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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-devi

by 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
      This is a case of lack of enforcement, not a case of lax licensing. You do have this right under GPLv2 according to Conservancy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877.
    - hbtsbuss 5y ago
      Linux has many more stakeholders than you. It’s a failure for you, but extremely important to many others (including me). I’d go further and allege you are in the minority among users of Linux, because think about what a user of Linux is. Linus made the absolutely correct call and Linux would be on the decline if he hadn’t; the money in Linux is in embedding (and SaaS), not people dabbling with free software who by definition don’t pay for it, and until the FSF and its adherents conquer the concept of “an economy” they’re still fighting an uphill, losing battle against the same economic forces they despite. More than half of YC’s hardware startups, not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever. (Android has some means to do so and an audience much more interested in doing so but the point stands.) I’m also interested in the legal framework around a software license that’s able to dictate the architecture and design of components around the software, and I suspect it will not survive if challenged, particularly in Europe. The greatest failure of free software, to me, is thinking in absolutes and not studying how the world actually uses computers as time goes on. The concepts, ideas, and demands are stuck in 1991 and are basically “man shakes fist at capitalism,” while writing capitalist exceptions into the very Tivoization clause in question under pressure.
      - mr_toad 5y ago
        > without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image They have to release that code anyway. All they have to “invest” in is not implementing measures to prevent people using it.
      - Zambyte 5y ago
- spacebear 5y ago
  Unfortunately, phones are most people’s primary computer.
  - howaboutnope 5y ago
    > If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar. -- Alan Kay, https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
    - lupire 5y ago
      Nce theory. And yet smartphones have delivered far more real world computing to users than the "real computing" ever did.
      - dijit 5y ago
        There is no formal definition of computing which is furthered by iPhones. I have an iPhone, and pythonista is the only potential thing which fulfils the criteria of "computing", everything else is convenience. Smartphones have done an incredible amount at bringing the consumption of the internet, audio, video and rich communication via social media. But they have not brought "real world computing", because "real world computing" is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both hardware and software. It has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects. You might want to read the wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing
        JAlexoid 5y ago
        ACM tried to define it: >"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast." I basically would half agree that iPhone brought more computing. Based on practical applications, iPhone has not brought radically more computing. iPhone replaced some stationary computing with ultra-mobile computing. Cheap feature phones, that allowed people in Africa to make cashless payments, brought more computing to ordinary people... than expensive iPhone - that is owned by people who have/had other computers. People who formally require computing - engineers(all kinds, incl software and structural), data collectors, music professionals and so on - still rely on other forms of computing. Some have shifted to iPad, which made computing more fun. But then all of the heavier forms of computing - they are still done on a "computer", not a phone or iPad.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > phone's are just phones > But computers are another story. Librem 5 and Pinephone smartphones are computers running GNU/Linux.
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    Yeah I think the distinction is more with OS than the form factor. With a close garden and close sourced apps, there are basically nothing you can do (to make sure you're not being monitored). Completely at whim, true for regular computers too, but a lot more choices exist for the latter group.
- dTal 5y ago
  One of the most pernicious sins of the smartphone revolution was to rebrand the "computer". We'd evolved expectations as to what we were entitled to on our own machines - yes, even those with a proprietary OS - and then with one weird trick, it all went in the trash. Advertising, surveillance, inability to install whatever you want - before smartphones, this sort of thing used to be unequivocally malware. The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers".
