10 ms·

I feel like there's a third option here, though, in that Apple is very likely trying to get ahead of what's likely to be requests from the government that they

I feel like there's a third option here, though, in that Apple is very likely trying to get ahead of what's likely to be requests from the government that they won't be able to just not abide by. This already happens to every hosting and storage provider and it's entirely plausible that politicians will start publicly wringing their hands to try and justify an actual invasion of privacy where "the government" will be able to scan devices (and even require it from manufacturers) in the interest of "saving the children". This (and I realize it assumes good intentions on behalf of the actors involved) seems to be an attempt to get ahead of that kind of situation by saying "we'll scan things if we're 99% sure they're breaking the law" but we don't want to violate people's privacy. The iCloud vs Facebook comparison is great and noble and all but how long do we honestly think that'll stand up before the politicians move past that argument and onto the next one. When it stops being about the children, it'll be about the terrorists. When it stops being about the terrorists, it'll be about whatever the next excuse is. This seems like a compromise between those unfortunate scenarios - upholding privacy (we don't see the content) while still attempting to solve for the problems that privacy inherently allows for (we can still identify CP).

nullc 5y ago
> Apple is very likely trying to get ahead of what's likely to be requests from the government that they won't be able to just not abide by No. Don't make that excuses for them. If it were true it would be a shocking revelation which might result in thousands of cases being overturned. If the NCMEC searches by providers are being done as a result of government coercion then the fourth amendment requires there be a search warrant. Since there isn't one, these searches would all be unlawful if there was coercion. Thus far, tech companies like Google and AOL have gone out of their way to testify that there is no coercion (I haven't found a case involving Apple). If there were coercion it would be a shocking conspiracy. I wouldn't argue that it's impossible: The USG has done some shockingly unethical and illegal things in the past but it fails occams razor. Moreover, the excuse doesn't actually make apple look better: Instead of being a corporation compromising user privacy and security for commercial gain, they'd be an active participant in a conspiracy to violate the US constitution. Apple is doing this because they believe they'll make more money this way, and because they believe the complaints raised here about people rejecting devices betraying their trust are fundamentally inconsequential. Show them otherwise, don't make excuses. Don't blame the government. The government may well be to blame too, but Apple's actions are apple's fault.
- usaman 5y ago
  >> If there were coercion it would be a shocking conspiracy. This comment is as if the 2001-2010 decade never happened. Secret wiretaps. Secret Evidence. Overseas torture facilities. Imprisonment without charges. What makes you think that checks and balances would miraculously appear after having disappeared for over a decade. NOTE: this is a USA-centric viewpoint
  - nullc 5y ago
    I would not argue that the conspiracy is impossible, but if it exists then it makes Apple's actions less excusable instead of more excusable. If the conspiracy exists Apple is an active participant in secretly and illegally undermining the constitutional rights of well over a hundred million Americans. If the conspiracy does not exist, then they're simply lawfully invading people's privacy in order to improve their profits.
  - strken 5y ago
    Those are examples of shocking conspiracies that got uncovered. Illegal wiretapping and Guantanamo Bay ended up in the news and we're still talking about them now.
    - bigfudge 5y ago
      But nobody apologies for them or went to prison. There is little to believe the don’t continue.
      - bigiain 5y ago
        Snowden did. (Well, effectively did. He'd totally go to prison if he stepped foot in a country that'd extradite him to the US.) But you're right, none of the people who broke all the laws Snowden showed us were getting broken has suffered any consequences.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    > NOTE: this is a USA-centric viewpoint Those are USA-centric examples. I'm sure the viewpoint is just as valid across five eyes and even worse in places like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China et al. I'm from Australia, allegedly a 1st world democracy - and secret wiretaps, secret evidence (and even secret trials!), overseas torture facilities, imprisonment without charges - are all public policy, covered my the media, and enshrined in laws passes by both of the two-party political system.
caconym_ 5y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with the "getting ahead of it" thing, and I do see the benefits of this strategy wrt. keeping data private in the face of escalating govt overreach, but I'm simply not comfortable with the surveillance happening on my own physical device. It means trusting proprietary software to work exactly the way it claims to, which in my own experience is often not the case.
- dpkonofa 5y ago
