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This invasive capability on the device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy and there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once

This invasive capability on the device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy and there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once implemented. The scope will always broaden. From the article: Apple’s choices in this case, though, go in the opposite direction: instead of adding CSAM-scanning to iCloud Photos in the cloud that they own-and-operate, Apple is compromising the phone that you and I own-and-operate, without any of us having a say in the matter. Yes, you can turn off iCloud Photos to disable Apple’s scanning, but that is a policy decision; the capability to reach into a user’s phone now exists, and there is nothing an iPhone user can do to get rid of it. A far better solution to the “Flickr problem” I started with is to recognize that the proper point of comparison is not the iPhone and Facebook, but rather Facebook and iCloud. One’s device ought be one’s property, with all of the expectations of ownership and privacy that entails; cloud services, meanwhile, are the property of their owners as well, with all of the expectations of societal responsibility and law-abiding which that entails. It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
It's hard to argue they did this for a vision of privacy. They did this because they want YOUR phone to be a liability not THEIR servers.
- aNoob7000 5y ago
  To make it even worse they extended the functionality to Mac OSX. WTF???
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    Do you have references for this? I must have missed this part.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ https://www.apple.com/child-safety/, at the bottom lists macOS as target platform.
      - cassianoleal 5y ago
        It's unclear exactly what this means to be honest. Which is not less scary but more. This sentence: > Next, iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online seems to suggest that the hash-matching happens only on iOS and iPadOS. The rest of the text OTOH suggests many things happen across all types of devices and OSs. Regardless, this seems very bad.
        YokoSix 5y ago
        My guess is that they're going to put it into the macOS Photos app. Those images are already scanned for people, animals and objects so it should be easy for them to implement the child protection database there.
      - aethertron 5y ago
        Won't implementing this on macOS make it too easy to reverse engineer? Think the hashes are supposed to be secret. ETA: Apple quote: "unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices". Unreadable, unleakable, no doubt uninterpretable... unless someone reverses them to get a blurry 'visual proxy' collection.
  - freeopinion 5y ago
    How is this worse? Any Apple device you thought you owned and controlled was never under your control. You were wrong. Perhaps your understanding of the situation has changed so that you better understand how bad it is. But the situation isn't worse.
- syops 5y ago
  That’s an interesting point. Do you know I’d this is the case? That is, by putting this in the phone then Apple’s liability is lessened.
- 015a 5y ago
  Not to mention, this neural hashing can't be a cheap operation. Better to use the processors paid for by your customers than ones you have to pay for in the cloud!
  - eropple 5y ago
    I would like to see tests wrt this before I assume it--Apple puts a pretty hefty premium on battery life for customer devices, and while that would probably not win out when placed against this kind of liability minimization, they've got a lot of sharp folks there who crunch this stuff in their sleep.
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      I have been noticing increased background activity on my phone after it reached 100% during charging, for years now. Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device. Nothing new really. And they can still keep their promise of a good battery life -- which is quite justified by the way, I am using iPhones for 4 years now and they've consistently won over any of the 13 Android devices that I've used in the years before (and sometimes during). There are ways to achieve both -- good observable battery life plus ability to use your phone for P2P computation -- and it's IMO obvious that Apple has succeeded in that for several years now.
      - Xylakant 5y ago
        Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device. They already do, the feature is called “Optimized Batter Charging”. It charges the battery to 80% and only does the full charge a bit before you usually start using the phone. You’ll find the setting in the battery health section.
        edgyquant 5y ago
        Optimized Battery Charging isn’t the same as being a node in a bot net.
- ursugardaddy 5y ago
  Apple's just really weird when it comes to the control they exert over devices. they do it with 'privacy' in mind and what they come up with is usually better than the worst case but it can still be pretty iffy eg. a few months back when their notarization/entitlement verification system was being discussed it's all just their vision of computing (which has some merits), hyper-controlled, locked down and "safe" it's not going to change if you're not comfortable with it you really shouldn't be using their products
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Hate Apple's philosophy personally but I recommend my mom a Mac every single time. Not everyone needs freedom, she's not downloading fitgirl repacks.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      This is a weird mindset. Either you care about privacy or you don’t: what a person does on their device shouldn’t matter. If you only care about privacy when doing illegal things you don’t actually care about privacy you’re just a criminal not wanting to be caught.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  I've heard it argued that this allows Apple to move iCloud toward end-to-end encryption (which would be a good thing for privacy, right?). It seems like the current US government position is "we'll let tech giants use end-to-end encryption for user data as long as they put measures in place to catch CSAM." by "US government position" I'm including negotiations and proposed/threatened legislation, not just the current laws on the books.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    It moves iCloud to end-to-end encryption by compromising the ends. Not really a reasonable outcome.
  - babesh 5y ago
    If you really believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. The exact same safety argument can and will be applied to ALL data whether on your device or Apple's servers. Why limit to iMessage and photos? Why not Signal on your device? Why not your backups on Apple servers? Oh wait, already happens.
    - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
      I think Apple would rather put this CSAM-scanning system in place (which allows them to implement end-to-end encryption for iCloud in the future) than deal with the EARN-IT Act or similar becoming law, which could effectively make all e2e-encrypted services illegal (require a government backdoor). >The bill also crafts two addition changes to Section 230(c)(2)'s liability, allows any state to bring a lawsuit to service providers if they fail to deal with child sexual abuse material on their service, or if they allow end-to-end encryption on their service and do not provide means to enforcement officials to decrypt the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020
      - babesh 5y ago
