pressed too hard, it would open into the full email anyway. So Tim Cook, demoing the feature, said a funny thing. He said, "It's great, I use it all the time." Which maybe, just maybe, is true, but personally I don't believe, not for a second. So since then, I've had Tim down in my book as basically a big liar.

boardwaalk 5y ago
If that's your bar for labeling someone a big liar, I surely don't wanna know ya. I actually use this feature pretty regularly in Safari, even if it's a long press rather than force touch now.
- dilap 5y ago
  Web is different; he was talking about email. Maybe I should go watch the clip again, but I remember it as seeming quite transparently untrue. Anyway, it's not surprising to me that Apple is not living up to its lofty rhetoric around privacy.

nonbirithm 5y ago

What I want to know is why they decided to implement this. Are Apple just trying to appear virtuous and took action independently? Or was this done at someone else's request? For all the rhetoric about privacy coming from Apple, I feel that such an extreme measure would surely cause complaints from anyone deeply invested in privacy. And maybe they're just using words like "significant privacy benefits compared to previous techniques" to make it sound reasonable to the average user who's not that invested in privacy.

blakeinate 5y ago

This year I purchased my first iPhone since the 3G, after today I am starting to regret that decision. At this point, I can only hope Linux on mobile picks up steam.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

So you mean the company that was part of PRISM, that has unfair business practices and a bully as a founder was not really the world savior their marketting speach said they were ? I'm in shock. Multi-billion dollars company usually never lies to make money! And power grabbing entities have such a neat track record in human history. Not to mention nobody saw that coming and told repeatadly one should not get locked into such a closed and proprietary ecosystem in the first place. I mean, dang, this serial killer was such a nice guy. The dead babies in the basements were weird but appart from that he was a stellar neighbour.