  - lupire 5y ago
    You're blaming smartphones for problem that exists because of the Internet. If smartphones didn't render computers irrelevant to most people, all this "bad app" stuff would have happened on computers. And the computers that don't have "bad apps" are hacked and encrypted by ransomware. Is that better? Spyware is older than smartphones.
    - dTal 5y ago
      Spyware is older than smartphones, but back then we called it "spyware", not "ooh, the latest Android!".
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        Apple is literally going to spy on you... and then report you to the authorities. I'd rather give all of my DNA to an advertising company.
        dTal 5y ago
        Fine, "the latest iPhone" then. If you thought that was some sort of Android-vs-Apple remark then you have missed the point.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers". Back in the day, before cellular phones, mainframe and minicomputer vendors tried their best to restrict the software that could be run on “their” hardware. They realised that they could squeeze the most out of their customers that way.
aj3 5y ago
Meh. Dropbox and Google Drive can run arbitrary queries over your files stored there. iCloud (assuming they finish e2ee transition) will have to push the same hashes to everyone. It's not transparent and we don't have a way to inspect what exactly are they searching for, but at least there's a way in principle to reverse engineer the algorithm and to monitor how often hash database gets updated. In my book that's a step in the direction of privacy, compared to old status quo.
- wiremine 5y ago
  This is a better way to frame the discussion, IMHO. The conversation is around Apple, which is critical, but we need to compare them to the rest of the industry, and discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    True. The constant migration of everything to the cloud has lots of consequences just like this. If the false positive are as common as the fotoForensics guy states, this could also become a new weapon for corporate warfare. A small competitor to a market Apple wants to control happens to have assets stored in an apple cloud? Guess who's offices are getting raided today?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kbenson 5y ago
    That is indeed what the article does, does it not? It makes the case that storing online with a decryption key that can be used with a search warrant is probably the right trade off, and the way other companies sometimes implement this. Then you get to choose whether to push your data to the third party or not, given the risks involved. The author even notes they were opposed to Facebook's end-to-end encryption previously, I assume because as for defaults it sets a precedent and makes it unsearchable, but I'm not sure the specific tradeoffs they weigh and points they consider since it's behind a paywall (and I'm not sure I agree). > discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company. Right now the differences are essentially per-company, since we've let our experiences be controlled almost entirely by a small subset of companies. To abstract the implementation from the primary implementer is to obfuscate some of the cause and effect here. We should discuss this as a societal tradeoff, as you note, but we should not ignore that this was spurred by a company running out in front of what was required of it and implementing this system which many see as at the expense of their users privacy.
iso1210 5y ago
RMS has been saying this stuff for decades, but people ignore him.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  Quite literally: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57 https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Agreed and a great example of why his message on free software is so important. I would never have been as cognizant of the topic if not for his laser-focused and committed work.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Maybe he'd get more traction if he'd stop publicly eating the gunk on the bottom of his foot.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    He probably would. He's his own worst enemy. Doesn't make him wrong.
- jaredklewis 5y ago
  This sentiment gets repeated all the time and it drives me crazy. I've read a lot of stuff by RMS and am certainly aware of his concerns. I have an iPhone and Mac so I guess you would consider that I "ignored" him. This is a ridiculous conclusion. I considered the risks and trade-offs of non-FOSS software, and regrettably accepted them, because the FOSS alternatives had trade-offs that cumulatively (for me) were much worse. Unlike RMS, I am not a one-dimensional person that only evaluates tech on the single dimension of freedom. Tech is not a religion for me; it's just a tool. RMS pontificating about FOSS does not magically bring iPhone comparable FOSS software and hardware into existence. If the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, ratio of pontificating about to building consumer products needs to be much lower.