        If that were the case, wouldn't this CSAM scanning system be insufficient to meet those EARN-IT requirements? You have other Apple services and third-party apps that host material on Apple's servers. For example, if a user turns on iCloud backups, then every third-party app's Documents directory is backed up to iCloud. Would it be a violation to not CSAM scan that content? What if the contents are encrypted? Would they be required to be decrypted so that they are CSAM-scanned? iCloud drive is another Apple service that backs up to Apple's servers. Wouldn't its absence from the list be a violation? What if a user hosts encrypted files on iCloud drive? Would the user be required to decrypt them so that Apple can scan them? It seems that the real intention is to eliminate end-to-end encryption.
endisneigh 5y ago
This is an interesting comment. If you had an Apple device it was never truly yours to begin with.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  If you own a device with builtin software that synchronizes part of the data on it to the cloud then it was never truly yours to begin with** Fixed it for you. I hope you are not implying that Google, whose bread and butter has been selling personal information, has resisted the temptation for all these years? I use Apple and it's an informed choice. I am pretty realistic about their practices. And realistically we don't have a choice. Either you use a smartphone and it's a Swiss cheese of security vulnerabilities -- worst of which are embedded in the device on purpose! -- or you don't use a smartphone at all. This is the era we're living in. I hope that custom ROM Android communities can win and give us back some freedom but I am skeptical. Still, I am open to try some of the de-bloated Xiaomi ROMs at one point. Or maybe put LineageOS / PostmarketOS on them.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I didn’t mention Google at all, not sure why you brought it up
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      Because I dislike the implication that only Apple is doing it. No. Everybody is doing it. Apple was just the first to publicly admit it. Doesn't make it better, sure, but let's not delude ourselves at least. No company can resist using all that valuable personal data on the smartphones.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        I didn’t imply only Apple is doing it either
        5y ago
WA 5y ago
I guess we all now just realize the truth: you don't control your iPhone. Apple does. You merely use it. In a way, nothing changed. Apple could've done on-device scanning forever. In another way, everything changed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  phone's are just phones. At this point multiple companies and potential governments are monitoring or have the capability to monitor it. But computers are another story. So far we still maintain some privacy there thanks to Linux.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Android is also Linux. Yet some manufacturers don't allow any kind of boot unlocking or root access. Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down. The reason is more that the industry hasn't bothered selling locked-down computers yet by default. The tech is there, Secure Boot + TPM. They just give us the options to override in the BIOS. For now.
    - api 5y ago
      Open source also doesn't guarantee any type of control if it's SaaS or anchored to a closed source SaaS system. There's a ton of "but it's open source!" SaaS companies that I shall not name that leverage open source but in reality are lock-in walled gardens. The code is open but the data and network effect are not.
    - Zambyte 5y ago
      > Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down It can though. See: GPLv3. IMO the greatest failure of Linux was not upgrading from GPLv2.
      - btdmaster 5y ago
Aperocky 5y ago
> now exists Is this true? I've always assumed apple can always do that (if they somehow needed to).
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  They always had the potential, but now the code is there and running.
  - zionic 5y ago
    It’s like your spouse’s communication has broken down, they’re doing things that don’t make sense, and they just randomly went out and bought a gun without telling you. Sure, they haven’t killed you in your sleep yet… but they sure are acting weird and recently acquired the means to do so
GeekyBear 5y ago
> This invasive capability on the device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy I am a user uploading a photo to the cloud. Google's servers scan photos after they are uploaded to the cloud, and have done so for the past decade. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple wants the device to scan the photo before it is uploaded to the cloud. Both are equally invasive and both can only be avoided by refusing to use the cloud.
- hef19898 5y ago
  But only Apple can, at least for now, scan content or your phone. Google cannot. Yet. Small, bit crucial difference.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    Frankly, it's more of a problem for my data to be flagged after Google has it than it would be for it to never leave my device at all. People have certainly run afoul of the law when the data Google has about them is misused. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre... We are only talking about what happens when you try to send the data to the cloud, after all. Not about all the data on the device.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      You are so close to understand the issue. When Google, or anyone else, is flagging it and sharing the result with, e.g., law enforcement you can have a problem. Apple will no just simply refuse to upload stuff that would be flagged in the cloud, it is flagging it already before upload on your device. And share the results with authorities. That for now they claim to only do so with stuff about to be uploaded is of minor concern, the tech is there to scan all the pictures on an iPhone now. No reason to believe it will stop with intended uploads, or pictures.
shuckles 5y ago
Google could’ve announced the same solution for Google Photos as a 3rd party app. I don’t understand what privileged position Apple as OS maker has used to build this solution. It’s a feature of their Photos application when used with their cloud photo service.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  To be installed by default and not removable on one of the most used devices in the world.
  - shuckles 5y ago
    It’s a pretty weak argument to say that a clearly communicated change in behavior of a single application compromises trust in the entire operating system. You’d basically need to argue that Apple should not be allowed to install any default applications or services. The Photos application can’t be removed, but this behavior can be turned off.
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      It does because they control the entire os, ecosystem, now and in the future, and have demonstrated with PRISM and this they don't play for our team.
      - vb6sp6 5y ago
        > they don't play for our team I'm no apple apologist but apple must follow the laws of the countries they operate in. They can't advocate for us because we are not the ones setting the rules.
        BiteCode_dev 5y ago
        Sure. If the law tell them to locate all gays so that they can be jailed in the emirates, would you agree with that ? I could do worse, but Godwin called.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I’ve been thinking carefully about this situation. I just don’t see the intrusion. Firstly, you are syncing your photos to iCloud. It’s equivalent to developing your photos at an old timey film shop. iCloud happens to have lots of security guarantees, much like the film shop. But the moment you develop CP, all bets are off. I think most of us lead pampered, selfish lives. Perhaps this is a “think of the children” cry, and perhaps this has been used for many evils over time. If Apple were to get their lists of hashes from China (a situation they’ve opened themselves up to in the future), then sure, that’s awful. Or if they were doing these checks and alerting law enforcement without iCloud sync, then that’s awful too. But this doesn’t seem to be a slippery slope, yet. They are targeting a specific case: you uploading your photos, and your photos being of known child sexual abuse. Yes, there are false positive photos in the database. Maybe there’s even a flower in there. But if you got flagged as a false positive, the moment law enforcement looks at your photos (which, remember, you’ve surrendered to iCloud), you sexually abusing a flower won’t cause any problems. Or will it? Please, my mind is open. I’d love to change it.
