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The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. The very fact of

The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. The very fact of existence of such Spyware Engine has effect that each person would behave as 'someone is looking'. This means zero privacy. This means 'no privacy' feeling. Everyone is more 'careful' when people around. And this has prolonged effect on society's freedom, democracy and rights of individual because independent thinking happens when true privacy is there. Even a fear of false triggering the system and exposure of one's private thoughts/pictures/events to other people during 'sorting out false alarm' would make people behave differently. Even if they have nothing to do with any children the fear that their private moments can become public just because some AI would decide so would make each person think twice about each step. This is a huge attack on privacy of individual and should not be taken lightly. The effect will be also huge. Just imagine what they will do next if they get away with this. Just imagine what other companies will do once this is accepted for apple devices. I think this can/should also be considered as a fraud because when one bought apple device one was never told that spyware would be installed some day later. Edit: I think it should be illegal/made illegal to install any spyware on any device for any excuse without warant. Spyware is a Search of 'home' without warrant to some degree, isn't it? Done through the hands of some private company under some excuse... What about Fourth Amendment?

nine_k 5y ago
> each person would behave as 'someone is looking'. They (that is, we) should already. We should assume being looked at, unless we can reasonably prove it's not so. In all public places, for certain. Using all public services, for certain. This decision erodes the trust in personal handheld terminals (quaintly still named "phones"). This is great that the announcement is made publicly. I can easily imagine a similar feature to be deployed tacitly in other countries and other platforms.
croes 5y ago
It's always to protect children or protect from terrorists or organized crime. And it is always pretended that the bad guys can only exist on the client side and not on the supervisor side.
- nine_k 5y ago
  There is a nonzero price to enforce norms and laws. For instance, let's imagine a technology emerges that can render any wall in a building transparent and penetrable for a short time, without affecting the structural integrity of the building. How much easier would it make the job of the law enforcement! How many crimes would it help prevent or at least detect! Of course it will be a securely guarded technology, so that it won't fall to hands of random strangers, malicious hackers, or burglars; only the law enforcement agencies would use it, and only for legitimate purposes! Honest. Would you endorse such a technology in your town? Mandate it for your neighborhood? Why? Are you comfortable with the idea that a number of crimes will go undetected or not prevented because this feature is not implemented? Not rhetorical questions all.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    I don't mind your downvotes, as long as you honestly think about the transparent wall proposition.
    - supermatt 5y ago
      Didn’t downvote, but didn’t understand context of your comment given who you replied to. Maybe that’s why downvotes?
      - nine_k 5y ago
        I think the context is suitable: the arguments for increasing efforts of law enforcement, because "think of the children", accompanied with promises that only the good guys will have the new technical means, and the law enforcement won't even make honest mistakes using it, to say nothing of ever abusing it.
  - howaboutnope 5y ago
    Or as someone on slashdot put it: > Destroying the privacy of several billion people is not an adequate price to pay for capturing a dozen or even a hundred bad guys. > Sure it did get them some. So would carpet-bombing New York City. Success alone is a worthless measure without taking cost into account. -- http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4631081&cid=45871537 http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4631081&cid=45871537
azinman2 5y ago
It seems that this is before uploading photos to iCloud or on send to iMessage. You can avoid both and still use an iPhone.
new299 5y ago
What confuses me is the requirement for this capability. The technology is only used on photos that are being uploaded to iCloud. Apple can decrypt data on iCloud, so why not just do this offline? Doesn't make much sense. It makes me think that the technology will be expanded to encompass all offline images at some point.
- ndkwj 5y ago
  The fact that they've decided to move this processing from their servers to the local device means they 100% intend to scan all of your photos and not only those that you upload to iCloud in the future.
  - trangus_1985 5y ago
    I don't think they do. I also don't think they can easily decrypt icloud as you're making it out to be. However... yeah. This is a massive breach of trust. Having any spyware agent on my device is disgusting. I can't imagine the abuse cases this sort of thing can be used for.
    - realusername 5y ago
      > I also don't think they can easily decrypt icloud as you're making it out to be. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
    - new299 5y ago
      According to some reports they’ve been doing it server side for a while: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-icloud-photos-for-child-abuse-images https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-...
    - rasz 5y ago
      https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2021/01/apple-scraps-end-to-end-encryption-of-icloud-backups/ https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2021/01/apple-scraps-end-to-end-e...