  - 5y ago
8note 5y ago
Apples selling point is that they decide what should be running on your phone. From the various app store monopolization threads, people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it.
- feanaro 5y ago
  On the other hand, I'm not buying an iPhone due to control issues. If I were able to fully control it, I'd probably buy one.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    Why would you choose apple over anyone else at that point?
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  > people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it. My guess is that this applies to about as many people as the opposite “wants to control their device” stance. Which is to say approximately nobody. Most users probably don’t think about these things much if at all. They want a smartphone that runs the expected smartphone apps and has the expected smartphone features, and do not care whether or not some nerd can install and run some apps they’ve never heard of on his own device. I imagine, though, that most people would have an opinion one way or the other about phones snitching on their owners.
- petra 5y ago
  The iPhone is a status symbol. That's why most people buy it.
  - kuratkull 5y ago
    Exactly, it's easy with phones - you can have the same phone your favorite celebrity has! Not so with almost anything else. People have just the weirdest reasons. It's also funny to me because I will never ask anything about a persons phone, laptop or other tech gadget if I recognize it from a distance (for example Apple products), but I will ask and converse about brands/devices that I have not seen much of. Not sure why people think Apple products give them any credit whatsoever.
vb6sp6 5y ago
Steve Jobs received a standing ovation when he showed how the new iOS would finally let you change your wallpaper. This broke the RDF for me.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I've never been to one of Apple's events, but as a viewer of their videos some of those applause breaks have me convinced there are giant "Applause Now" signs. I imagine them being on more than they are off by how over the top their dialog is written. Or they fill the air in the room with some sort of gas that makes the attendees very susceptible to the RDF. Those are much more fun explanations than just realizing they probably have plants to start the cheering in a room full of fanboys
- dpkonofa 5y ago
  Why is that wrong? I also applauded (internally) when notifications were added because it was a feature that I wanted and I didn't care that Android had it before because I wasn't using an Android phone. I bought all of the Google-branded Android phones when they came out and I still preferred iOS and the iPhone so having that feature was worthy of applause for me. I don't see how the wallpaper thing is any different. As much as I would like to have had the ability to change wallpaper before then, that wasn't as important as all the other things I cared about more.
danudey 5y ago
I think what you mean is that you don't control the iCloud Photos client, Apple does. Your photos are scanned by the iCloud Photos "client" (which is built into the OS) before uploading them to the cloud. Would it be any different if Dropbox was scanning files before it uploaded them rather than afterwards? It already computes hashes of your files on your device so that it doesn't have to re-upload existing content, so I honestly don't understand the objection to doing image scanning on your device before uploading your content.
- jdiez17 5y ago
  The point is that if the capability for "the iCloud Photos client" to scan your photos before uploading them to the cloud exists, it's only Apple's policy that stops it from scanning all of your photos.
  - tpush 5y ago
    That capability obviously already exists independent from this CSAM-scanning system.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      Yes, they were already doing facial recognition of my photos, which I didn’t ask for and can’t turn off.
- Osiris 5y ago
  You can uninstall Dropbox. You cannot uninstall Photos.
mortenjorck 5y ago
While there is certainly truth to this, this is also a defeatist position. Of course Apple could do anything, with or without telling us. And they do some fairly indefensible things, though I would argue those have mostly to do with the App Store. But this is not the time to throw our hands up and say there was nothing we could do all along. That the situation was never ideal does not preclude there being something worth fighting for.