- wobblykiwi 5y ago
  This is about Apple scanning the pictures on your phone, not the pictures that have been synced to iCloud.
  - camillomiller 5y ago
    A good point to keep in mind, there is no "scanning". There is a hashing, then a check of the hashes - not the pictures - and if a hash matches the on-device NCMEC hashes list a "security voucher" is generated. Said voucher will be uploaded to iCloud photos along with the picture it refers to, without anyone in the chain being able to know that it happened.
  - 0x000000001 5y ago
    they already scan all the images on your phone. that's how i can search for "dog" or "flowers" and find results in my photo library.
kumarsw 5y ago
It's an unfortunate choice because my understanding is that it's possible to match encrypted files on the cloud with CSAM, assuming that Apple has the public key, and this has done before in a court case as evidence leading to a conviction. Maybe it's computationally prohibitive?
- danudey 5y ago
  The files that iCloud Photos stores are encrypted to your account and Apple can't access them. Apple scans the images on your phone so that this can continue to be the case, but they're doing a perceptual match - i.e. determining if this image looks like a modified version of the original image (e.g. if it's just been resized or re-encoded or something). This way Apple can scan for CSAM without having to actually violate privacy by scanning a user's images themselves.
  - kumarsw 5y ago
    I recall a court case where a police officer was convicted of possessing CSAM on his computer. The files were encrypted so the prosecution was not able to view them, but they were able to demonstrate that the encrypted files contained known images, I believe by encrypting a known image with the same public key and demonstrating that the result was binary identical. Obviously this wouldn't work except for unmodified files including cropping, scaling and editing metadata.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Interesting. Can you link to the case?
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > The files that iCloud Photos stores are encrypted to your account and Apple can't access them. This is false[1]. Apple can decrypt them, and they can decrypt them and send them to law enforcement should they get subpoenas. They're encrypted at rest with keys that Apple has. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51207744 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51207744
jlpom 5y ago
> there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once implemented. The scope will always broaden Speculating it is slippery slope arg. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  As the article says: "The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect." > It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used. -- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html To pretend it's inherently unknowable right up to the point until it's "too late" is kinda getting old.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  From Wikipedia[1]: > Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
  - jlpom 5y ago
caconym_ 5y ago
> It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours. Well said. It's very easy to understand that content on a physical disk I own will not be scanned by some government-friendly surveillance program, and content I upload to somebody else's servers will. I am comfortable with [subsets of] my files existing on both sides of this distinction, but only because I understand it. Now Apple is letting the surveillance apparatus reach into my own physical hardware, blurring the lines with some overwrought, proprietary crypto-gobbledygook solution. Given the details they've provided, I get why they might have thought this was in line with their general privacy ethos of keeping everything on-device, but the fact is that it is too complicated to build a reliable understanding of in my mental model of my own data privacy--and that's for somebody (me) who is quite technical and has even dabbled in crypto. Now that I no longer understand Apple's practices as a steward of my private data, I can no longer trust them with it. It's a real shame.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >It's very easy to understand that content on a physical disk I own will not be scanned by some government-friendly surveillance program, and content I upload to somebody else's servers will. I am comfortable with [subsets of] my files existing on both sides of this distinction, but only because I understand it. According to Apple, the only content being scanned are the images you are storing in iCloud. So how is this breaking your rule?
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > According to Apple, the only content being scanned are the images you are storing in iCloud Thats the whole point of this debate. TODAY (if you trust apple is honest) it's only stuff being stored in icloud. But there is no technical reason for this to be true - just a "policy" reason. The scanner is already deployed to devices, we already let in the trojan horse. Tomorrow, the rules could change (and we might not know)
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    This is breaking my "rule" because the detection is being moved device-side as part of a complicated scheme I don't believe it's realistically possible for an outsider to have a complete and persistently correct understanding of. Thus, I do not trust myself to fully understand the attack surface I'm exposing, and that is something I'm not personally comfortable with. I thought this was fairly clear from the later parts of my comment.
zzyzxd 5y ago
> Yes, you can turn off iCloud Photos to disable Apple’s scanning To me, it is such a weird implementation. The feature is about scanning on-device data, not data in iCloud, but for some reason disabling iCloud is the way to opt out? Did I miss any technical details? Apple is always pretty OK with handing over iCloud data to authorities. Not only that they have already stored Chinese users iCloud data in state controlled entity, this was their whole argument regarding the San Bernardino case -- on-device data is user's sacred privacy, but if the shooter's phone uploaded data to iCloud, they were willing to send a copy to FBI in a heartbeat. This makes me wonder, is iCloud the underlying technical boundary for privacy?
- leokennis 5y ago
  The feature is because it’s illegal for Apple to host/have/posses CSAM (in iCloud). But Apple doesn’t want to know what they host for you on iCloud. So they need to be sure that before something is uploaded to iCloud, it’s not CSAM. So if you don’t intend to upload to iCloud (i.e. you disable iCloud on your phone), then Apple doesn’t care anymore if you have CSAM or not.
migueldeicaza 5y ago
Apple's approach opens the door to get full end-to-end encryption for other assets that are currently stored on iCloud, that currently are not. It is not a guarantee, but it leaves that door open, which currently would face very strong headwinds to get rolled out.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  That's mentioned in TFA, Apple relented to the FBI's request that iCloud backups would not encrypted. I can't see that changing since scanning for CP won't help the FBI in the vast majority of their investigations (terrorism, drug trafficking, fraud).
snarf21 5y ago