lm28469 5y ago
> I think this can/should also be considered as a fraud because when one bought apple device one was never told that spyware would be installed some day later. I have an itch that somewhere in the hundreds of pages of EULA no one ever reads there is a "You accept that Apple has the right to modify its software at any time for any reason" kind of thing
- DoubleGlazing 5y ago
  In a sensible world there would be a law that allows you to pick and choose which non-essential apps and services can run on the hardware you own.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Sorry, the spyware engine is considered "essential" for regulatory compliance reasons. You have no idea the inherent power of being the "setter of definitions" in a legal context.
    - DoubleGlazing 5y ago
      That's why I said sensible.
      - oehpr 5y ago
        It turns out Sensible is also a word that is up for definition.
      - salawat 5y ago
        I'm pointing out that sensibility is determined by multi-person consensus which by definition will tend to exclude a lot of viewpoints. The presence of legitimate common sense (an actual concordance of principles, life experience, understanding, and the existence of a fungible nominative signpost that will be reliably reproduced within error bars) is surprisingly difficult to hew and maintain. It morphs over time, and is exactly why these multi-national tech companies implementing things like this is so terrifyingly dangerous. If they implement the capability to do a thing, they are now the movers of the political Overton window by realizing the means. They are literally shaping the rhetorical landscape. Example: Let's say the push for this intrusive client side scanning came from the U.K., and the U.K. marketplace alone accounted for enough business to make it too painful to NOT do (simplifying economic/business assumption for illustrative purposes, and just picking on the U.K for because they are $not_my_jurisdiction). In the U.S. (Third Party Doctrine aside), this feature would be something that would be a U.S. Constitutional violation (4th Amendment) if mandated by the legislature short of an Amendment, yet since it would be done out of expedience in the absence of someone telling them NOT to do it, they'd ship it by default on American phones anyway. The mere existence of the capability greatly increases the willingness of jurisdictions to use it. This means the most privacy eroding jurisdictions are creating a race to the bottom for infecting everyone else barring population Al refusal to say No unambiguously. I don't know why this jurisdictional backdooring isn't more obvious to people than it is. Or maybe I'm just starting to grasp how politics actually works vs. working in theory, but this really does seem to be completely screwing up how process is supposed to go. This is nothing short of a private entity taking the practical reins of power, and the political edifice coming along behind and post-facto rationalizing what the actual trailblazers are doing. To be frank, this terrifies me even more than Congress being in charge. Congress's process rounds out most things to some level of effectual benign nature. Tech companies though? If you even start asking the important questions about higher order effects, either out the window you go, or everyone looks at you like a nut. This is not a good way to go.
lovelyviking 5y ago
The other issue here is this: If Spyware Engine is allowed to be installed by some idiot with company in his hands to amplify his idiocy, what prevents another idiot with company in his hands to do the same? And how about specially crafted 'normal' pictures sent to individual to trigger the system? Special mind would have a perfect tool to get some one down / put into the troubles.
- Haemm0r 5y ago
  "And how about specially crafted 'normal' pictures sent to individual to trigger the system? Special mind would have a perfect tool to get some one down / put into the troubles." Exactly this was my first thought. Sad that these days my first thought, if some new "system" to prevent/catch something/one is introduced, is "How could this system be abused to blame somebody?".
- pmontra 5y ago
  Of course, that can be the basis for blackmail but I guess that what's going to happen most frequently will be a parent sending a bathroom or beach picture of a child to his/her spouse or parents, getting flagged and... what? This is going to happen tens of thousands of times pretty soon.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
>> has effect that each person would behave as 'someone is looking' I don’t think that’s true. Compare the difference in how people react to cctv vs how they react to “Surveillance Camera Man”. This is a cctv system, you can forget it’s there. Until it incorrectly flags you anyway.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  But you don't take your clothes off in places with cctv, because you know that you don't want to be recorded doing that. People are aware where and how they are recorded. Phones are (well.. were) private, people take nudes, do naked video calls and all the other related stuff, because they trust that there is only one other person watching this, and they usually trust that person. Now, we're one step away from trump-beats-cnn-gif-meme getting into the hash database to flag all the trump supporters. When the next wikileaks happens, and they can track who had the documents/photos/videos first, possibly even before they got leaked. Someone (4chan,...) can email you photos an videos that are of something random, but crafted in a way to create a false positive (a bit slower form of swatting). This is basically setting up cctv in your bedroom, saying it's there "to protect the children" and trusting some stupid algorithm to look at you.