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So Apple wants to use my electricity/computation instead of doing it on their own servers. Disregarding the privacy issues that’s pretty scummy IMHO.

GeekyBear 5y ago
Google and the rest do the same thing, but on their own servers. You want Google, for example, to hold false positive data on their servers forever where it can be subpoenaed and 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...
- CTDOCodebases 5y ago
  What’s not to say the logs of the scans being performed on my device will be uploaded and stored off my device forever anyway? The point I was trying to make was privacy reasons aside their motivation of doing it on the users device is scummy. Why don’t they mine Bitcoin on my iPhone while they are at it?
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    If there is a false positive, I don't want that fact to ever leave my phone, instead of residing on Google's servers forever, where it can be subpoenaed and misused. Apple's approach here is far superior from a privacy standpoint. >1. Only if you're uploading files are the files matched. 2. Only if the matches are very close are they considered matches. 3. Only if you have multiple very close matches is Apple able to decrypt the low-res versions of the images themselves. 4. Only if a human reviewer discovers any of the decrypted low-res images to be illegal content is any of your information shared with anyone else. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28120598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28120598
    - fsociety 5y ago
      It’s only superior from a privacy standpoint if you completely trust Apple and humans to get this right. I don’t. At least with server side your images are being scanned when you are actively sharing photos with other users or to the internet. Thus making it more difficult to distribute CSAM material. If iMessage was serious about preventing child abuse, they should be introducing mechanisms to prevent actual abuse from occurring on their platform.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        As opposed to trusting Google? A company well known for refusing to hire human beings when their flawed machine learning models are a less accurate but cheaper option? Again, Apple is not scanning images until you try to upload them to the cloud. Just like Google.
    - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
      How can you prove that this will always be the case? For now that’s the way things are done but it’s a slippery slope. I don’t want anything of mine to be scanned but these days it’s fair to assume that anything that is not self hosted is not private.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        > How can you prove that this will always be the case? How can you prove that Google isn't intentionally turning in a huge number of unnecessary false positives because of their well known aversion to hiring human beings when flawed machine learning models are cheaper?
        CTDOCodebases 5y ago
        Easily. Currently I have a choice to not use their services and I exercise that choice. I don't trust Google and I don't trust Apple. Apple can perform the same process on their iCloud servers but choose not to. The way they are approaching the problem speeds up the erosion of privacy. In other words I reject the false dichotomy you are presenting.

GeekyBear 5y ago

Google and the rest do the same thing, but on their own servers. You want Google, for example, to hold false positive data on their servers forever where it can be subpoenaed and 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...

CTDOCodebases 5y ago
What’s not to say the logs of the scans being performed on my device will be uploaded and stored off my device forever anyway? The point I was trying to make was privacy reasons aside their motivation of doing it on the users device is scummy. Why don’t they mine Bitcoin on my iPhone while they are at it?
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  If there is a false positive, I don't want that fact to ever leave my phone, instead of residing on Google's servers forever, where it can be subpoenaed and misused. Apple's approach here is far superior from a privacy standpoint. >1. Only if you're uploading files are the files matched. 2. Only if the matches are very close are they considered matches. 3. Only if you have multiple very close matches is Apple able to decrypt the low-res versions of the images themselves. 4. Only if a human reviewer discovers any of the decrypted low-res images to be illegal content is any of your information shared with anyone else. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28120598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28120598
  - fsociety 5y ago
    It’s only superior from a privacy standpoint if you completely trust Apple and humans to get this right. I don’t. At least with server side your images are being scanned when you are actively sharing photos with other users or to the internet. Thus making it more difficult to distribute CSAM material. If iMessage was serious about preventing child abuse, they should be introducing mechanisms to prevent actual abuse from occurring on their platform.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      As opposed to trusting Google? A company well known for refusing to hire human beings when their flawed machine learning models are a less accurate but cheaper option? Again, Apple is not scanning images until you try to upload them to the cloud. Just like Google.
  - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
    How can you prove that this will always be the case? For now that’s the way things are done but it’s a slippery slope. I don’t want anything of mine to be scanned but these days it’s fair to assume that anything that is not self hosted is not private.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      > How can you prove that this will always be the case? How can you prove that Google isn't intentionally turning in a huge number of unnecessary false positives because of their well known aversion to hiring human beings when flawed machine learning models are cheaper?
      - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
        Easily. Currently I have a choice to not use their services and I exercise that choice. I don't trust Google and I don't trust Apple. Apple can perform the same process on their iCloud servers but choose not to. The way they are approaching the problem speeds up the erosion of privacy. In other words I reject the false dichotomy you are presenting.