The one thing that occurred to me is that this is almost seems like this is a cya, Section 230 protection in disguise. There has been more discussions about Big Tech and 230, and this is one way to say "Look, we are compliant on our platform. Don't remove our protections or break us up, we are your friend!" It also shouldn't be too surprising given how Apple has behaved in China. They will only push back against the government up until the point it starts to affect profits. I'm also curious and I don't mean this in a judging way, but are all the people who are planning to sell their iDevices also going to divest all their retirement holdings from Apple? Stock price is the thing that actually applies pressure. Everyone's comp is based on it. What would happen if enough people divested from these rent-seeking companies? We can't expect the government (though they should) or companies to behave in a way that is pro-consumer, but if we can align incentives we have a chance.
ohazi 5y ago
> It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours. Disappointing, sure, but not surprising. Since the introduction of the iPhone, Apple has made it clear that one of their core beliefs is that they alone know better than their users. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are happy to remove user control wherever possible. Their decision here fits that pattern perfectly.
ksec 5y ago
I think a lot of people are either stuck with images of Apple under Steve Jobs or Apple under Tim Cook's marketing. It is at still nice to see people are finally asking these sort of questions.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
The thing no one seems to be discussing here as this topic arises again and again is that the problem being addressed is Apple's problem, not the problem of anyone who purchases an Apple computer. Apple's "solution" is to create a new problem for all Apple purchasers. The majority of Apple hardware purchasers are probably not engaged in illegal activity. Yet all Apple purchasers are being forced to pay the price for Apple's mistake. Apple's hands are not clean. No Apple purchaser ever intentionally requested that Apple copy their files to servers in Apple datacenters, or that Apple perform encryption intsead of the user, store and forward the user's personal messages through servers in Apple datacenters. Those were business decisions that Apple made to benefit Apple. Technology allows, all computer users are quite capable of storing their files on their own portable media, and many are capable of encrypting and then sending messages directly to others, peer-to-peer, without leaving a copy with a third party. Technology allows, Apple has choices. No purchaser ever demanded that device storage capacity be reduced or ports for removable media be removed. Nor did any purchaser ever demand that her message be stored with Apple. Those are choices made by Apple, not users. Users should have choices too. Instead they are corralled into a user-hostile vision of personal computing that props up the world's wealthiest companies who horde money offshore while their domicile country falls into chaotic decline. As the parent comment states, "One's device ought to be one's property..." Apple has actively and aggressively sought to overcome this basic tenet of common sense. As people online argue about "misinformation" please stop and consider the "lies" that Apple and the companies they compete with are telling the public about what exactly it is they do. Apple has taken Jobs' idea of the "Reality Distortion Field" too far. Computer users need quality hardware. Apple can design and assemble it and be the best at what they do. Users do not need to be manipulated by a hardware vendor after purchase. Where did that idea come from. The sad fact is the "new" Apple is not competing with other hardware vendors. No other vendor even comes close. Apple has set its sights on competing with "tech" (middleman) companies that do nefarious things and cover up the truth. Apple wants user data after purchase. Why. To compete with "tech" (middleman) companies. Bad decision. Users pay the price. The easiest way Apple could have fixed this problem with storing illegal files would be to stop storing user files and messages! Be a hardware company. Let purchasers use portable storage or arrange their own "cloud storage" with a more "competent" provider (let another company deal with the inherent flaws of the "cloud" concept^1). Let users discover how to encrypt their own data and use peer-to-peer transmission. Let them use the Apple computer to write programs without needing "permission" from Apple. Apple has only tried to hide these basic capabilities and competencies from the majority of new computer users, strengthening the "Reality Distortion Field". A long line of bad decisions from a hardware company we once admired. They just keep getting worse. And all for what. Greed. Immense untaxed cash reserves held offshore. Why not be a hardware company and stop trying to compete with "tech" (middleman) company surveillance. Why keep dumbing down and locking down what a former CEO once called a "bicycle for the mind". 1. "Cloud" is a synonym for "someone else's computer." "Cloud storage" is another way of saying "storing files on someone else's computer". Perhaps "Apple" is also a synonym for "someone elses's computer". If Aple can exercise control over a computer after they sell it, how it is not still theirs. Purchasers are just "users", not owners.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> being able to trust that your device is truly yours Yeah, this is essentially impossible today. Even personal computers have processors with potentially malicious firmware. In order to get a trustworthy processor to run free software on, we need to limit ourselves to hardware from decades ago. It's gotten to the point I don't we can trust any computer we haven't fabricated ourselves. Anyone can download a compiler and make their own software but hardware requires billions of dollars worth of equipment and personnel. Software freedom is doomed unless we somehow develop a way to fabricate chips at home.
beerandt 5y ago
>cloud services, meanwhile, are the property of their owners as well, with all of the expectations of societal responsibility and law-abiding which that entails. This is already a shifted/normalized perspective. If I rent an apartment or a house, it comes with an expectation of privacy. I don't know where to draw the line exactly, but a dumb storage-only cloud service should carry the same expectations. Things get more complex if a service is actually doing something with the data. But the broader point is that with cloud services, we've already given up some established legal expectations of privacy without much awareness or realization, let alone resistance.
simonh 5y ago
>This invasive capability on the device level... As the article points out, the capability to scan things on devices is already deployed on huge swathes of devices in the from of virus scanners and content search indexing. All the photos on iPhones and many Android devices get scanned for text recognition now anyway. I'm sorry, but 'OMG scanning things" is a genie that got out of the bottle decades ago. So no, scanning content is not a dangerous new capability, it's an extensions of existing capabilities to a new use case. Now arguably this is a further slip down that slope of on-device scanning, but it is not some new watershed moment where scanning is happening for the first time. Also we can see that the trend is not to repurpose existing scanning systems for new purposes. Virus scanning, search indexing, text recognition and now this are all separate mechanisms implemented and operating independently in task specific ways. The prediction that these mechanisms will be subverted for other purposes has not panned out. The real issue is what is being scanned and why, and the implementation of this system. That's the topic we need to focus on.
- bananapub 5y ago
  > As the article points out, the capability to scan things on devices is already deployed on huge swathes of devices in the from of virus scanners and content search indexing. that's a ridiculous counterpoint. 1) no iphone has AV 2) AV and content indexing don't secretly contact the feds. adding a new "background service that sometimes contacts the US government" is a big privacy regression.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