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Someone stole my Aunt's laptop a while ago, but she managed to hunt the person down and get it back only to find the bloody thing had it's password reset, accounts wiped, etc... She gave it to me to get back in working order, and I had to ask her if she was interested in pressing charges, because handing it to me may compromise chain of custody of any investigation. She decided not to proceed with filing charges, but just wanted me to investigate and restore the bloody thing. The person in question sync's their mobile content to that laptop. I had more than enough evidence of phone use while driving, who they were associating with, where they were hanging out, what they were doing, etc.... I didn't even have to try digging. Do not underestimate the level of mindless information spillage by modern devices, nor the level of exposure guaranteed always on, officially acknowledged hooks into your device sensor or input feeds offers.
- 5y ago
tvirosi 5y ago
I agree with you. But on the other hand Google Drive has been doing this already since forever so I'm not really sure what's changed through this.
- porlune 5y ago
  The location of the scanning moved from their hardware to consumer hardware.
  - api 5y ago
    If your consumer hardware auto-updates, it's "their" hardware where "their" is the set of all software vendors with keys allowing them to auto-update anything on your computer.
jiggawatts 5y ago
> Just imagine what other companies will do once this is accepted for apple devices. No need to imagine. China flat out censors chat programs and discussion sites, and some words will instantly get you put on "the list". Winnie the Pooh, for example. Oh, you say that you're just interested in the wonderful literary works of A. A. Milne, but that's what the anti-government types always say! Prove your innocence in this kangaroo court, and you'll be let off with merely a stint in a re-education camp.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I was using Tantan last year, a Chinese dating app. I tried to send a woman I was flirting with a message like “that pic of you is sexy”, and the app warned me against using vulgar language. I can’t say sexy. In a dating app. With a woman I matched with. What am I supposed to do? Say she’s doing a great job of maximizing her gene pool’s potential for aesthetic presentation in the context of a romantic setting?
  - api 5y ago
    > Say she’s doing a great job of maximizing her gene pool’s potential for aesthetic presentation in the context of a romantic setting? If she goes for that, she's a keeper.
  - inetknght 5y ago
    > I can’t say sexy. In a dating app. With a woman I matched with. Would you go into a Christian church and start preaching about Hindu gods? Some might, but nearly everyone would say it's disrespectful of a different culture. So it seems to me like it'd be a cultural difference. In Western culture sex is prominent (America, Europe, etc) even if repressed (America). In Chinese culture... well I'm going to assume it's still very much repressed.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The example you described is not analogous to texting a woman in a dating app. But the point about cultural differences does stand (not that it should result in a government being able to police how two adults communicate.)
jmull 5y ago
> The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. I’m always surprised when people say things like this. As if we haven’t been carrying around highly capable “Spyware Engines” this whole time. Apple doesn’t need the cover of stamping out child porn to spy on you. They can do it just fine, if they want to, without it.
decasteve 5y ago
That definition of Spyware Engine has existed for a while. Every browser checks sites and downloads using Google's Safe Browsing [1]. Firefox constantly phones home to googleusercontent and AWS. Apple sends hashes of every application you run on MacOS to its Akamai hosted service -- try blocking Akamai on your firewall while still connected to the internet and the OS becomes unresponsive. The OS features to scan and report home have been around for a long time. I think Apple checking photos before they uploaded to its own servers is their way around the Fourth Amendment while using relatively similar methods that they already use for malware. Devil's advocacy aside, I buy the slippery slope argument and I find these methods reprehensible and open to abuse. I agree with all of it. I think this new addition is a step on the downward slope. I don't use MacOS, nor Windows, nor any cloud services personally. I keep an iPhone 7 around to chat with "iMessage" friends -- and this is the straw that stops me from using for that. I have never used iCloud for photos even when I was using an iPhone regularly. I used to have an Android phone, which I also never sync'd with Google's cloud/drive. Then after an update, the sync-to-cloud option was automagically turned on again and my photos started to upload. I deleted them from the cloud and swore off ever using an Android phone again. [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m... Addendum: That Mozilla support link is also interesting in terms of privacy. It's flagged as a privileged page for me so it loads Google Analytics that would otherwise be blocked by browser extensions.
- donatj 5y ago
  It seems like the fourth amendment would be more applicable in Apples case, as it's doing the searching within your own home, where searches are explicitly forbidden.
xxs 5y ago
A strong belief of mine is: the technology should never betray its owner. Regardless who the owner is, regardless if they are benevolent, regardless of their wishes or background.
bostonsre 5y ago
