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I strongly disagree with the author. Apple did this feature not for "increased privacy" or "better cloud security". Sorry to say that but that's a desperate bel

I strongly disagree with the author. Apple did this feature not for "increased privacy" or "better cloud security". Sorry to say that but that's a desperate believer right there. Why did Apple do it, though? To create precisely this kind of cognitive dissonance. It's not Apple that's observing you. It's the government. Apple has basically created an API for government surveillance and can now say "see, we don't collect the data. We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you." Apple just side-stepped the question on how to reconcile trust in propietary software and surveillance requests from the government. And everyone who tells you that it's not guaranteed that this feature will be extended to texts, spoken language, and other contents, is not worth talking to. We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. This general pattern won't disappear, ever. In a couple of years you will have to carefully consider every word you say in a car, every movie you watch, every website you visit, every program you write, because some neural net will use it to create a fingerprint that might be classified as illegal behavior.

Clubber 5y ago
You could just get a cell phone that you can turn off. I think they still make them, but get them while you can. Eventually that won't work, because your car will be able to observe you just as easily probably. I have an old razor flip phone I might start using again. That and an iPod touch with no cellular. This is here to stay. Time to adapt to it.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Can’t you “turn off” anything by just sticking it in a Faraday cage to block it from phoning home?
  - Clubber 5y ago
    You can block the signal, but since the new scanner is now on the device itself, it can still snoop and phone home later. I want a phone that I can use as a phone still but be able to control when it does stuff and what stuff it does. I don't need a portable computer if it's just gonna spy on me all the time.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
edrxty 5y ago
I find myself already contemplating the websites I visit, the videos I watch and the things I post, even anonymously, because my interests include military electronics among other things. Even when I'm not worried about attracting unwarranted attention I still hesitate because my life is being hoovered up by big data and if I accidentally watch one click bait video suddenly the algorithms are hell bent on only feeding me fake news, alt right indoctrination material and conspiracy theories...
- mindslight 5y ago
  Don't cower in fear. Learn to use about:config, VMs, VPNs, and TOR. Not everyone is able to do this, but you're technical enough to be spending time on Hacker News. (Also, this doesn't preclude lobbying for restrictions on government and corporate surveillance. It's not a dichotomy)
  - de_keyboard 5y ago
    What about smartphones? Increasingly, an up-to-date and unmodified Android or Apple smartphone is required to interface with the modern world. Want to use a Linux phone? Sorry no banking app for you. No check-in for flights. So you either need to accept massive day-to-day inconvenience or subject yourself to surveillance and control. This era of computing is a disaster from the perspective or user-control. You know what, Stallman was right.
    - hypothesis 5y ago
      And that is why having an open web is important. Not being locked-in into apps is critical nowadays.
      - cudgy 5y ago
        How does open web make it better? Then your data is swimming on a server outside your device on an unknown operating system with god knows who looking at it. Someone earlier astutely stated the metaphor “the thin edge of the wedge”; the movement to the “cloud” via the open web over the last decade was the thinnest part of the wedge.
imwillofficial 5y ago
> Apple has basically created an API for government surveillance and can now say "see, we don't collect the data. We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you." This is straight up a lie. Comparing hashes is not anything crazy, nor is it an API for big brother
- fredsir 5y ago
  Except the list of hashes is a black box. Today it's child porn, tomorrow it's anti-government or something similar. It's a slippery slope that's only going in one direction.
  - stetrain 5y ago
    But Apple doesn't report to authorities based only on a hash match.
    - themaninthedark 5y ago
      They hash the files on your device. The hashes are then sent out to for comparison to the hash table. Right now they are only comparing to the CSAM table but they can add other later. Also, how are the hashes sent? Can they be intercepted?
      - stetrain 5y ago
        Yes but there is a manual review step. A hash match does not automatically report to authorities. If the Apple reviewer looks at the images that were flagged and doesn’t see CSAM, they don’t report it.
    - stetrain 5y ago
      A human at Apple reviews thumbnails of the flagged images to see if they are actually CSAM. You do not get reported just because of a hash match.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
ballenf 5y ago
The author felt nothing like a true believer. At least not compared to coverage from MacRumors or other mainstream media sites which keep mindlessly vomiting up the "but Google's been doing basically this for ages, so it must be harmless" type logic. Intentionally misinterpreting every relevant point from critics.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Google has been doing this for ages in their cloud. As have all the other major clouds. Apple's the first to do this on your own device. Sure, only content that would have been uploaded to iCloud. For now. But this is the start of that particular slippery slope.