It's hard to argue they did this for a vision of privacy. They did this because they want YOUR phone to be a liability not THEIR servers.

aNoob7000 5y ago
To make it even worse they extended the functionality to Mac OSX. WTF???
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  Do you have references for this? I must have missed this part.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ https://www.apple.com/child-safety/, at the bottom lists macOS as target platform.
    - cassianoleal 5y ago
      It's unclear exactly what this means to be honest. Which is not less scary but more. This sentence: > Next, iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online seems to suggest that the hash-matching happens only on iOS and iPadOS. The rest of the text OTOH suggests many things happen across all types of devices and OSs. Regardless, this seems very bad.
      - YokoSix 5y ago
        My guess is that they're going to put it into the macOS Photos app. Those images are already scanned for people, animals and objects so it should be easy for them to implement the child protection database there.
    - aethertron 5y ago
      Won't implementing this on macOS make it too easy to reverse engineer? Think the hashes are supposed to be secret. ETA: Apple quote: "unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices". Unreadable, unleakable, no doubt uninterpretable... unless someone reverses them to get a blurry 'visual proxy' collection.
- freeopinion 5y ago
  How is this worse? Any Apple device you thought you owned and controlled was never under your control. You were wrong. Perhaps your understanding of the situation has changed so that you better understand how bad it is. But the situation isn't worse.
syops 5y ago
That’s an interesting point. Do you know I’d this is the case? That is, by putting this in the phone then Apple’s liability is lessened.
015a 5y ago
Not to mention, this neural hashing can't be a cheap operation. Better to use the processors paid for by your customers than ones you have to pay for in the cloud!
- eropple 5y ago
  I would like to see tests wrt this before I assume it--Apple puts a pretty hefty premium on battery life for customer devices, and while that would probably not win out when placed against this kind of liability minimization, they've got a lot of sharp folks there who crunch this stuff in their sleep.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    I have been noticing increased background activity on my phone after it reached 100% during charging, for years now. Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device. Nothing new really. And they can still keep their promise of a good battery life -- which is quite justified by the way, I am using iPhones for 4 years now and they've consistently won over any of the 13 Android devices that I've used in the years before (and sometimes during). There are ways to achieve both -- good observable battery life plus ability to use your phone for P2P computation -- and it's IMO obvious that Apple has succeeded in that for several years now.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device. They already do, the feature is called “Optimized Batter Charging”. It charges the battery to 80% and only does the full charge a bit before you usually start using the phone. You’ll find the setting in the battery health section.
      - edgyquant 5y ago
        Optimized Battery Charging isn’t the same as being a node in a bot net.
ursugardaddy 5y ago
Apple's just really weird when it comes to the control they exert over devices. they do it with 'privacy' in mind and what they come up with is usually better than the worst case but it can still be pretty iffy eg. a few months back when their notarization/entitlement verification system was being discussed it's all just their vision of computing (which has some merits), hyper-controlled, locked down and "safe" it's not going to change if you're not comfortable with it you really shouldn't be using their products
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Hate Apple's philosophy personally but I recommend my mom a Mac every single time. Not everyone needs freedom, she's not downloading fitgirl repacks.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    This is a weird mindset. Either you care about privacy or you don’t: what a person does on their device shouldn’t matter. If you only care about privacy when doing illegal things you don’t actually care about privacy you’re just a criminal not wanting to be caught.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
I've heard it argued that this allows Apple to move iCloud toward end-to-end encryption (which would be a good thing for privacy, right?). It seems like the current US government position is "we'll let tech giants use end-to-end encryption for user data as long as they put measures in place to catch CSAM." by "US government position" I'm including negotiations and proposed/threatened legislation, not just the current laws on the books.
- feanaro 5y ago
  It moves iCloud to end-to-end encryption by compromising the ends. Not really a reasonable outcome.
- babesh 5y ago
  If you really believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. The exact same safety argument can and will be applied to ALL data whether on your device or Apple's servers. Why limit to iMessage and photos? Why not Signal on your device? Why not your backups on Apple servers? Oh wait, already happens.
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    I think Apple would rather put this CSAM-scanning system in place (which allows them to implement end-to-end encryption for iCloud in the future) than deal with the EARN-IT Act or similar becoming law, which could effectively make all e2e-encrypted services illegal (require a government backdoor). >The bill also crafts two addition changes to Section 230(c)(2)'s liability, allows any state to bring a lawsuit to service providers if they fail to deal with child sexual abuse material on their service, or if they allow end-to-end encryption on their service and do not provide means to enforcement officials to decrypt the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020
    - babesh 5y ago
      If that were the case, wouldn't this CSAM scanning system be insufficient to meet those EARN-IT requirements? You have other Apple services and third-party apps that host material on Apple's servers. For example, if a user turns on iCloud backups, then every third-party app's Documents directory is backed up to iCloud. Would it be a violation to not CSAM scan that content? What if the contents are encrypted? Would they be required to be decrypted so that they are CSAM-scanned? iCloud drive is another Apple service that backs up to Apple's servers. Wouldn't its absence from the list be a violation? What if a user hosts encrypted files on iCloud drive? Would the user be required to decrypt them so that Apple can scan them? It seems that the real intention is to eliminate end-to-end encryption.