They are doing everything client side so it seems like an apartment complex saying you are not allowed to have fires inside your apartment so they installed a smoke detector in your apartment. Most people would agree that it's a reasonable check because they don't plan on burning down their apartment but yes, if they keep pressing on it can definitely become orwellian. > The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. I'm not sure that's entirely true. There is a reason stuff like this is debatable and is being considered by a reputable company. It is not black and white and both sides have some valid arguments. There are absolute atrocious monsters in this world and apple is in a tough spot. They are locking down their devices and it is keeping both bad and good guys out. You may think good riddens, they both shouldn't be able to get in but there are downsides to building a completely impenetrable device (e.g. tor is great for freedom, but also makes it a lot easier for criminals to operate). They are receiving pressure from law enforcement and no doubt people in their company have glimpsed the horror of child abuse and want to do something about it. They wouldn't be able to sleep at night if they did nothing, but they also won't be able to sleep at night because of the incredibly slippery slope they just stepped out on. We also don't live in a libertarian society and I don't think most people would like the reality of living in one. On the state security and personal liberty spectrum, I think they united states is a lot closer to libertarian than we are to the ccp tho but there is no spot on that spectrum where everyone will be happy. Finding the least bad spot is an incredibly difficult problem for Apple.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > They are doing everything client side That's what they say. And we should trust them on this because...? More importantly, even if they're doing everything client-side now, why should we trust it won't change in a few years? Also, they aren't doing everything client-side. For this measure to be useful, it has to send out the hashes, or that there were matches detected, to the company, and ultimately the law enforcement. > it seems like an apartment complex saying you are not allowed to have fires inside your apartment so they installed a smoke detector in your apartment This situation is not like a fire. A fire in one apartment threatens the entire building (and everyone in it), and it spreads very quickly like started. This is more like installing chemical sensors in every apartment that will automatically call the police when they sniff out illegal drugs. You have nothing to fear if you're not an illegal drug user... unless the sensor has a false positive against your medication. Or the volatiles from your cooking. Or the cleaning agents. Or a jar with a mix of benign substances that someone sent you to screw with you. Or... Perhaps people would mind less if they could trust the system will work. But anyone with even little bit of exposure to tech industry already knows that these systems don't work, and data collected is routinely abused.
JTbane 5y ago
> This means zero privacy. This means 'no privacy' feeling. Everyone is more 'careful' when people around. And this has prolonged effect on society's freedom, democracy and rights of individual because independent thinking happens when true privacy is there. 100% agree, this is called a "chilling effect", shutting down discussion and giving more power to the status quo.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> "The very fact of existence of such Spyware Engine has effect that each person would behave as 'someone is looking'. This means zero privacy. This means 'no privacy' feeling. Everyone is more 'careful' when people around." These are pressures which likely help keep society relatively stable. People's behaviour is guided and influenced by what other people might think of it, and human ancestral environment up until cities(?) was small groups and families and villages where everyone knew everyone else's business. I don't think we should take it as given that changing that is unarguably for the better. Historically there was always the chance that someone would eavesdrop, or see your diary lying around, or open your mail, > "And this has prolonged effect on society's freedom, democracy and rights of individual because independent thinking happens when true privacy is there" Citation needed because "Please don't machine-process my photos because I get so anxious I can't think" sounds like a problem you need to deal with, not a problem for everyone else to deal with. So does "The effect will be also huge. Just imagine what they will do next if they get away with this." - always jumping to the worst possible doom scenario is something people see therapists about. > "The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine." This is no more than a bank having to make sure you aren't storing stolen diamonds in their bank vaults, and they've now found a way to check only the things people are about to bring into the bank to alert the bank as early as possible.
- kian 5y ago
  I'm glad you've nailed the crux of the problem - if this is no more than a bank making sure you aren't storing stolen diamonds in their bank vaults -- then surely the analogy to bank vaults here is 'the phone you purchased from Apple'. But you are right - as long as they have the right to push code to your device at any time, it isn't really yours. Shame it costs so much to keep the bank's vaults in our pockets at all times.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    This system does not stop you keeping whatever you want on the phone you purchased from Apple, it only affects what you try to send to iCloud, so no the analogy to bank vaults is not your phone, it is asking Apple to hold your data on their servers and people trying to send them illegal data to hold.
russdpale 5y ago
The fourth amendment applies to the government, not apple.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nine_k 5y ago

