5 ms·

time for some myth busting: 1. It's been turned on for all major cloud providers for some time. Upload something into google cloud/photos/dropbox? Yeah, the sy

by kmlx 5y ago

time for some myth busting: 1. It's been turned on for all major cloud providers for some time. Upload something into google cloud/photos/dropbox? Yeah, the system's there as well. It just seems most people have been unaware of this so far. 2. It's only for the US. From my understanding Europe and ROW doesn't get this. At least for now. 3. I don't like this way of doing things, but I do understand that there's been major push from the US Government for this kind of tech. Basically, the tech companies had two choices: either add an actual backdoor, or provide another way of checking the content of all their users. They went with the latter. 4. If anyone has a problem with this solution, they should contact their US Representative, as they've been pushing this like crazy "for the children" :) 5. it's not scanning your local files. only the ones uploaded to apple photos. just like all the other actors.

tpush 5y ago
> 2. It's only for the US. From my understanding Europe and ROW doesn't get this. At least for now. AFAIK the EU is actually pondering legislation to make proactive scanning for CSAM mandatory. Right now, in the US at least, proactive scanning like practically all cloud providers do is not required by law.
- vaylian 5y ago
  The EU law was passed recently: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chatcontrol-european-parliament-approves-mass-surveillance-of-private-communications/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chatcontrol-european-parlia...
  - kmlx 5y ago
    happy times :( i fear more governments will take this position now that the big ones managed to push it thru.
draw_down 5y ago
> I don't like this way of doing things, but Yeah yeah. We know. Won’t someone think of the children.
lovelyviking 5y ago
The issue is what they are going to do next without telling you. The issue is installation of Spyware Engine, not it's current usage.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  What, other than paranoia, makes you think they are going to do anything next without telling you? They told us about this, we're all talking about it. The issue is your calling it "Spyware Engine" as if it's anything that wasn't happening before - mesh networking for "Find my phone", watching bluetooth and wifi and GPS locations and reporting back to HQ for things like mapping and traffic monitoring and route planning, and possibly advertising, these are much more "spyware" than this is - they happen more routinely, to more people, and report more back. UK ISPs have been legally obliged to block certain websites from access for years, Google knows where you live from nearby WiFi SSIDs and can correlate all your browsing traffic back almost entirely to your real identity all the time, GMail and Office365 and FaceBook and Microsoft know everyone you contact and what you talk about and therefore what kind of relation you are to each other, all the big providers know where you live and where you work and whose house you spend time in from location tracking and correlating cookies with IPs. This thing from Apple is way more narrowly constrained and scoped than any of that.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> 1. It's been turned on for all major cloud providers for some time. Upload something into google cloud/photos/dropbox? Yeah, the system's there as well. It just seems most people have been unaware of this so far. Two things. First, this feels like the outrage about the CPU ID in Pentium III's, until someone figured out it had been there all along in Pentium II's. Second, are there any statistics which show that this scanning has been effective? Searching reveals a lot of conflicting information about child predation statistics.
starbugs 5y ago
> 3. I don't like this way of doing things, but I do understand that there's been major push from the US Government for this kind of tech. Basically, the tech companies had two choices: either add an actual backdoor, or provide another way of checking the content of all their users. They went with the latter. That was the wrong decision. Had they just removed the strong encryption of cloud content, this would be the standard case you are referring to. Now, since it's local, the question is no longer what it's currently being used for, but how long before they are obligated by the government to activate it for local files also.
- salawat 5y ago
  This was still a problem when they were doing it server side. Especially since it was implemented stealthily.

by kmlx 5y ago

tpush 5y ago

> 2. It's only for the US. From my understanding Europe and ROW doesn't get this. At least for now. AFAIK the EU is actually pondering legislation to make proactive scanning for CSAM mandatory. Right now, in the US at least, proactive scanning like practically all cloud providers do is not required by law.

vaylian 5y ago
The EU law was passed recently: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chatcontrol-european-parliament-approves-mass-surveillance-of-private-communications/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chatcontrol-european-parlia...
- kmlx 5y ago
  happy times :( i fear more governments will take this position now that the big ones managed to push it thru.

draw_down 5y ago

> I don't like this way of doing things, but Yeah yeah. We know. Won’t someone think of the children.

lovelyviking 5y ago

The issue is what they are going to do next without telling you. The issue is installation of Spyware Engine, not it's current usage.

jodrellblank 5y ago
What, other than paranoia, makes you think they are going to do anything next without telling you? They told us about this, we're all talking about it. The issue is your calling it "Spyware Engine" as if it's anything that wasn't happening before - mesh networking for "Find my phone", watching bluetooth and wifi and GPS locations and reporting back to HQ for things like mapping and traffic monitoring and route planning, and possibly advertising, these are much more "spyware" than this is - they happen more routinely, to more people, and report more back. UK ISPs have been legally obliged to block certain websites from access for years, Google knows where you live from nearby WiFi SSIDs and can correlate all your browsing traffic back almost entirely to your real identity all the time, GMail and Office365 and FaceBook and Microsoft know everyone you contact and what you talk about and therefore what kind of relation you are to each other, all the big providers know where you live and where you work and whose house you spend time in from location tracking and correlating cookies with IPs. This thing from Apple is way more narrowly constrained and scoped than any of that.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

> 1. It's been turned on for all major cloud providers for some time. Upload something into google cloud/photos/dropbox? Yeah, the system's there as well. It just seems most people have been unaware of this so far. Two things. First, this feels like the outrage about the CPU ID in Pentium III's, until someone figured out it had been there all along in Pentium II's. Second, are there any statistics which show that this scanning has been effective? Searching reveals a lot of conflicting information about child predation statistics.

starbugs 5y ago

> 3. I don't like this way of doing things, but I do understand that there's been major push from the US Government for this kind of tech. Basically, the tech companies had two choices: either add an actual backdoor, or provide another way of checking the content of all their users. They went with the latter. That was the wrong decision. Had they just removed the strong encryption of cloud content, this would be the standard case you are referring to. Now, since it's local, the question is no longer what it's currently being used for, but how long before they are obligated by the government to activate it for local files also.

salawat 5y ago
This was still a problem when they were doing it server side. Especially since it was implemented stealthily.