endisneigh 5y ago

This is an interesting comment. If you had an Apple device it was never truly yours to begin with.

pdimitar 5y ago
If you own a device with builtin software that synchronizes part of the data on it to the cloud then it was never truly yours to begin with** Fixed it for you. I hope you are not implying that Google, whose bread and butter has been selling personal information, has resisted the temptation for all these years? I use Apple and it's an informed choice. I am pretty realistic about their practices. And realistically we don't have a choice. Either you use a smartphone and it's a Swiss cheese of security vulnerabilities -- worst of which are embedded in the device on purpose! -- or you don't use a smartphone at all. This is the era we're living in. I hope that custom ROM Android communities can win and give us back some freedom but I am skeptical. Still, I am open to try some of the de-bloated Xiaomi ROMs at one point. Or maybe put LineageOS / PostmarketOS on them.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I didn’t mention Google at all, not sure why you brought it up
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    Because I dislike the implication that only Apple is doing it. No. Everybody is doing it. Apple was just the first to publicly admit it. Doesn't make it better, sure, but let's not delude ourselves at least. No company can resist using all that valuable personal data on the smartphones.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      I didn’t imply only Apple is doing it either
      - 5y ago

WA 5y ago

I guess we all now just realize the truth: you don't control your iPhone. Apple does. You merely use it. In a way, nothing changed. Apple could've done on-device scanning forever. In another way, everything changed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good.

Aperocky 5y ago
phone's are just phones. At this point multiple companies and potential governments are monitoring or have the capability to monitor it. But computers are another story. So far we still maintain some privacy there thanks to Linux.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Android is also Linux. Yet some manufacturers don't allow any kind of boot unlocking or root access. Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down. The reason is more that the industry hasn't bothered selling locked-down computers yet by default. The tech is there, Secure Boot + TPM. They just give us the options to override in the BIOS. For now.
  - api 5y ago
    Open source also doesn't guarantee any type of control if it's SaaS or anchored to a closed source SaaS system. There's a ton of "but it's open source!" SaaS companies that I shall not name that leverage open source but in reality are lock-in walled gardens. The code is open but the data and network effect are not.
  - Zambyte 5y ago
    > Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down It can though. See: GPLv3. IMO the greatest failure of Linux was not upgrading from GPLv2.
    - btdmaster 5y ago

Aperocky 5y ago

> now exists Is this true? I've always assumed apple can always do that (if they somehow needed to).

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
They always had the potential, but now the code is there and running.
- zionic 5y ago
  It’s like your spouse’s communication has broken down, they’re doing things that don’t make sense, and they just randomly went out and bought a gun without telling you. Sure, they haven’t killed you in your sleep yet… but they sure are acting weird and recently acquired the means to do so

GeekyBear 5y ago

> This invasive capability on the device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy I am a user uploading a photo to the cloud. Google's servers scan photos after they are uploaded to the cloud, and have done so for the past decade. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple wants the device to scan the photo before it is uploaded to the cloud. Both are equally invasive and both can only be avoided by refusing to use the cloud.

hef19898 5y ago
But only Apple can, at least for now, scan content or your phone. Google cannot. Yet. Small, bit crucial difference.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  Frankly, it's more of a problem for my data to be flagged after Google has it than it would be for it to never leave my device at all. People have certainly run afoul of the law when the data Google has about them is misused. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre... We are only talking about what happens when you try to send the data to the cloud, after all. Not about all the data on the device.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    You are so close to understand the issue. When Google, or anyone else, is flagging it and sharing the result with, e.g., law enforcement you can have a problem. Apple will no just simply refuse to upload stuff that would be flagged in the cloud, it is flagging it already before upload on your device. And share the results with authorities. That for now they claim to only do so with stuff about to be uploaded is of minor concern, the tech is there to scan all the pictures on an iPhone now. No reason to believe it will stop with intended uploads, or pictures.

shuckles 5y ago

Google could’ve announced the same solution for Google Photos as a 3rd party app. I don’t understand what privileged position Apple as OS maker has used to build this solution. It’s a feature of their Photos application when used with their cloud photo service.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
To be installed by default and not removable on one of the most used devices in the world.
- shuckles 5y ago
  It’s a pretty weak argument to say that a clearly communicated change in behavior of a single application compromises trust in the entire operating system. You’d basically need to argue that Apple should not be allowed to install any default applications or services. The Photos application can’t be removed, but this behavior can be turned off.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    It does because they control the entire os, ecosystem, now and in the future, and have demonstrated with PRISM and this they don't play for our team.
    - vb6sp6 5y ago
      > they don't play for our team I'm no apple apologist but apple must follow the laws of the countries they operate in. They can't advocate for us because we are not the ones setting the rules.
      - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
        Sure. If the law tell them to locate all gays so that they can be jailed in the emirates, would you agree with that ? I could do worse, but Godwin called.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I’ve been thinking carefully about this situation. I just don’t see the intrusion. Firstly, you are syncing your photos to iCloud. It’s equivalent to developing your photos at an old timey film shop. iCloud happens to have lots of security guarantees, much like the film shop. But the moment you develop CP, all bets are off. I think most of us lead pampered, selfish lives. Perhaps this is a “think of the children” cry, and perhaps this has been used for many evils over time. If Apple were to get their lists of hashes from China (a situation they’ve opened themselves up to in the future), then sure, that’s awful. Or if they were doing these checks and alerting law enforcement without iCloud sync, then that’s awful too. But this doesn’t seem to be a slippery slope, yet. They are targeting a specific case: you uploading your photos, and your photos being of known child sexual abuse. Yes, there are false positive photos in the database. Maybe there’s even a flower in there. But if you got flagged as a false positive, the moment law enforcement looks at your photos (which, remember, you’ve surrendered to iCloud), you sexually abusing a flower won’t cause any problems. Or will it? Please, my mind is open. I’d love to change it.