> each person would behave as 'someone is looking'. They (that is, we) should already. We should assume being looked at, unless we can reasonably prove it's not so. In all public places, for certain. Using all public services, for certain. This decision erodes the trust in personal handheld terminals (quaintly still named "phones"). This is great that the announcement is made publicly. I can easily imagine a similar feature to be deployed tacitly in other countries and other platforms.

croes 5y ago

It's always to protect children or protect from terrorists or organized crime. And it is always pretended that the bad guys can only exist on the client side and not on the supervisor side.

nine_k 5y ago
There is a nonzero price to enforce norms and laws. For instance, let's imagine a technology emerges that can render any wall in a building transparent and penetrable for a short time, without affecting the structural integrity of the building. How much easier would it make the job of the law enforcement! How many crimes would it help prevent or at least detect! Of course it will be a securely guarded technology, so that it won't fall to hands of random strangers, malicious hackers, or burglars; only the law enforcement agencies would use it, and only for legitimate purposes! Honest. Would you endorse such a technology in your town? Mandate it for your neighborhood? Why? Are you comfortable with the idea that a number of crimes will go undetected or not prevented because this feature is not implemented? Not rhetorical questions all.
- nine_k 5y ago
  I don't mind your downvotes, as long as you honestly think about the transparent wall proposition.
  - supermatt 5y ago
    Didn’t downvote, but didn’t understand context of your comment given who you replied to. Maybe that’s why downvotes?
    - nine_k 5y ago
      I think the context is suitable: the arguments for increasing efforts of law enforcement, because "think of the children", accompanied with promises that only the good guys will have the new technical means, and the law enforcement won't even make honest mistakes using it, to say nothing of ever abusing it.
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  Or as someone on slashdot put it: > Destroying the privacy of several billion people is not an adequate price to pay for capturing a dozen or even a hundred bad guys. > Sure it did get them some. So would carpet-bombing New York City. Success alone is a worthless measure without taking cost into account. -- http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4631081&cid=45871537 http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4631081&cid=45871537

azinman2 5y ago

It seems that this is before uploading photos to iCloud or on send to iMessage. You can avoid both and still use an iPhone.

new299 5y ago

What confuses me is the requirement for this capability. The technology is only used on photos that are being uploaded to iCloud. Apple can decrypt data on iCloud, so why not just do this offline? Doesn't make much sense. It makes me think that the technology will be expanded to encompass all offline images at some point.

ndkwj 5y ago
The fact that they've decided to move this processing from their servers to the local device means they 100% intend to scan all of your photos and not only those that you upload to iCloud in the future.
- trangus_1985 5y ago
  I don't think they do. I also don't think they can easily decrypt icloud as you're making it out to be. However... yeah. This is a massive breach of trust. Having any spyware agent on my device is disgusting. I can't imagine the abuse cases this sort of thing can be used for.
  - realusername 5y ago
    > I also don't think they can easily decrypt icloud as you're making it out to be. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
  - new299 5y ago
    According to some reports they’ve been doing it server side for a while: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-icloud-photos-for-child-abuse-images https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-...
  - rasz 5y ago
    https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2021/01/apple-scraps-end-to-end-encryption-of-icloud-backups/ https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2021/01/apple-scraps-end-to-end-e...

lm28469 5y ago

> I think this can/should also be considered as a fraud because when one bought apple device one was never told that spyware would be installed some day later. I have an itch that somewhere in the hundreds of pages of EULA no one ever reads there is a "You accept that Apple has the right to modify its software at any time for any reason" kind of thing