smnrchrds 5y ago
Buying an iPhone (and increasingly Mac) is like going to Disneyland: You pay a lot of money to be allowed in so you can pay them even more money. The experience is highly curated and controlled. At the end of the day, you are just a guest there and what you are or aren't allowed to do is determined by the company. EDIT: And they have CCTV and undercover security officers everywhere. More than you can possibly imagine.
- judge2020 5y ago
  And Disney is one of the most well-known global brands - at least when people think about entertainment and vacationing.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  A Mac is very different from an iPhone. I am writing this in Firefox, I have development tools and commandline scripts installed.
  - tgvaughan 5y ago
    Are you sure? I have a Mac too, and earlier this year all of my non Apple-approved software stopped working because some random Apple server went down.
- lancesells 5y ago
  I really don't Apple Hardware is a lot of money. I buy the cheapest MacBook Airs with a ram upgrade and they last me around ~6 years. Same with the phone I buy (iPhone SE). Outside of the battery needing replaced they last me a long, long time. Everything else with I agree. The eco-system of all these companies is never-ending (cars, food, cities, etc.). It's like those sci-fi movies where one corporation owns everything. The only difference is it's 5 or 6 companies because they haven't yet started to merge.
  - alerighi 5y ago
    You can buy an Android phone with better specs (except the camera, where the iPhone objectively the best) for 200$, while an iPhone is minimum 500$ (and for an SE 2 that is an old iPhone 8 with a newer SOC). For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade. Apple tends not to upgrade the oldest computers, leaving you with an insecure OS where you can't run the latest software. I have my battle Thinkpad that with Linux runs better than most Macbook and we are talking about a PC that has more than 10 years and I bought used on Ebay for 100$. Really Apple is not that great. I once used to buy their product thinking they were superior, and maybe once they were, nowadays they are just the other crap made in China but sold at (at least) twice the price because they have the Apple logo on it.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
> Problem is that the devices are really really good their devices are really good, but they come with so much crippling for the sake of the walled garden that their goodness is wasted in some fronts. There's a large list of things they are (or can be with minimal effort) perfectly capable for, but are forbidden for reasons, like reverse wireless charge of other iphones / airpods.
jandorn 5y ago
Unfortunately that is accurate for every property software, not only that but you can easily make a case that all software that you personally don’t maintain including open source has same problem.
amelius 5y ago
> I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good. The devices are good, but still Apple has a weak value proposition. Also, handing them your money probably isn't going to make things better in terms of alternatives.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
There’s not much you can do about it if you want a decent smartphone. On Android Google also can do on-device scanning since forever.
- kuratkull 5y ago
  The problem is _not_ on-device scanning, it's on-device scanning and then sending incriminating results to the device maker.
  - nicce 5y ago
    Final result is better than before, because scanning applies only into targets which are ending into the cloud. Content was plaintext in the cloud before (not counting server-side encryption). With current change, they have "partial" E2E encryption and Apple can decrypt them only if CSAM treshold is reached. If we leave all speculation, this is a great improvement for privacy in CSAM context. You can opt-out from scanning by not using iCloud.
- LMYahooTFY 5y ago
  On Android they can do this? Source? The distinction still needs to be made between AOSP and whatever ships on your phone or is included in play services. Especially on HN of all places.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Fair enough, but Android includes Play Services in all notable cases. Yes a handful of people run it without, which does solve that issue, at the cost of convenience and usability. That's why I specified "decent smartphone". I wouldn't consider the UX of Android without Play Services to be "decent".
tearfang 5y ago
Life existed before the iPhone. Life goes on even if you have to use other devices, and you'll be able to do more stuff than before iPhones were invented. ppl are very inventive and adaptable. Give Linux a try. Mint is a pretty good noob friendly version. Ubuntu is a very popular one.