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    I'm thinking about encrypting all data in the cloud and disabling the platform specific image upload/backup altogether. Not sure how I would a) automate the backup process from our phones to the cloud and b) how to make it somewhat convenient to look at and share pictures among the family Any form of automation and convenient goes against the main point that is privacy.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      I use cryptomator for this. On Android it allows auto uploading to any of the major Android-enabled clouds, while encrypting. You do need to keep your vault unlocked though for the auto upload to work, otherwise it will need to catch up whenever you unlock it. Not sure if it has this feature on iOS. If you share cryptomator and the vault to your family/friends they can access it but it's not possible to look at the pics on the web that way. The app is also paid but it's a one-time fee and not expensive.
  - papito 5y ago
    Imagine if your luxury car came with cameras equipped in all the compartments, sending an alert to authorities that what looks like a baggie of cocaine was detected in the glove box, blowing away any protections from unreasonable search.
jrochkind1 5y ago
You're suggesting that Apple's motivation was "precisely" to enable general widespread government surveillance? Why would Apple have an interest in doing that? What evidence do you have that this is their motivation, how do you know what motivates them?
- Aunche 5y ago
  An SRE friend told me that they're pretty confident that a three letter organization have attempted a serious breach at a data center. There's a good chance that Apple has negotiated a deal so they'll stop attempting hacks in the future.
  - jdlshore 5y ago
    “A SRE friend” is “pretty confident?” That’s a very bold claim to make on hearsay. Does your friend work at Apple? Are they just speculating, or do they have actual evidence? Why do you believe them? C’mon, people, I know this is a knee-jerk issue, but exercise some basic critical thinking skills.
    - Aunche 5y ago
      Basic critical thinking skills would tell you that Apple would spend millions of dollars developing something that isn't making them any more money. The most obvious explanation is that the government is pressuring them to somehow. As far as the attack goes, I have a few more details, but I'd rather no reveal them since I could be violating confidentiality somehow. I understand why you'd be skeptical.
  - meroes 5y ago
    So the gov't it got exactly what it wanted and instead of getting Congress to actually pass a law, they just effected a much simpler solution by force. Winning!
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  I would suspect because governments repeatedly want this surveillance and as the GP comment correctly pointed out, this gives governments what they want while Apple sits on the side and acts innocent. Given pressure from governments for this type of surveillance is, i think, well agreed upon - Apple giving in while avoiding direct responsibility seems quite the incentive in my view.
lovelyviking 5y ago
>This general pattern won't disappear, ever. It should disappear due to active push back because freedom, democracy and human rights cannot coexist with such surveillance. Privacy is where independent thinking is happening and generated and if it's not guarded properly the whole idea of democracy is not possible. More on that here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084578
- sharken 5y ago
  Yes, it should be obvious by now why Apple must back down. But to convince Apple there needs to be plenty more articles about CSAM and where it leads.
- conception 5y ago
  And yet... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite... Apple has just created a product that slowed the government down and they wouldn't stand for it and so they compromised. But America talks a good talk about pushing back against surveillance but if it doesn't affect people day to day, no one will care. Hell, almost a million Americans are dead and about half care more about being able to go to a bar than the easily preventable deaths.
- papito 5y ago
  For some reason, people living from paycheck to paycheck are expected to be "good citizens", but if you make billions (and pay much less in tax, percentage-wise), your obligation to not be a shitbag is, well, waived. Everyone here is hating on Apple, but looking at what Peter Thiel is involved in - oh, that's FINE. He is rich, he is better than you, obviously. Don't believe me? Watch the Peter Thiel shrine that is HN downvote this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db4ad/google-bans-safegraph-former-saudi-intelligence https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db4ad/google-bans-safegraph...
lijogdfljk 5y ago
Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. Corporations have done nothing but repeatedly invade my privacy, exploit my data and attempt to squeeze money out of me at every turn. The relationship has seemed adversarial for quite a few years. So what should i expect from Apple here? It sort of feels like the alternative is for Apple to stand up to governments. To fight for the people.. But this seems super, super hopeful. A desperate plea founded in wishful thinking that corporations have any incentive aligned with ours. So what in your eyes is the right solution here? Apple letting us down here is par for the course here to me. But i also don't see an alternative where i'm not just blindly hoping some corporation will defend my freedoms for me. I've lost all trust in literally every other corporation.. honestly, should i have trusted Apple?
- dwater 5y ago
  > Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. They are sitting on ~$200B in cash. If they want to continue to be viewed as protecting users data and privacy, that is exactly what they should do. Spend some of that money in court, defending the privacy of their users. But they won't, and they will lose the thing that differentiates them for some subset of their users.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    Even $200B is minuscule when compared to the money that governments can spend to make this a requirement for everyone. People need to push back on the situation that led to Apple even thinking they needed to do something like this. We need to go against the root cause, not the solution one company came up with to try and fight against that cause.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  > Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. Honest question, were are you going that has less privacy issues than this?
smilespray 5y ago
