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Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-

by toxik 5y ago

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

tobyhinloopen 5y ago
Talking about this with non-tech people might make the distrust in anything they don’t understand worse. Think vaccines.
- u4ria 5y ago
  Theory of Vaccines is simple. They want you to outsource all your immunity to big pharma. Just like when they took away your guns, and made you outsource your self defence to government. Just like when they outsourced your critical thinking to fact checkers. You are no good on your own. Submit to us and pay us, and we will make you good.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  Yes, most people are not good at persuasion, and a generic mention of the fact may be harmful as you say.
- cle 5y ago
  Intentionally deceiving people is probably not a good strategy for building their trust.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  Refusing to acknowledge egregious top-down decisions which threaten or violate either one's well-being or some perceived fundamental right has a much worse effect on public trust. "Why didn't you tell me this was going on?" "You're simply too stupid to handle the idea that your betters might occasionally be untrustworthy"
  - zepto 5y ago
    How are you going to argue that it’s bad for parents to be informed when strangers send sexual imagery to their children?
    - crocodiletears 5y ago
      You argue the applications of the technology further down the line. Remind them how facebook's safety features turned into tools for censorship.
      - zepto 5y ago
        Can you think of a time when that kind of argument has ever worked? I remind you that people made that argument about Facebook and it didn’t.
        crocodiletears 5y ago
        Raising awareness won't stop any of this. It's inevitable. We have the technological capacity and institutional interest required to implement it, it will be done, and it will be endemic. Raising awareness is about letting people know so that they might take the necessary precautions if they consider themselves to be at risk of its abuse, and degrades their faith in the institutions that support it.
        zepto 5y ago
        It doesn’t matter whether they are aware. They can’t take precautions. There are no technical solutions that people can use, and technologists seem to be uninterested in working on them. Apple’s solution is the best on offer. Raising awareness about Facebook’s problems hasn’t harmed Facebook.
        crocodiletears 5y ago
        They can take precautions by not using iOS devices. The goal isn't to harm Apple, it's to make the knowledge available to those who need it, and have the will to avoid it. That could mean anything from watching what they put on their iPhone, to putting them down the track of using degoogled android variants on select phones, to ditching cell phones all together depending on their needs. Knowing that your phone is watching, reporting, and potentially moderating the content in it is information which is valuable in and of itself. Even if it only has utility to a fraction of the population. We find ourselves in the tightening noose of a latent authoritarian technocratic surveillance society. Few people have anything to fear from it, or the resources to escape it. But some do, and should be given every piece of information that might help them moderate or escape it.
- forcry 5y ago
  Theory of Vaccines is simple. They want you to outsource all your immunity to big pharma. Just like when they took away your guns, and made you outsource your self defence to government. Just like when they outsourced your critical thinking to fact checkers. You are no good on your own. Submit to us and pay us, and we will make you good. You are nothing, your immune system is useless, your guns don't fire true, your logic is not sound, without us.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    When did they take away my guns? I must have my missed that town hall.
- bombcar 5y ago
  "See what Apple is doing is basically vaccinating your iPhone against child porn. That's bad because there's the possibility of side effects, though rare, and you should have the decision yourself as to whether you vaccinate your phone." Wait, no, that's not the argument ...
defaultname 5y ago
Anyone who engaged in such a discussion with a non-technical person is going to defacto seem like an advocate for child pornography, similar to how advocating for encryption can easily be twisted to being pro-crime. Having said that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about a pretty tame change. This seems like so much ado about very close to nothing. a) They optionally scan messaged photos for nudity using a NN if the participants are children and in a family (the account grouping), and the group adult(s) have opted in, giving children warnings and information if they send or receive such material. A+++ thumbs up. b) They scan photos that you've uploaded to iCloud (available at photos.icloud.com, unencrypted -- in the E2E sense, effectively "plaintext" from Apple's perspective -- etc) for known CP hashes. Bizarrely Apple decided to scan these on device as well, causing 99% of the outrage and confusion, yet every major cloud photo service in the world does such checks for the same reason, whether you have the photo set to private or not, and presumably Apple decided to do it on device simply as free distributed computing, taking advantage of hundreds of millions of high performance chips, but most importantly as a PR move demonstrating that "Apple Silicon helps with Child Safety", etc. That's it. Various "this is a harbinger of doom and tomorrow they're going to..." arguments are unconvincing. This does absolutely nothing to break or subvert E2E encryption or on device privacy. EDIT: The moderation of this comment has been fascinating, going to double digits, down to negatives, back up again, etc.
- new299 5y ago