  I share that concern and completely understand. My only response to that concern, though, is that what you’re asking for is not possible without submitting the content in question to Apple and I would rather they not have it at all and therefore not even have the ability to go down that route. It’s like a double airlock. If your content never leaves your device, there’s no way for them to provide it to someone upon request. It’s definitely a complicated situation but I have yet to see someone provide a solution for how to achieve what Apple has while never transferring your data to them in the first place.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    > what you’re asking for is not possible without submitting the content in question to Apple This unfortunately appears to be true, and part of me is impressed by [the idea of] the solution they've come up with. But, like I said in my first comment, it means in practice that I have an opaque and unaccountable surveillance program running on my personal physical hardware, which is undeniably an escalation. Whatever they claim it's doing is both completely unverifiable and probably complicated enough, and subject enough to change, that it's practically impossible to form a complete and persistently correct understanding of the attack surface it exposes—even if it were open-sourced and exhaustively documented, which it isn't and presumably never will be. I am much more comfortable simply knowing that anything I upload to somebody else's servers is subject to snooping, and anything I keep on my hardware is not. That's how the other cloud storage providers do it, and I may not like it, but it's at least easy to account for when I'm thinking about my own data security and privacy. It's admirable that Apple tried to come up with something better, but (I'd argue) from certain important perspectives it's arguably worse. Software is a chronic disease. Once you let it in, it never goes away, and changes beyond the scope of "fixes" seem to infallibly make it more intrusive and/or harmful. We are like frogs with many bodies, each being boiled in a different pot by a different chef. I have no interest in yet another unaccountable daemon inhabiting my private person.
fossuser 5y ago
Yeah - my read of this is Apple wants to increase their e2e adoption while still handling CSAM in a way that gets them an okay from the regulators. Ben Thompson's suggested approach for them in this article is to just do the unencrypted iCloud model with normal CSAM reporting like FB does and make that the tradeoff. Apple actually wants things to be more secure by encrypting everything e2e with this CSAM hash approach to still fulfill that obligation (and protect themselves from future regulatory requirements that are more broad). Reasonable people can disagree on these approaches to policy, but it's not obvious that Apple's move here is strictly worse for end users - if they do make moves to e2e then it's arguably better for user privacy to do it the way they're doing it.
- aborsy 5y ago
  Yeah, good cop, bad cop, game. Bad cop: I want access to all your information. Good cop: Oh, these guys are after you. Let me see if I can intervene for you. I can implement a selective limited search, that make these bureaucrats happy and at the same time will protect you. I am on your side, I hate them too. This is the best practical solution.
- feanaro 5y ago
  It's been said elsewhere, but it bears repeating: E2EE is useless if the ends are compromised. Furthermore, since the end is compromised, it's no longer a true end. The true end is the user and a system compromised in this way doesn't offer any guarantees to the user.
  - dpkonofa 5y ago
    Why are you assuming the end is compromised? What makes you say it is in the first place?
    - creata 5y ago
      The "end" will happily send information to Apple such that under certain circumstances (that Apple and various organizations get to decide) low-resolution versions of the "end-to-end encrypted" messages can be obtained. That seems "compromised" by any reasonable definition. Edit: thanks dpkonofa, I made the description vague in the hope that it's more correct.
feanaro 5y ago
> problems that privacy inherently allows for I wonder how we ever survived with the level of privacy we had before the advent of the internet. It must've been a living hell. /s Privacy is not a problem, it is necessary in order for freedom from tyranny to be possible. Even if all the governments of the world mandate that all communication devices must be compromised like this, criminals will still be able to have private communication channels, but lawful citizens won't.
- BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
  I don't claim to have an ideal solution here, but to your point: There weren't highly-effective global distribution networks for CSAM "before the advent of the internet" either. This capability has created a market for these people to produce/obtain this material, and thus creates financial incentives for people to abuse children in this way more than in pre-internet times. There needs to be some way of combating this that can keep up with this growth curve, and that answer can't simply be to throw up our hands and say "the criminals will always win, so there's no solution worth doing".
  - dpkonofa 5y ago
    This is a great response and covers what I think the crux of the issue is. Technology has exacerbated a problem and, rather than simply bow to that, they tried to come up with a solution. Whether that solution addresses the negatives of the problem without introducing other, worse negatives is to be seen. On paper, it feels like they have addressed the problem in a reasonable way if you trust that they want to make money while absolving themselves of liability. They can’t violate users’ privacy if they don’t have the ability to do so.
    - tearfang 5y ago
      //they tried to come up with a solution.// ... they decided to spy on us ^there I fixed it for you. Making me total dictator would be a 'solution' too I mean something has to be done nothing else is working or could possibly work. Me for dictator- I promise to be benevolent, who can argue with that. At worst it is a thing reasonable ppl can disagree about. /s