DoubleGlazing 5y ago
In a sensible world there would be a law that allows you to pick and choose which non-essential apps and services can run on the hardware you own.
- salawat 5y ago
  Sorry, the spyware engine is considered "essential" for regulatory compliance reasons. You have no idea the inherent power of being the "setter of definitions" in a legal context.
  - DoubleGlazing 5y ago
    That's why I said sensible.
    - oehpr 5y ago
      It turns out Sensible is also a word that is up for definition.
    - salawat 5y ago
      I'm pointing out that sensibility is determined by multi-person consensus which by definition will tend to exclude a lot of viewpoints. The presence of legitimate common sense (an actual concordance of principles, life experience, understanding, and the existence of a fungible nominative signpost that will be reliably reproduced within error bars) is surprisingly difficult to hew and maintain. It morphs over time, and is exactly why these multi-national tech companies implementing things like this is so terrifyingly dangerous. If they implement the capability to do a thing, they are now the movers of the political Overton window by realizing the means. They are literally shaping the rhetorical landscape. Example: Let's say the push for this intrusive client side scanning came from the U.K., and the U.K. marketplace alone accounted for enough business to make it too painful to NOT do (simplifying economic/business assumption for illustrative purposes, and just picking on the U.K for because they are $not_my_jurisdiction). In the U.S. (Third Party Doctrine aside), this feature would be something that would be a U.S. Constitutional violation (4th Amendment) if mandated by the legislature short of an Amendment, yet since it would be done out of expedience in the absence of someone telling them NOT to do it, they'd ship it by default on American phones anyway. The mere existence of the capability greatly increases the willingness of jurisdictions to use it. This means the most privacy eroding jurisdictions are creating a race to the bottom for infecting everyone else barring population Al refusal to say No unambiguously. I don't know why this jurisdictional backdooring isn't more obvious to people than it is. Or maybe I'm just starting to grasp how politics actually works vs. working in theory, but this really does seem to be completely screwing up how process is supposed to go. This is nothing short of a private entity taking the practical reins of power, and the political edifice coming along behind and post-facto rationalizing what the actual trailblazers are doing. To be frank, this terrifies me even more than Congress being in charge. Congress's process rounds out most things to some level of effectual benign nature. Tech companies though? If you even start asking the important questions about higher order effects, either out the window you go, or everyone looks at you like a nut. This is not a good way to go.

lovelyviking 5y ago

The other issue here is this: If Spyware Engine is allowed to be installed by some idiot with company in his hands to amplify his idiocy, what prevents another idiot with company in his hands to do the same? And how about specially crafted 'normal' pictures sent to individual to trigger the system? Special mind would have a perfect tool to get some one down / put into the troubles.

Haemm0r 5y ago
"And how about specially crafted 'normal' pictures sent to individual to trigger the system? Special mind would have a perfect tool to get some one down / put into the troubles." Exactly this was my first thought. Sad that these days my first thought, if some new "system" to prevent/catch something/one is introduced, is "How could this system be abused to blame somebody?".
pmontra 5y ago
Of course, that can be the basis for blackmail but I guess that what's going to happen most frequently will be a parent sending a bathroom or beach picture of a child to his/her spouse or parents, getting flagged and... what? This is going to happen tens of thousands of times pretty soon.

CraigJPerry 5y ago

>> has effect that each person would behave as 'someone is looking' I don’t think that’s true. Compare the difference in how people react to cctv vs how they react to “Surveillance Camera Man”. This is a cctv system, you can forget it’s there. Until it incorrectly flags you anyway.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
But you don't take your clothes off in places with cctv, because you know that you don't want to be recorded doing that. People are aware where and how they are recorded. Phones are (well.. were) private, people take nudes, do naked video calls and all the other related stuff, because they trust that there is only one other person watching this, and they usually trust that person. Now, we're one step away from trump-beats-cnn-gif-meme getting into the hash database to flag all the trump supporters. When the next wikileaks happens, and they can track who had the documents/photos/videos first, possibly even before they got leaked. Someone (4chan,...) can email you photos an videos that are of something random, but crafted in a way to create a false positive (a bit slower form of swatting). This is basically setting up cctv in your bedroom, saying it's there "to protect the children" and trusting some stupid algorithm to look at you.
- salawat 5y ago
  Someone stole my Aunt's laptop a while ago, but she managed to hunt the person down and get it back only to find the bloody thing had it's password reset, accounts wiped, etc... She gave it to me to get back in working order, and I had to ask her if she was interested in pressing charges, because handing it to me may compromise chain of custody of any investigation. She decided not to proceed with filing charges, but just wanted me to investigate and restore the bloody thing. The person in question sync's their mobile content to that laptop. I had more than enough evidence of phone use while driving, who they were associating with, where they were hanging out, what they were doing, etc.... I didn't even have to try digging. Do not underestimate the level of mindless information spillage by modern devices, nor the level of exposure guaranteed always on, officially acknowledged hooks into your device sensor or input feeds offers.
5y ago

tvirosi 5y ago

I agree with you. But on the other hand Google Drive has been doing this already since forever so I'm not really sure what's changed through this.