  They were already doing it on the cloud: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-icloud-photos-for-child-abuse-images/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-... So now they’re doing it on device too. This feels like it’s putting in place the foundation to scan all offline content.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Scanning on device (albeit only of photos shared off device) seems like an ill-considered PR move for a whole child safety push (perhaps with a "look at how powerful our iPhone chips are" angle). As you mentioned, they've already been doing these checks for some time on their servers, and people concerned about false positives should realize that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon et al are doing identical checks with a very similar process. I imagine there are some frantic meetings at Apple today. However the grossly misleading claims people have been making to fear-monger aren't helpful.
rvz 5y ago
> Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. They were already sold into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 12's, M1 Macs and iPad Pros. They are going to have a hard time moving to another platform. Best part? Apple is a huge customer of Google Cloud for storage so you can now tell Google about all the files on your iCloud account. [0] 'With privacy in mind.' /s [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-googles-largest-corporate-customer-for-cloud-storage https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-goog...
- mosselman 5y ago
  In all fairness, in theory, they could have all that data encrypted with keys that google doesn't have.
sundvor 5y ago
The privacy implications are fucking horrible. As an Android user I'd love to gloat, after all Apple have really had the upper edge on privacy so far, and their users have not been shy about telling us. Again and again. However any pleasure would be as short lived as peeing your pants to keep warm in winter, because if Apple proceeds, Google is bound to follow. A user monitoring system like this is just ripe for abuse of the most horrific kinds. It must die.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Google Photos runs PhotoDNA on all photos there, so it’s no different from Apple scanning photos destined for iCloud photos with similar tech. I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device (still only to photos going to iCloud Photos) instead of server-side, where they have to disable E2EE to do so?
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    iCloud Photos are not end-to-end encrypted in the first place.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      This opens the door to doing so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081863
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    > I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device. This is exactly what my problem is. They are using my CPU, battery time and network bandwidth to do this when they should be using their own resources. I know I can turn off iCloud but I am paying for that and we already have an agreement in place. Honestly, it's the only concrete thing to complain about. Every other complaint is based on a what-if, slippery slope concern. Of course, as per usual, nobody agrees with me here on HN... but that's fine with me because they simply don't reply which lets me know that they don't have any good arguments against my PoV.
ren_engineer 5y ago
it still boggles my mind how naive people in the tech industry are, they fall for the same trick again and again over the course of decades. Same people who fell for Google's "don't be evil" and Google pretending to be better than the Evil Empire Microsoft are now shocked that Apple was really only in business for money from the start and the privacy stuff was just a marketing gimmick
- mekal 5y ago
  That's a little cynical though don't you think? Couldn't it be that they were sincere in the beginning but over time, company culture changes, the original founders move on/retire/die/etc and pressure from government, lobbyists, etc add up. I guess its the same result in the end.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
>touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative There is a difference between selling your data to the highest bidder through a stalker capitalism ecosystem and giving governments carte blanche access. I am not at all advocating for the latter, but if you are fighting that battle, CP is not the hill to die on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- osmarks 5y ago
  This is why it's a problem - this is the most defensible usecase for it, and any upscaling later will just get seen as a natural progression.
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    My point was that battle was already lost a long time ago when terrorism was the use case.
ColinHayhurst 5y ago
Privacy is not something Apple, or any company, gives us. But it’s something they extract from us; by tracking us and harvesting data. If Apple were serious, as opposed to positioning themselves as less extractive than GFAM and others, they would not be taking this road. Yes, they say it’s on iCloud for now, but the signs are that it will be done client side in future. Whether you believe that will happen or not the risks are too high; so it’s prudent to assume the worst. This is this a first step to "Detective in your Pocket", cloaked intentionally, or not, by a well-meaning objective. An objective we can all support. If you wanted to put in a thin wedge on distributed surveillance, where better to start? As pointed out CSAM filtering/scanning is already done so that’s not the issue here. There’s a big debate to be had, and being had, on the upsides/downsides and benefits/dangers of AI and false positives. That’s a huge issue in itself; but that’s not the biggest concern with this move. If Apple pushes on with this it’s a clear signal that they wish to march us all to a new world order with Distributed Surveillance, as a Service. A march in step with the drumbeat of your increasingly authoritarian (or if you are lucky or more generous, safety conscious) government. I have signed the letter to express my very strong personal concerns but also as a CEO of a company that takes CSAM seriously and seeks to provide solutions, in search, without surveillance.