by WA 5y ago

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
    This is a case of lack of enforcement, not a case of lax licensing. You do have this right under GPLv2 according to Conservancy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877.
  - hbtsbuss 5y ago
    Linux has many more stakeholders than you. It’s a failure for you, but extremely important to many others (including me). I’d go further and allege you are in the minority among users of Linux, because think about what a user of Linux is. Linus made the absolutely correct call and Linux would be on the decline if he hadn’t; the money in Linux is in embedding (and SaaS), not people dabbling with free software who by definition don’t pay for it, and until the FSF and its adherents conquer the concept of “an economy” they’re still fighting an uphill, losing battle against the same economic forces they despite. More than half of YC’s hardware startups, not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever. (Android has some means to do so and an audience much more interested in doing so but the point stands.) I’m also interested in the legal framework around a software license that’s able to dictate the architecture and design of components around the software, and I suspect it will not survive if challenged, particularly in Europe. The greatest failure of free software, to me, is thinking in absolutes and not studying how the world actually uses computers as time goes on. The concepts, ideas, and demands are stuck in 1991 and are basically “man shakes fist at capitalism,” while writing capitalist exceptions into the very Tivoization clause in question under pressure.
    - mr_toad 5y ago
      > without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image They have to release that code anyway. All they have to “invest” in is not implementing measures to prevent people using it.
    - Zambyte 5y ago
spacebear 5y ago
Unfortunately, phones are most people’s primary computer.
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  > If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar. -- Alan Kay, https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
  - lupire 5y ago
    Nce theory. And yet smartphones have delivered far more real world computing to users than the "real computing" ever did.
    - dijit 5y ago
      There is no formal definition of computing which is furthered by iPhones. I have an iPhone, and pythonista is the only potential thing which fulfils the criteria of "computing", everything else is convenience. Smartphones have done an incredible amount at bringing the consumption of the internet, audio, video and rich communication via social media. But they have not brought "real world computing", because "real world computing" is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both hardware and software. It has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects. You might want to read the wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        ACM tried to define it: >"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast." I basically would half agree that iPhone brought more computing. Based on practical applications, iPhone has not brought radically more computing. iPhone replaced some stationary computing with ultra-mobile computing. Cheap feature phones, that allowed people in Africa to make cashless payments, brought more computing to ordinary people... than expensive iPhone - that is owned by people who have/had other computers. People who formally require computing - engineers(all kinds, incl software and structural), data collectors, music professionals and so on - still rely on other forms of computing. Some have shifted to iPad, which made computing more fun. But then all of the heavier forms of computing - they are still done on a "computer", not a phone or iPad.
fsflover 5y ago
> phone's are just phones > But computers are another story. Librem 5 and Pinephone smartphones are computers running GNU/Linux.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  Yeah I think the distinction is more with OS than the form factor. With a close garden and close sourced apps, there are basically nothing you can do (to make sure you're not being monitored). Completely at whim, true for regular computers too, but a lot more choices exist for the latter group.
dTal 5y ago
One of the most pernicious sins of the smartphone revolution was to rebrand the "computer". We'd evolved expectations as to what we were entitled to on our own machines - yes, even those with a proprietary OS - and then with one weird trick, it all went in the trash. Advertising, surveillance, inability to install whatever you want - before smartphones, this sort of thing used to be unequivocally malware. The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers".
- lupire 5y ago
  You're blaming smartphones for problem that exists because of the Internet. If smartphones didn't render computers irrelevant to most people, all this "bad app" stuff would have happened on computers. And the computers that don't have "bad apps" are hacked and encrypted by ransomware. Is that better? Spyware is older than smartphones.
  - dTal 5y ago
    Spyware is older than smartphones, but back then we called it "spyware", not "ooh, the latest Android!".
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      Apple is literally going to spy on you... and then report you to the authorities. I'd rather give all of my DNA to an advertising company.
      - dTal 5y ago
        Fine, "the latest iPhone" then. If you thought that was some sort of Android-vs-Apple remark then you have missed the point.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers". Back in the day, before cellular phones, mainframe and minicomputer vendors tried their best to restrict the software that could be run on “their” hardware. They realised that they could squeeze the most out of their customers that way.

aj3 5y ago

Meh. Dropbox and Google Drive can run arbitrary queries over your files stored there. iCloud (assuming they finish e2ee transition) will have to push the same hashes to everyone. It's not transparent and we don't have a way to inspect what exactly are they searching for, but at least there's a way in principle to reverse engineer the algorithm and to monitor how often hash database gets updated. In my book that's a step in the direction of privacy, compared to old status quo.

wiremine 5y ago
This is a better way to frame the discussion, IMHO. The conversation is around Apple, which is critical, but we need to compare them to the rest of the industry, and discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  True. The constant migration of everything to the cloud has lots of consequences just like this. If the false positive are as common as the fotoForensics guy states, this could also become a new weapon for corporate warfare. A small competitor to a market Apple wants to control happens to have assets stored in an apple cloud? Guess who's offices are getting raided today?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  That is indeed what the article does, does it not? It makes the case that storing online with a decryption key that can be used with a search warrant is probably the right trade off, and the way other companies sometimes implement this. Then you get to choose whether to push your data to the third party or not, given the risks involved. The author even notes they were opposed to Facebook's end-to-end encryption previously, I assume because as for defaults it sets a precedent and makes it unsearchable, but I'm not sure the specific tradeoffs they weigh and points they consider since it's behind a paywall (and I'm not sure I agree). > discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company. Right now the differences are essentially per-company, since we've let our experiences be controlled almost entirely by a small subset of companies. To abstract the implementation from the primary implementer is to obfuscate some of the cause and effect here. We should discuss this as a societal tradeoff, as you note, but we should not ignore that this was spurred by a company running out in front of what was required of it and implementing this system which many see as at the expense of their users privacy.

iso1210 5y ago

RMS has been saying this stuff for decades, but people ignore him.

thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
Quite literally: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57 https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
silicon2401 5y ago
Agreed and a great example of why his message on free software is so important. I would never have been as cognizant of the topic if not for his laser-focused and committed work.
mdoms 5y ago
Maybe he'd get more traction if he'd stop publicly eating the gunk on the bottom of his foot.
- iso1210 5y ago
  He probably would. He's his own worst enemy. Doesn't make him wrong.
jaredklewis 5y ago
This sentiment gets repeated all the time and it drives me crazy. I've read a lot of stuff by RMS and am certainly aware of his concerns. I have an iPhone and Mac so I guess you would consider that I "ignored" him. This is a ridiculous conclusion. I considered the risks and trade-offs of non-FOSS software, and regrettably accepted them, because the FOSS alternatives had trade-offs that cumulatively (for me) were much worse. Unlike RMS, I am not a one-dimensional person that only evaluates tech on the single dimension of freedom. Tech is not a religion for me; it's just a tool. RMS pontificating about FOSS does not magically bring iPhone comparable FOSS software and hardware into existence. If the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, ratio of pontificating about to building consumer products needs to be much lower.
- 5y ago

8note 5y ago

Apples selling point is that they decide what should be running on your phone. From the various app store monopolization threads, people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it.

feanaro 5y ago
On the other hand, I'm not buying an iPhone due to control issues. If I were able to fully control it, I'd probably buy one.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Why would you choose apple over anyone else at that point?
idle_zealot 5y ago
> people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it. My guess is that this applies to about as many people as the opposite “wants to control their device” stance. Which is to say approximately nobody. Most users probably don’t think about these things much if at all. They want a smartphone that runs the expected smartphone apps and has the expected smartphone features, and do not care whether or not some nerd can install and run some apps they’ve never heard of on his own device. I imagine, though, that most people would have an opinion one way or the other about phones snitching on their owners.
petra 5y ago
The iPhone is a status symbol. That's why most people buy it.
- kuratkull 5y ago
  Exactly, it's easy with phones - you can have the same phone your favorite celebrity has! Not so with almost anything else. People have just the weirdest reasons. It's also funny to me because I will never ask anything about a persons phone, laptop or other tech gadget if I recognize it from a distance (for example Apple products), but I will ask and converse about brands/devices that I have not seen much of. Not sure why people think Apple products give them any credit whatsoever.

vb6sp6 5y ago

Steve Jobs received a standing ovation when he showed how the new iOS would finally let you change your wallpaper. This broke the RDF for me.

dylan604 5y ago
I've never been to one of Apple's events, but as a viewer of their videos some of those applause breaks have me convinced there are giant "Applause Now" signs. I imagine them being on more than they are off by how over the top their dialog is written. Or they fill the air in the room with some sort of gas that makes the attendees very susceptible to the RDF. Those are much more fun explanations than just realizing they probably have plants to start the cheering in a room full of fanboys
dpkonofa 5y ago
Why is that wrong? I also applauded (internally) when notifications were added because it was a feature that I wanted and I didn't care that Android had it before because I wasn't using an Android phone. I bought all of the Google-branded Android phones when they came out and I still preferred iOS and the iPhone so having that feature was worthy of applause for me. I don't see how the wallpaper thing is any different. As much as I would like to have had the ability to change wallpaper before then, that wasn't as important as all the other things I cared about more.

danudey 5y ago

I think what you mean is that you don't control the iCloud Photos client, Apple does. Your photos are scanned by the iCloud Photos "client" (which is built into the OS) before uploading them to the cloud. Would it be any different if Dropbox was scanning files before it uploaded them rather than afterwards? It already computes hashes of your files on your device so that it doesn't have to re-upload existing content, so I honestly don't understand the objection to doing image scanning on your device before uploading your content.

jdiez17 5y ago
The point is that if the capability for "the iCloud Photos client" to scan your photos before uploading them to the cloud exists, it's only Apple's policy that stops it from scanning all of your photos.
- tpush 5y ago
  That capability obviously already exists independent from this CSAM-scanning system.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Yes, they were already doing facial recognition of my photos, which I didn’t ask for and can’t turn off.
Osiris 5y ago
You can uninstall Dropbox. You cannot uninstall Photos.