porlune 5y ago
The location of the scanning moved from their hardware to consumer hardware.
- api 5y ago
  If your consumer hardware auto-updates, it's "their" hardware where "their" is the set of all software vendors with keys allowing them to auto-update anything on your computer.

jiggawatts 5y ago

> Just imagine what other companies will do once this is accepted for apple devices. No need to imagine. China flat out censors chat programs and discussion sites, and some words will instantly get you put on "the list". Winnie the Pooh, for example. Oh, you say that you're just interested in the wonderful literary works of A. A. Milne, but that's what the anti-government types always say! Prove your innocence in this kangaroo court, and you'll be let off with merely a stint in a re-education camp.

devoutsalsa 5y ago
I was using Tantan last year, a Chinese dating app. I tried to send a woman I was flirting with a message like “that pic of you is sexy”, and the app warned me against using vulgar language. I can’t say sexy. In a dating app. With a woman I matched with. What am I supposed to do? Say she’s doing a great job of maximizing her gene pool’s potential for aesthetic presentation in the context of a romantic setting?
- api 5y ago
  > Say she’s doing a great job of maximizing her gene pool’s potential for aesthetic presentation in the context of a romantic setting? If she goes for that, she's a keeper.
- inetknght 5y ago
  > I can’t say sexy. In a dating app. With a woman I matched with. Would you go into a Christian church and start preaching about Hindu gods? Some might, but nearly everyone would say it's disrespectful of a different culture. So it seems to me like it'd be a cultural difference. In Western culture sex is prominent (America, Europe, etc) even if repressed (America). In Chinese culture... well I'm going to assume it's still very much repressed.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The example you described is not analogous to texting a woman in a dating app. But the point about cultural differences does stand (not that it should result in a government being able to police how two adults communicate.)

jmull 5y ago

> The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. I’m always surprised when people say things like this. As if we haven’t been carrying around highly capable “Spyware Engines” this whole time. Apple doesn’t need the cover of stamping out child porn to spy on you. They can do it just fine, if they want to, without it.

decasteve 5y ago

That definition of Spyware Engine has existed for a while. Every browser checks sites and downloads using Google's Safe Browsing [1]. Firefox constantly phones home to googleusercontent and AWS. Apple sends hashes of every application you run on MacOS to its Akamai hosted service -- try blocking Akamai on your firewall while still connected to the internet and the OS becomes unresponsive. The OS features to scan and report home have been around for a long time. I think Apple checking photos before they uploaded to its own servers is their way around the Fourth Amendment while using relatively similar methods that they already use for malware. Devil's advocacy aside, I buy the slippery slope argument and I find these methods reprehensible and open to abuse. I agree with all of it. I think this new addition is a step on the downward slope. I don't use MacOS, nor Windows, nor any cloud services personally. I keep an iPhone 7 around to chat with "iMessage" friends -- and this is the straw that stops me from using for that. I have never used iCloud for photos even when I was using an iPhone regularly. I used to have an Android phone, which I also never sync'd with Google's cloud/drive. Then after an update, the sync-to-cloud option was automagically turned on again and my photos started to upload. I deleted them from the cloud and swore off ever using an Android phone again. [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m... Addendum: That Mozilla support link is also interesting in terms of privacy. It's flagged as a privileged page for me so it loads Google Analytics that would otherwise be blocked by browser extensions.

donatj 5y ago
It seems like the fourth amendment would be more applicable in Apples case, as it's doing the searching within your own home, where searches are explicitly forbidden.

xxs 5y ago

A strong belief of mine is: the technology should never betray its owner. Regardless who the owner is, regardless if they are benevolent, regardless of their wishes or background.