I think the author, amongst others, speculates that Apple will announce E2E encryption of your iCloud data, such as backups, in the future. This is not an unreasonable speculation, nor does it imply support of the whole CSAM scheme. BTW: I've been an Apple fanboy since the mid-80s, but I find the whole concept of my phone suspecting me of child pornography appalling. It's the thin end of the wedge, and IMHO Apple have made a huge mistake.
- headmelted 5y ago
  “It’s the thin end of the wedge” This is the biggest worry. Apple essentially waved their hand in their FAQ and said something to the effect of they’d never do something like that. Yes you would. You’ll get called to congress and told in no uncertain terms what you’re expected to do, you’ll say no, the law will be changed, then the gentleman in a suit that people don’t say no to will call to your nice headquarters for you to walk him through his shiny new surveillance tools.
  - avalys 5y ago
    Yes, Apple's defense is literally the "If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" line that is universally recognized as laughable.
    - headmelted 5y ago
      Not only that, when they suggest that morally they would or would not do something they’re either being dishonest (which to be fair I don’t think is the case) or genuinely naive as to the limits of their control here, even over their own products. Once the tool exists, they’ll add whatever features governments in major economies tell them to or they’ll be forced into adding them. All this said, I don’t blame Apple alone here and I have mixed feelings about it still - as I really do believe in their fight against CSAM. I just don’t think this is the magic solution to solving CSAM while preserving an innocent user’s right to privacy that they’re selling it as. I’m also certain there are engineers who worked on this system who also share these concerns.
  - 5y ago
usefulcat 5y ago
> 'Apple ... can now say "see, we don't collect the data. We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you."' I don't know what Apple is thinking, but I doubt it's that, because people who care about being surveilled are very unlikely to be persuaded by that argument. (And obviously people who don't care much about being surveilled are unlikely to care very much whether such surveillance happens on device or in the cloud.)
5faulker 5y ago
Scary.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  Dystopian.
robertoandred 5y ago
> We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. No, we don't. Your refusal to understand how any of this actually works, your desperation to conflate this process with the worst hypotheticals, does more damage than Apple ever could.
- cudgy 5y ago
  Are you refusing to see how this opens Pandora’s box of surveillance on a device that many people store there most personal communications, memories, and other data?
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    If everything is a Pandora’s box, then nothing is.
stetrain 5y ago
I think there are a lot of great arguments to be made against this system, and the road that it is going down. But I think your arguments would be improved by actually reading and understanding the current system Apple is proposing. Which, for example, does not include automatic reporting to authorities based only on a hash detection. At the end of the day this is mostly an issue of political and legal requirements. Apple is doing what they think they need to do to cover their bases as they wrestle with governments over things like E2E encryption policies.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Think of it this way. Ever see the movie where they put the neck shackles on people that blow up if they do something wrong? Running Man is an example. With local device scanning, I feel apple is putting a neck bomb on me, but promising they won't blow it up unless I do so and so. I can't take the neck bomb off and never should have let them put it on in the first place. My head is now at the mercy of Apple now and forever because it's locked on. Now Apple can change the terms of service, boom. Apple has a bug, boom. Why in the hell would I want this neck bomb on me?!
  - stetrain 5y ago
    Sure. I'm not saying this is good. I'm saying there are a lot of kneejerk arguments being made that directly conflict with Apple's description of the system.
    - postoak 5y ago
      The problem is that you have to trust their description when the technology is a black box. And trust that it won't change in the future.
      - stetrain 5y ago
        Sure. But like I said the causes are mostly political and legal. A utopia of GPL-only mobile devices with no proprietary cloud service connections doesn't seem like a valid option. At least not for a large enough share of users to make a societal difference.
fluidcruft 5y ago
I can actually see it as something that encourages parents to have fewer qualms about giving their kids iPhones. I don't know how the thing works but if it makes it annoying for my kids to take/send nudes, then great. Edit: I guess at worst Apple's just sending a cryptographic hash of unencrypted data so that the known childporn can be flagged. It's basically like sending a hashdeep record of the data. It's an interesting concept with at lot of implications for tracing the spread of files within networks without knowing what they contain. Presumably if it was expanded to all files in cloud storage then LE could say something like "Give be a list of everyone that has object XDFAECXDZE" when LE knows that XDFAECXDZE is Catcher_in_the_Rye.pdf and Apple does not.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  >I don't know how the thing works but if it makes it annoying for my kids to take/send nudes, then great. My understanding is that this only works for known abuse images and even then only if the files are identical. So apple has no way to know if high schoolers are sending nudes to each other.
Covzire 5y ago
I remember a decade ago that Freedom of Speech was a pretty common sentiment shared here and pretty much everywhere online. Today though, that freedom is no longer even prized over the rights of private mega corps, sometimes doing the bidding of the government. On one hand it's encouraging to read your take, but I have no faith that in another 10 years, the government scanning all our devices for "misinformation" that the then regime deems as such, will be anything but hand waved away by the majority of SV employees as "it's the law".