by toxik 5y ago

tobyhinloopen 5y ago

Talking about this with non-tech people might make the distrust in anything they don’t understand worse. Think vaccines.

u4ria 5y ago
Theory of Vaccines is simple. They want you to outsource all your immunity to big pharma. Just like when they took away your guns, and made you outsource your self defence to government. Just like when they outsourced your critical thinking to fact checkers. You are no good on your own. Submit to us and pay us, and we will make you good.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
Yes, most people are not good at persuasion, and a generic mention of the fact may be harmful as you say.
cle 5y ago
Intentionally deceiving people is probably not a good strategy for building their trust.
crocodiletears 5y ago
Refusing to acknowledge egregious top-down decisions which threaten or violate either one's well-being or some perceived fundamental right has a much worse effect on public trust. "Why didn't you tell me this was going on?" "You're simply too stupid to handle the idea that your betters might occasionally be untrustworthy"
- zepto 5y ago
  How are you going to argue that it’s bad for parents to be informed when strangers send sexual imagery to their children?
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    You argue the applications of the technology further down the line. Remind them how facebook's safety features turned into tools for censorship.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Can you think of a time when that kind of argument has ever worked? I remind you that people made that argument about Facebook and it didn’t.
      - crocodiletears 5y ago
        Raising awareness won't stop any of this. It's inevitable. We have the technological capacity and institutional interest required to implement it, it will be done, and it will be endemic. Raising awareness is about letting people know so that they might take the necessary precautions if they consider themselves to be at risk of its abuse, and degrades their faith in the institutions that support it.
        zepto 5y ago
        It doesn’t matter whether they are aware. They can’t take precautions. There are no technical solutions that people can use, and technologists seem to be uninterested in working on them. Apple’s solution is the best on offer. Raising awareness about Facebook’s problems hasn’t harmed Facebook.
        crocodiletears 5y ago
        They can take precautions by not using iOS devices. The goal isn't to harm Apple, it's to make the knowledge available to those who need it, and have the will to avoid it. That could mean anything from watching what they put on their iPhone, to putting them down the track of using degoogled android variants on select phones, to ditching cell phones all together depending on their needs. Knowing that your phone is watching, reporting, and potentially moderating the content in it is information which is valuable in and of itself. Even if it only has utility to a fraction of the population. We find ourselves in the tightening noose of a latent authoritarian technocratic surveillance society. Few people have anything to fear from it, or the resources to escape it. But some do, and should be given every piece of information that might help them moderate or escape it.
forcry 5y ago
Theory of Vaccines is simple. They want you to outsource all your immunity to big pharma. Just like when they took away your guns, and made you outsource your self defence to government. Just like when they outsourced your critical thinking to fact checkers. You are no good on your own. Submit to us and pay us, and we will make you good. You are nothing, your immune system is useless, your guns don't fire true, your logic is not sound, without us.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  When did they take away my guns? I must have my missed that town hall.
bombcar 5y ago
"See what Apple is doing is basically vaccinating your iPhone against child porn. That's bad because there's the possibility of side effects, though rare, and you should have the decision yourself as to whether you vaccinate your phone." Wait, no, that's not the argument ...

defaultname 5y ago

Anyone who engaged in such a discussion with a non-technical person is going to defacto seem like an advocate for child pornography, similar to how advocating for encryption can easily be twisted to being pro-crime. Having said that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about a pretty tame change. This seems like so much ado about very close to nothing. a) They optionally scan messaged photos for nudity using a NN if the participants are children and in a family (the account grouping), and the group adult(s) have opted in, giving children warnings and information if they send or receive such material. A+++ thumbs up. b) They scan photos that you've uploaded to iCloud (available at photos.icloud.com, unencrypted -- in the E2E sense, effectively "plaintext" from Apple's perspective -- etc) for known CP hashes. Bizarrely Apple decided to scan these on device as well, causing 99% of the outrage and confusion, yet every major cloud photo service in the world does such checks for the same reason, whether you have the photo set to private or not, and presumably Apple decided to do it on device simply as free distributed computing, taking advantage of hundreds of millions of high performance chips, but most importantly as a PR move demonstrating that "Apple Silicon helps with Child Safety", etc. That's it. Various "this is a harbinger of doom and tomorrow they're going to..." arguments are unconvincing. This does absolutely nothing to break or subvert E2E encryption or on device privacy. EDIT: The moderation of this comment has been fascinating, going to double digits, down to negatives, back up again, etc.