bostonsre 5y ago

They are doing everything client side so it seems like an apartment complex saying you are not allowed to have fires inside your apartment so they installed a smoke detector in your apartment. Most people would agree that it's a reasonable check because they don't plan on burning down their apartment but yes, if they keep pressing on it can definitely become orwellian. > The issue here has nothing to do with children, they would always use 'children' as excuse. The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine. I'm not sure that's entirely true. There is a reason stuff like this is debatable and is being considered by a reputable company. It is not black and white and both sides have some valid arguments. There are absolute atrocious monsters in this world and apple is in a tough spot. They are locking down their devices and it is keeping both bad and good guys out. You may think good riddens, they both shouldn't be able to get in but there are downsides to building a completely impenetrable device (e.g. tor is great for freedom, but also makes it a lot easier for criminals to operate). They are receiving pressure from law enforcement and no doubt people in their company have glimpsed the horror of child abuse and want to do something about it. They wouldn't be able to sleep at night if they did nothing, but they also won't be able to sleep at night because of the incredibly slippery slope they just stepped out on. We also don't live in a libertarian society and I don't think most people would like the reality of living in one. On the state security and personal liberty spectrum, I think they united states is a lot closer to libertarian than we are to the ccp tho but there is no spot on that spectrum where everyone will be happy. Finding the least bad spot is an incredibly difficult problem for Apple.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> They are doing everything client side That's what they say. And we should trust them on this because...? More importantly, even if they're doing everything client-side now, why should we trust it won't change in a few years? Also, they aren't doing everything client-side. For this measure to be useful, it has to send out the hashes, or that there were matches detected, to the company, and ultimately the law enforcement. > it seems like an apartment complex saying you are not allowed to have fires inside your apartment so they installed a smoke detector in your apartment This situation is not like a fire. A fire in one apartment threatens the entire building (and everyone in it), and it spreads very quickly like started. This is more like installing chemical sensors in every apartment that will automatically call the police when they sniff out illegal drugs. You have nothing to fear if you're not an illegal drug user... unless the sensor has a false positive against your medication. Or the volatiles from your cooking. Or the cleaning agents. Or a jar with a mix of benign substances that someone sent you to screw with you. Or... Perhaps people would mind less if they could trust the system will work. But anyone with even little bit of exposure to tech industry already knows that these systems don't work, and data collected is routinely abused.

JTbane 5y ago

> This means zero privacy. This means 'no privacy' feeling. Everyone is more 'careful' when people around. And this has prolonged effect on society's freedom, democracy and rights of individual because independent thinking happens when true privacy is there. 100% agree, this is called a "chilling effect", shutting down discussion and giving more power to the status quo.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> "The very fact of existence of such Spyware Engine has effect that each person would behave as 'someone is looking'. This means zero privacy. This means 'no privacy' feeling. Everyone is more 'careful' when people around." These are pressures which likely help keep society relatively stable. People's behaviour is guided and influenced by what other people might think of it, and human ancestral environment up until cities(?) was small groups and families and villages where everyone knew everyone else's business. I don't think we should take it as given that changing that is unarguably for the better. Historically there was always the chance that someone would eavesdrop, or see your diary lying around, or open your mail, > "And this has prolonged effect on society's freedom, democracy and rights of individual because independent thinking happens when true privacy is there" Citation needed because "Please don't machine-process my photos because I get so anxious I can't think" sounds like a problem you need to deal with, not a problem for everyone else to deal with. So does "The effect will be also huge. Just imagine what they will do next if they get away with this." - always jumping to the worst possible doom scenario is something people see therapists about. > "The issue here is installation of Spyware Engine." This is no more than a bank having to make sure you aren't storing stolen diamonds in their bank vaults, and they've now found a way to check only the things people are about to bring into the bank to alert the bank as early as possible.

kian 5y ago
I'm glad you've nailed the crux of the problem - if this is no more than a bank making sure you aren't storing stolen diamonds in their bank vaults -- then surely the analogy to bank vaults here is 'the phone you purchased from Apple'. But you are right - as long as they have the right to push code to your device at any time, it isn't really yours. Shame it costs so much to keep the bank's vaults in our pockets at all times.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  This system does not stop you keeping whatever you want on the phone you purchased from Apple, it only affects what you try to send to iCloud, so no the analogy to bank vaults is not your phone, it is asking Apple to hold your data on their servers and people trying to send them illegal data to hold.

russdpale 5y ago

The fourth amendment applies to the government, not apple.

deleted 5y ago

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