mortenjorck 5y ago

While there is certainly truth to this, this is also a defeatist position. Of course Apple could do anything, with or without telling us. And they do some fairly indefensible things, though I would argue those have mostly to do with the App Store. But this is not the time to throw our hands up and say there was nothing we could do all along. That the situation was never ideal does not preclude there being something worth fighting for.

smnrchrds 5y ago

Buying an iPhone (and increasingly Mac) is like going to Disneyland: You pay a lot of money to be allowed in so you can pay them even more money. The experience is highly curated and controlled. At the end of the day, you are just a guest there and what you are or aren't allowed to do is determined by the company. EDIT: And they have CCTV and undercover security officers everywhere. More than you can possibly imagine.

judge2020 5y ago
And Disney is one of the most well-known global brands - at least when people think about entertainment and vacationing.
tomjen3 5y ago
A Mac is very different from an iPhone. I am writing this in Firefox, I have development tools and commandline scripts installed.
- tgvaughan 5y ago
  Are you sure? I have a Mac too, and earlier this year all of my non Apple-approved software stopped working because some random Apple server went down.
lancesells 5y ago
I really don't Apple Hardware is a lot of money. I buy the cheapest MacBook Airs with a ram upgrade and they last me around ~6 years. Same with the phone I buy (iPhone SE). Outside of the battery needing replaced they last me a long, long time. Everything else with I agree. The eco-system of all these companies is never-ending (cars, food, cities, etc.). It's like those sci-fi movies where one corporation owns everything. The only difference is it's 5 or 6 companies because they haven't yet started to merge.
- alerighi 5y ago
  You can buy an Android phone with better specs (except the camera, where the iPhone objectively the best) for 200$, while an iPhone is minimum 500$ (and for an SE 2 that is an old iPhone 8 with a newer SOC). For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade. Apple tends not to upgrade the oldest computers, leaving you with an insecure OS where you can't run the latest software. I have my battle Thinkpad that with Linux runs better than most Macbook and we are talking about a PC that has more than 10 years and I bought used on Ebay for 100$. Really Apple is not that great. I once used to buy their product thinking they were superior, and maybe once they were, nowadays they are just the other crap made in China but sold at (at least) twice the price because they have the Apple logo on it.

ASalazarMX 5y ago

> Problem is that the devices are really really good their devices are really good, but they come with so much crippling for the sake of the walled garden that their goodness is wasted in some fronts. There's a large list of things they are (or can be with minimal effort) perfectly capable for, but are forbidden for reasons, like reverse wireless charge of other iphones / airpods.

jandorn 5y ago

Unfortunately that is accurate for every property software, not only that but you can easily make a case that all software that you personally don’t maintain including open source has same problem.

amelius 5y ago

> I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good. The devices are good, but still Apple has a weak value proposition. Also, handing them your money probably isn't going to make things better in terms of alternatives.

benhurmarcel 5y ago

There’s not much you can do about it if you want a decent smartphone. On Android Google also can do on-device scanning since forever.

kuratkull 5y ago
The problem is _not_ on-device scanning, it's on-device scanning and then sending incriminating results to the device maker.
- nicce 5y ago
  Final result is better than before, because scanning applies only into targets which are ending into the cloud. Content was plaintext in the cloud before (not counting server-side encryption). With current change, they have "partial" E2E encryption and Apple can decrypt them only if CSAM treshold is reached. If we leave all speculation, this is a great improvement for privacy in CSAM context. You can opt-out from scanning by not using iCloud.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
On Android they can do this? Source? The distinction still needs to be made between AOSP and whatever ships on your phone or is included in play services. Especially on HN of all places.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Fair enough, but Android includes Play Services in all notable cases. Yes a handful of people run it without, which does solve that issue, at the cost of convenience and usability. That's why I specified "decent smartphone". I wouldn't consider the UX of Android without Play Services to be "decent".

tearfang 5y ago

Life existed before the iPhone. Life goes on even if you have to use other devices, and you'll be able to do more stuff than before iPhones were invented. ppl are very inventive and adaptable. Give Linux a try. Mint is a pretty good noob friendly version. Ubuntu is a very popular one.