wobblykiwi 5y ago
This is about Apple scanning the pictures on your phone, not the pictures that have been synced to iCloud.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  A good point to keep in mind, there is no "scanning". There is a hashing, then a check of the hashes - not the pictures - and if a hash matches the on-device NCMEC hashes list a "security voucher" is generated. Said voucher will be uploaded to iCloud photos along with the picture it refers to, without anyone in the chain being able to know that it happened.
- 0x000000001 5y ago
  they already scan all the images on your phone. that's how i can search for "dog" or "flowers" and find results in my photo library.

kumarsw 5y ago

It's an unfortunate choice because my understanding is that it's possible to match encrypted files on the cloud with CSAM, assuming that Apple has the public key, and this has done before in a court case as evidence leading to a conviction. Maybe it's computationally prohibitive?

danudey 5y ago
The files that iCloud Photos stores are encrypted to your account and Apple can't access them. Apple scans the images on your phone so that this can continue to be the case, but they're doing a perceptual match - i.e. determining if this image looks like a modified version of the original image (e.g. if it's just been resized or re-encoded or something). This way Apple can scan for CSAM without having to actually violate privacy by scanning a user's images themselves.
- kumarsw 5y ago
  I recall a court case where a police officer was convicted of possessing CSAM on his computer. The files were encrypted so the prosecution was not able to view them, but they were able to demonstrate that the encrypted files contained known images, I believe by encrypting a known image with the same public key and demonstrating that the result was binary identical. Obviously this wouldn't work except for unmodified files including cropping, scaling and editing metadata.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Interesting. Can you link to the case?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > The files that iCloud Photos stores are encrypted to your account and Apple can't access them. This is false[1]. Apple can decrypt them, and they can decrypt them and send them to law enforcement should they get subpoenas. They're encrypted at rest with keys that Apple has. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51207744 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51207744

jlpom 5y ago

> there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once implemented. The scope will always broaden Speculating it is slippery slope arg. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

howaboutnope 5y ago
As the article says: "The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect." > It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used. -- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html To pretend it's inherently unknowable right up to the point until it's "too late" is kinda getting old.
heavyset_go 5y ago
From Wikipedia[1]: > Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
- jlpom 5y ago

caconym_ 5y ago

> It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours. Well said. It's very easy to understand that content on a physical disk I own will not be scanned by some government-friendly surveillance program, and content I upload to somebody else's servers will. I am comfortable with [subsets of] my files existing on both sides of this distinction, but only because I understand it. Now Apple is letting the surveillance apparatus reach into my own physical hardware, blurring the lines with some overwrought, proprietary crypto-gobbledygook solution. Given the details they've provided, I get why they might have thought this was in line with their general privacy ethos of keeping everything on-device, but the fact is that it is too complicated to build a reliable understanding of in my mental model of my own data privacy--and that's for somebody (me) who is quite technical and has even dabbled in crypto. Now that I no longer understand Apple's practices as a steward of my private data, I can no longer trust them with it. It's a real shame.

dylan604 5y ago
>It's very easy to understand that content on a physical disk I own will not be scanned by some government-friendly surveillance program, and content I upload to somebody else's servers will. I am comfortable with [subsets of] my files existing on both sides of this distinction, but only because I understand it. According to Apple, the only content being scanned are the images you are storing in iCloud. So how is this breaking your rule?
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > According to Apple, the only content being scanned are the images you are storing in iCloud Thats the whole point of this debate. TODAY (if you trust apple is honest) it's only stuff being stored in icloud. But there is no technical reason for this to be true - just a "policy" reason. The scanner is already deployed to devices, we already let in the trojan horse. Tomorrow, the rules could change (and we might not know)
- caconym_ 5y ago
  This is breaking my "rule" because the detection is being moved device-side as part of a complicated scheme I don't believe it's realistically possible for an outsider to have a complete and persistently correct understanding of. Thus, I do not trust myself to fully understand the attack surface I'm exposing, and that is something I'm not personally comfortable with. I thought this was fairly clear from the later parts of my comment.

zzyzxd 5y ago

> Yes, you can turn off iCloud Photos to disable Apple’s scanning To me, it is such a weird implementation. The feature is about scanning on-device data, not data in iCloud, but for some reason disabling iCloud is the way to opt out? Did I miss any technical details? Apple is always pretty OK with handing over iCloud data to authorities. Not only that they have already stored Chinese users iCloud data in state controlled entity, this was their whole argument regarding the San Bernardino case -- on-device data is user's sacred privacy, but if the shooter's phone uploaded data to iCloud, they were willing to send a copy to FBI in a heartbeat. This makes me wonder, is iCloud the underlying technical boundary for privacy?

leokennis 5y ago
The feature is because it’s illegal for Apple to host/have/posses CSAM (in iCloud). But Apple doesn’t want to know what they host for you on iCloud. So they need to be sure that before something is uploaded to iCloud, it’s not CSAM. So if you don’t intend to upload to iCloud (i.e. you disable iCloud on your phone), then Apple doesn’t care anymore if you have CSAM or not.

migueldeicaza 5y ago

Apple's approach opens the door to get full end-to-end encryption for other assets that are currently stored on iCloud, that currently are not. It is not a guarantee, but it leaves that door open, which currently would face very strong headwinds to get rolled out.

exhilaration 5y ago
That's mentioned in TFA, Apple relented to the FBI's request that iCloud backups would not encrypted. I can't see that changing since scanning for CP won't help the FBI in the vast majority of their investigations (terrorism, drug trafficking, fraud).

snarf21 5y ago

The one thing that occurred to me is that this is almost seems like this is a cya, Section 230 protection in disguise. There has been more discussions about Big Tech and 230, and this is one way to say "Look, we are compliant on our platform. Don't remove our protections or break us up, we are your friend!" It also shouldn't be too surprising given how Apple has behaved in China. They will only push back against the government up until the point it starts to affect profits. I'm also curious and I don't mean this in a judging way, but are all the people who are planning to sell their iDevices also going to divest all their retirement holdings from Apple? Stock price is the thing that actually applies pressure. Everyone's comp is based on it. What would happen if enough people divested from these rent-seeking companies? We can't expect the government (though they should) or companies to behave in a way that is pro-consumer, but if we can align incentives we have a chance.