nullc 5y ago

> Apple is very likely trying to get ahead of what's likely to be requests from the government that they won't be able to just not abide by No. Don't make that excuses for them. If it were true it would be a shocking revelation which might result in thousands of cases being overturned. If the NCMEC searches by providers are being done as a result of government coercion then the fourth amendment requires there be a search warrant. Since there isn't one, these searches would all be unlawful if there was coercion. Thus far, tech companies like Google and AOL have gone out of their way to testify that there is no coercion (I haven't found a case involving Apple). If there were coercion it would be a shocking conspiracy. I wouldn't argue that it's impossible: The USG has done some shockingly unethical and illegal things in the past but it fails occams razor. Moreover, the excuse doesn't actually make apple look better: Instead of being a corporation compromising user privacy and security for commercial gain, they'd be an active participant in a conspiracy to violate the US constitution. Apple is doing this because they believe they'll make more money this way, and because they believe the complaints raised here about people rejecting devices betraying their trust are fundamentally inconsequential. Show them otherwise, don't make excuses. Don't blame the government. The government may well be to blame too, but Apple's actions are apple's fault.

usaman 5y ago
>> If there were coercion it would be a shocking conspiracy. This comment is as if the 2001-2010 decade never happened. Secret wiretaps. Secret Evidence. Overseas torture facilities. Imprisonment without charges. What makes you think that checks and balances would miraculously appear after having disappeared for over a decade. NOTE: this is a USA-centric viewpoint
- nullc 5y ago
  I would not argue that the conspiracy is impossible, but if it exists then it makes Apple's actions less excusable instead of more excusable. If the conspiracy exists Apple is an active participant in secretly and illegally undermining the constitutional rights of well over a hundred million Americans. If the conspiracy does not exist, then they're simply lawfully invading people's privacy in order to improve their profits.
- strken 5y ago
  Those are examples of shocking conspiracies that got uncovered. Illegal wiretapping and Guantanamo Bay ended up in the news and we're still talking about them now.
  - bigfudge 5y ago
    But nobody apologies for them or went to prison. There is little to believe the don’t continue.
    - bigiain 5y ago
      Snowden did. (Well, effectively did. He'd totally go to prison if he stepped foot in a country that'd extradite him to the US.) But you're right, none of the people who broke all the laws Snowden showed us were getting broken has suffered any consequences.
- bigiain 5y ago
  > NOTE: this is a USA-centric viewpoint Those are USA-centric examples. I'm sure the viewpoint is just as valid across five eyes and even worse in places like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China et al. I'm from Australia, allegedly a 1st world democracy - and secret wiretaps, secret evidence (and even secret trials!), overseas torture facilities, imprisonment without charges - are all public policy, covered my the media, and enshrined in laws passes by both of the two-party political system.

caconym_ 5y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with the "getting ahead of it" thing, and I do see the benefits of this strategy wrt. keeping data private in the face of escalating govt overreach, but I'm simply not comfortable with the surveillance happening on my own physical device. It means trusting proprietary software to work exactly the way it claims to, which in my own experience is often not the case.

