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This makes me appreciate the tough spot that Apple is in: > both the UK and the EU are moving forward on bills that mandate online service companies proactivel

This makes me appreciate the tough spot that Apple is in: > both the UK and the EU are moving forward on bills that mandate online service companies proactively look for and report CSAM. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the most important factor behind Apple’s move: the company doesn’t want to give up on end-to-end encryption — and likely wants to expand it — which leaves on-device scanning as the only way to satisfy governments not (just) in China but also the West.

josephcsible 5y ago
If Apple really cared about privacy, they'd instead have spent some money to lobby against those bills.
- davewritescode 5y ago
  There is no company on Earth who is going to take the side of child pornographers. Most of the arguments against this ignore the fact there is a legitimate chance that this type of technology will only be used to combat child abuse and not more nefarious purposes.
  - tiagod 5y ago
    What about terrorism, hate speech, etc? Most people would agree these are very bad things. Problem is there is no objective definition of what constitutes it.
- bzbarsky 5y ago
  What makes you think they didn't? (I don't know whether they did or not, but I would absolutely expect such lobbying to (1) be happening and (2) be kept very quiet because it's too easy to spin it as "Apple supports pedophilia" or some such.)
mbauman 5y ago
Even without a requirement to proactively scan, Apple is surely expanding its ML stack on photos to categorize and describe photos and persons in them. Is that not the simpler explanation for this?
- acdha 5y ago
  They can already do this now for every iCloud photo and the protocol described is elaborately protecting a small number of hashes. It seems unlikely that the PR brushfire from this is better than simply pointing that classifier on all of the photos already on Apple’s servers.
  - mbauman 5y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. Apple is required by law to report images if they have "actual knowledge" of CSAM. Courts aren't too kind about superficial technicalities like "that output label wasn't trained" when Apple is doing on-device ML classification of pictures to identify content. By proactively scanning for selective hashes they can say they're doing something without being required to report a less-accurate ML output. That's also why this only applies if connected to iCloud; otherwise they don't have "knowledge" of it.

josephcsible 5y ago

If Apple really cared about privacy, they'd instead have spent some money to lobby against those bills.

davewritescode 5y ago
There is no company on Earth who is going to take the side of child pornographers. Most of the arguments against this ignore the fact there is a legitimate chance that this type of technology will only be used to combat child abuse and not more nefarious purposes.
- tiagod 5y ago
  What about terrorism, hate speech, etc? Most people would agree these are very bad things. Problem is there is no objective definition of what constitutes it.
bzbarsky 5y ago
What makes you think they didn't? (I don't know whether they did or not, but I would absolutely expect such lobbying to (1) be happening and (2) be kept very quiet because it's too easy to spin it as "Apple supports pedophilia" or some such.)

mbauman 5y ago

Even without a requirement to proactively scan, Apple is surely expanding its ML stack on photos to categorize and describe photos and persons in them. Is that not the simpler explanation for this?

acdha 5y ago
They can already do this now for every iCloud photo and the protocol described is elaborately protecting a small number of hashes. It seems unlikely that the PR brushfire from this is better than simply pointing that classifier on all of the photos already on Apple’s servers.
- mbauman 5y ago
  That's not what I'm saying. Apple is required by law to report images if they have "actual knowledge" of CSAM. Courts aren't too kind about superficial technicalities like "that output label wasn't trained" when Apple is doing on-device ML classification of pictures to identify content. By proactively scanning for selective hashes they can say they're doing something without being required to report a less-accurate ML output. That's also why this only applies if connected to iCloud; otherwise they don't have "knowledge" of it.