ohazi 5y ago

> It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours. Disappointing, sure, but not surprising. Since the introduction of the iPhone, Apple has made it clear that one of their core beliefs is that they alone know better than their users. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are happy to remove user control wherever possible. Their decision here fits that pattern perfectly.

ksec 5y ago

I think a lot of people are either stuck with images of Apple under Steve Jobs or Apple under Tim Cook's marketing. It is at still nice to see people are finally asking these sort of questions.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

The thing no one seems to be discussing here as this topic arises again and again is that the problem being addressed is Apple's problem, not the problem of anyone who purchases an Apple computer. Apple's "solution" is to create a new problem for all Apple purchasers. The majority of Apple hardware purchasers are probably not engaged in illegal activity. Yet all Apple purchasers are being forced to pay the price for Apple's mistake. Apple's hands are not clean. No Apple purchaser ever intentionally requested that Apple copy their files to servers in Apple datacenters, or that Apple perform encryption intsead of the user, store and forward the user's personal messages through servers in Apple datacenters. Those were business decisions that Apple made to benefit Apple. Technology allows, all computer users are quite capable of storing their files on their own portable media, and many are capable of encrypting and then sending messages directly to others, peer-to-peer, without leaving a copy with a third party. Technology allows, Apple has choices. No purchaser ever demanded that device storage capacity be reduced or ports for removable media be removed. Nor did any purchaser ever demand that her message be stored with Apple. Those are choices made by Apple, not users. Users should have choices too. Instead they are corralled into a user-hostile vision of personal computing that props up the world's wealthiest companies who horde money offshore while their domicile country falls into chaotic decline. As the parent comment states, "One's device ought to be one's property..." Apple has actively and aggressively sought to overcome this basic tenet of common sense. As people online argue about "misinformation" please stop and consider the "lies" that Apple and the companies they compete with are telling the public about what exactly it is they do. Apple has taken Jobs' idea of the "Reality Distortion Field" too far. Computer users need quality hardware. Apple can design and assemble it and be the best at what they do. Users do not need to be manipulated by a hardware vendor after purchase. Where did that idea come from. The sad fact is the "new" Apple is not competing with other hardware vendors. No other vendor even comes close. Apple has set its sights on competing with "tech" (middleman) companies that do nefarious things and cover up the truth. Apple wants user data after purchase. Why. To compete with "tech" (middleman) companies. Bad decision. Users pay the price. The easiest way Apple could have fixed this problem with storing illegal files would be to stop storing user files and messages! Be a hardware company. Let purchasers use portable storage or arrange their own "cloud storage" with a more "competent" provider (let another company deal with the inherent flaws of the "cloud" concept^1). Let users discover how to encrypt their own data and use peer-to-peer transmission. Let them use the Apple computer to write programs without needing "permission" from Apple. Apple has only tried to hide these basic capabilities and competencies from the majority of new computer users, strengthening the "Reality Distortion Field". A long line of bad decisions from a hardware company we once admired. They just keep getting worse. And all for what. Greed. Immense untaxed cash reserves held offshore. Why not be a hardware company and stop trying to compete with "tech" (middleman) company surveillance. Why keep dumbing down and locking down what a former CEO once called a "bicycle for the mind". 1. "Cloud" is a synonym for "someone else's computer." "Cloud storage" is another way of saying "storing files on someone else's computer". Perhaps "Apple" is also a synonym for "someone elses's computer". If Aple can exercise control over a computer after they sell it, how it is not still theirs. Purchasers are just "users", not owners.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> being able to trust that your device is truly yours Yeah, this is essentially impossible today. Even personal computers have processors with potentially malicious firmware. In order to get a trustworthy processor to run free software on, we need to limit ourselves to hardware from decades ago. It's gotten to the point I don't we can trust any computer we haven't fabricated ourselves. Anyone can download a compiler and make their own software but hardware requires billions of dollars worth of equipment and personnel. Software freedom is doomed unless we somehow develop a way to fabricate chips at home.

beerandt 5y ago

>cloud services, meanwhile, are the property of their owners as well, with all of the expectations of societal responsibility and law-abiding which that entails. This is already a shifted/normalized perspective. If I rent an apartment or a house, it comes with an expectation of privacy. I don't know where to draw the line exactly, but a dumb storage-only cloud service should carry the same expectations. Things get more complex if a service is actually doing something with the data. But the broader point is that with cloud services, we've already given up some established legal expectations of privacy without much awareness or realization, let alone resistance.

simonh 5y ago

>This invasive capability on the device level... As the article points out, the capability to scan things on devices is already deployed on huge swathes of devices in the from of virus scanners and content search indexing. All the photos on iPhones and many Android devices get scanned for text recognition now anyway. I'm sorry, but 'OMG scanning things" is a genie that got out of the bottle decades ago. So no, scanning content is not a dangerous new capability, it's an extensions of existing capabilities to a new use case. Now arguably this is a further slip down that slope of on-device scanning, but it is not some new watershed moment where scanning is happening for the first time. Also we can see that the trend is not to repurpose existing scanning systems for new purposes. Virus scanning, search indexing, text recognition and now this are all separate mechanisms implemented and operating independently in task specific ways. The prediction that these mechanisms will be subverted for other purposes has not panned out. The real issue is what is being scanned and why, and the implementation of this system. That's the topic we need to focus on.

bananapub 5y ago
> As the article points out, the capability to scan things on devices is already deployed on huge swathes of devices in the from of virus scanners and content search indexing. that's a ridiculous counterpoint. 1) no iphone has AV 2) AV and content indexing don't secretly contact the feds. adding a new "background service that sometimes contacts the US government" is a big privacy regression.