dpkonofa 5y ago
I share that concern and completely understand. My only response to that concern, though, is that what you’re asking for is not possible without submitting the content in question to Apple and I would rather they not have it at all and therefore not even have the ability to go down that route. It’s like a double airlock. If your content never leaves your device, there’s no way for them to provide it to someone upon request. It’s definitely a complicated situation but I have yet to see someone provide a solution for how to achieve what Apple has while never transferring your data to them in the first place.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > what you’re asking for is not possible without submitting the content in question to Apple This unfortunately appears to be true, and part of me is impressed by [the idea of] the solution they've come up with. But, like I said in my first comment, it means in practice that I have an opaque and unaccountable surveillance program running on my personal physical hardware, which is undeniably an escalation. Whatever they claim it's doing is both completely unverifiable and probably complicated enough, and subject enough to change, that it's practically impossible to form a complete and persistently correct understanding of the attack surface it exposes—even if it were open-sourced and exhaustively documented, which it isn't and presumably never will be. I am much more comfortable simply knowing that anything I upload to somebody else's servers is subject to snooping, and anything I keep on my hardware is not. That's how the other cloud storage providers do it, and I may not like it, but it's at least easy to account for when I'm thinking about my own data security and privacy. It's admirable that Apple tried to come up with something better, but (I'd argue) from certain important perspectives it's arguably worse. Software is a chronic disease. Once you let it in, it never goes away, and changes beyond the scope of "fixes" seem to infallibly make it more intrusive and/or harmful. We are like frogs with many bodies, each being boiled in a different pot by a different chef. I have no interest in yet another unaccountable daemon inhabiting my private person.

fossuser 5y ago

Yeah - my read of this is Apple wants to increase their e2e adoption while still handling CSAM in a way that gets them an okay from the regulators. Ben Thompson's suggested approach for them in this article is to just do the unencrypted iCloud model with normal CSAM reporting like FB does and make that the tradeoff. Apple actually wants things to be more secure by encrypting everything e2e with this CSAM hash approach to still fulfill that obligation (and protect themselves from future regulatory requirements that are more broad). Reasonable people can disagree on these approaches to policy, but it's not obvious that Apple's move here is strictly worse for end users - if they do make moves to e2e then it's arguably better for user privacy to do it the way they're doing it.

aborsy 5y ago
Yeah, good cop, bad cop, game. Bad cop: I want access to all your information. Good cop: Oh, these guys are after you. Let me see if I can intervene for you. I can implement a selective limited search, that make these bureaucrats happy and at the same time will protect you. I am on your side, I hate them too. This is the best practical solution.
feanaro 5y ago
It's been said elsewhere, but it bears repeating: E2EE is useless if the ends are compromised. Furthermore, since the end is compromised, it's no longer a true end. The true end is the user and a system compromised in this way doesn't offer any guarantees to the user.
- dpkonofa 5y ago
  Why are you assuming the end is compromised? What makes you say it is in the first place?
  - creata 5y ago
    The "end" will happily send information to Apple such that under certain circumstances (that Apple and various organizations get to decide) low-resolution versions of the "end-to-end encrypted" messages can be obtained. That seems "compromised" by any reasonable definition. Edit: thanks dpkonofa, I made the description vague in the hope that it's more correct.

feanaro 5y ago

> problems that privacy inherently allows for I wonder how we ever survived with the level of privacy we had before the advent of the internet. It must've been a living hell. /s Privacy is not a problem, it is necessary in order for freedom from tyranny to be possible. Even if all the governments of the world mandate that all communication devices must be compromised like this, criminals will still be able to have private communication channels, but lawful citizens won't.

BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
I don't claim to have an ideal solution here, but to your point: There weren't highly-effective global distribution networks for CSAM "before the advent of the internet" either. This capability has created a market for these people to produce/obtain this material, and thus creates financial incentives for people to abuse children in this way more than in pre-internet times. There needs to be some way of combating this that can keep up with this growth curve, and that answer can't simply be to throw up our hands and say "the criminals will always win, so there's no solution worth doing".
- dpkonofa 5y ago
  This is a great response and covers what I think the crux of the issue is. Technology has exacerbated a problem and, rather than simply bow to that, they tried to come up with a solution. Whether that solution addresses the negatives of the problem without introducing other, worse negatives is to be seen. On paper, it feels like they have addressed the problem in a reasonable way if you trust that they want to make money while absolving themselves of liability. They can’t violate users’ privacy if they don’t have the ability to do so.
  - tearfang 5y ago
    //they tried to come up with a solution.// ... they decided to spy on us ^there I fixed it for you. Making me total dictator would be a 'solution' too I mean something has to be done nothing else is working or could possibly work. Me for dictator- I promise to be benevolent, who can argue with that. At worst it is a thing reasonable ppl can disagree about. /s