new299 5y ago
They were already doing it on the cloud: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-icloud-photos-for-child-abuse-images/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-... So now they’re doing it on device too. This feels like it’s putting in place the foundation to scan all offline content.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Scanning on device (albeit only of photos shared off device) seems like an ill-considered PR move for a whole child safety push (perhaps with a "look at how powerful our iPhone chips are" angle). As you mentioned, they've already been doing these checks for some time on their servers, and people concerned about false positives should realize that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon et al are doing identical checks with a very similar process. I imagine there are some frantic meetings at Apple today. However the grossly misleading claims people have been making to fear-monger aren't helpful.

rvz 5y ago

> Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. They were already sold into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 12's, M1 Macs and iPad Pros. They are going to have a hard time moving to another platform. Best part? Apple is a huge customer of Google Cloud for storage so you can now tell Google about all the files on your iCloud account. [0] 'With privacy in mind.' /s [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-googles-largest-corporate-customer-for-cloud-storage https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-goog...

mosselman 5y ago
In all fairness, in theory, they could have all that data encrypted with keys that google doesn't have.

sundvor 5y ago

The privacy implications are fucking horrible. As an Android user I'd love to gloat, after all Apple have really had the upper edge on privacy so far, and their users have not been shy about telling us. Again and again. However any pleasure would be as short lived as peeing your pants to keep warm in winter, because if Apple proceeds, Google is bound to follow. A user monitoring system like this is just ripe for abuse of the most horrific kinds. It must die.

judge2020 5y ago
Google Photos runs PhotoDNA on all photos there, so it’s no different from Apple scanning photos destined for iCloud photos with similar tech. I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device (still only to photos going to iCloud Photos) instead of server-side, where they have to disable E2EE to do so?
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  iCloud Photos are not end-to-end encrypted in the first place.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    This opens the door to doing so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081863
- wayneftw 5y ago
  > I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device. This is exactly what my problem is. They are using my CPU, battery time and network bandwidth to do this when they should be using their own resources. I know I can turn off iCloud but I am paying for that and we already have an agreement in place. Honestly, it's the only concrete thing to complain about. Every other complaint is based on a what-if, slippery slope concern. Of course, as per usual, nobody agrees with me here on HN... but that's fine with me because they simply don't reply which lets me know that they don't have any good arguments against my PoV.

ren_engineer 5y ago

it still boggles my mind how naive people in the tech industry are, they fall for the same trick again and again over the course of decades. Same people who fell for Google's "don't be evil" and Google pretending to be better than the Evil Empire Microsoft are now shocked that Apple was really only in business for money from the start and the privacy stuff was just a marketing gimmick

mekal 5y ago
That's a little cynical though don't you think? Couldn't it be that they were sincere in the beginning but over time, company culture changes, the original founders move on/retire/die/etc and pressure from government, lobbyists, etc add up. I guess its the same result in the end.

wintermutestwin 5y ago

>touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative There is a difference between selling your data to the highest bidder through a stalker capitalism ecosystem and giving governments carte blanche access. I am not at all advocating for the latter, but if you are fighting that battle, CP is not the hill to die on.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
osmarks 5y ago
This is why it's a problem - this is the most defensible usecase for it, and any upscaling later will just get seen as a natural progression.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  My point was that battle was already lost a long time ago when terrorism was the use case.

ColinHayhurst 5y ago

Privacy is not something Apple, or any company, gives us. But it’s something they extract from us; by tracking us and harvesting data. If Apple were serious, as opposed to positioning themselves as less extractive than GFAM and others, they would not be taking this road. Yes, they say it’s on iCloud for now, but the signs are that it will be done client side in future. Whether you believe that will happen or not the risks are too high; so it’s prudent to assume the worst. This is this a first step to "Detective in your Pocket", cloaked intentionally, or not, by a well-meaning objective. An objective we can all support. If you wanted to put in a thin wedge on distributed surveillance, where better to start? As pointed out CSAM filtering/scanning is already done so that’s not the issue here. There’s a big debate to be had, and being had, on the upsides/downsides and benefits/dangers of AI and false positives. That’s a huge issue in itself; but that’s not the biggest concern with this move. If Apple pushes on with this it’s a clear signal that they wish to march us all to a new world order with Distributed Surveillance, as a Service. A march in step with the drumbeat of your increasingly authoritarian (or if you are lucky or more generous, safety conscious) government. I have signed the letter to express my very strong personal concerns but also as a CEO of a company that takes CSAM seriously and seeks to provide solutions, in search, without surveillance.