- Digory 5y ago
  “They’re just consequences for abusing your right to privacy,” they’ll eventually explain.
mightybyte 5y ago
Oh the irony... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
notJim 5y ago
> We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. Wait a second, but only if you're uploading photos to iCloud? They were presumably already doing this once you upload them, so what is the big difference? I have totally missed this detail in a lot of the coverage, and it changes my view of it.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  It's my understanding that they weren't actually checking photos on their servers against the CSAM database, which is why Apple's reporting of CSAM on their network has historically been orders of magnitude less than other companies -- Facebook last year reported ~20M, other companies reported tens or hundreds of thousands, and Apple reported, IIRC, 265. I'm aware the general sentiment here is "don't assume governments are putting pressure on Apple to step up their reporting, this is all on Apple bad bad bad bad bad," but sorry -- those numbers do indeed lead me to strongly suspect governments are putting pressure on Apple to step up their reporting. And I don't think Jason Snell (the author of the linked article, who probably knows more about Apple's world view and internal politics than almost anyone outside the executive team does) is wrong to theorize that Apple sees this CSAM-hash-detection system as a way to meet that pressure while protecting user privacy as much as possible, because they've convinced themselves that "protecting user privacy" means "do as much on device and as little in the cloud as possible". To be clear, I don't think this is a good idea -- letting the camel's nose in the tent through a different opening is still letting the camel's nose in the tent. The irony, though, is that I think Apple's inventively bad solution comes from the most canonically Silicon Valley mindset ever: all problems are engineering problems.
  - notJim 5y ago
    Yeah it's kind of odd, because now law enforcement/the courts can say "well, you have the capability to scan content on device, you just choose not to in some cases", which would seem to open Apple up to being forced to do it in far more cases. I think we have to look at this through the lens of governments around the world attempting to ban E2E encryption. E2E encryption has both security and privacy benefits, and IMO most people are far more affected by the security benefits, given the frequency of data leaks/hacks. So maybe Apple is saying "let's preserve some of the E2E encryption benefits", but show it can be compatible with LEO demands. I think the unfortunate reality may be that that is the least bad option.
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
>We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. Nah. Everybody else will live in that world because they are addicted to convenience. Personally, I'll be scrapping my iPhone and buying something with free software.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  For my edification, what are you going to buy? I want to look at it and if it fits my requirements for a device, I might get right in line behind you.
  - c7DJTLrn 5y ago
    I don't know yet, I'm aware of the Librem 5 and Pinephone, the former being more attractive to me because of the isolated baseband modem. But let's be real, the user experience of these devices doesn't come close to an iPhone, so it will be a tough transition I reckon. But one I deem necessary.
    - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
      I looked at the Pinephone and, user experience not coming close is an understatement. Looking at the table of OSes, it looks like getting it working would be like installing Linux on a laptop circa 2008. Librem 5 looks a bit better, but a 6mo lead time for a $900 phone with a 720p screen and n WiFi? I’m going to continue my search.
shuckles 5y ago
The proposal is the exact opposite of how you characterize it. > Apple just side-stepped the question on how to reconcile trust in propietary software and surveillance requests from the government. They actually inserted themselves into the process, not side-stepped it. They could’ve kept status quo (no scanning) and kept supplying iCloud Backups to governments at large rates. As part of this, they’re also forced to add a greatly increased human review function. > We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you. They’ve explicitly stated what they’re scanning for and went further to say they will not scan for other types of content. You may not believe them, but this is not a content-neutral or blind justification.
m3kw9 5y ago
Very well articulated, in a worse prose, it would be “you will have less and less privacy as you depend on more technology because the govt will want more and more power.”

Clubber 5y ago

You could just get a cell phone that you can turn off. I think they still make them, but get them while you can. Eventually that won't work, because your car will be able to observe you just as easily probably. I have an old razor flip phone I might start using again. That and an iPod touch with no cellular. This is here to stay. Time to adapt to it.

jimbob45 5y ago
Can’t you “turn off” anything by just sticking it in a Faraday cage to block it from phoning home?
- Clubber 5y ago
  You can block the signal, but since the new scanner is now on the device itself, it can still snoop and phone home later. I want a phone that I can use as a phone still but be able to control when it does stuff and what stuff it does. I don't need a portable computer if it's just gonna spy on me all the time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

edrxty 5y ago

I find myself already contemplating the websites I visit, the videos I watch and the things I post, even anonymously, because my interests include military electronics among other things. Even when I'm not worried about attracting unwarranted attention I still hesitate because my life is being hoovered up by big data and if I accidentally watch one click bait video suddenly the algorithms are hell bent on only feeding me fake news, alt right indoctrination material and conspiracy theories...

mindslight 5y ago
Don't cower in fear. Learn to use about:config, VMs, VPNs, and TOR. Not everyone is able to do this, but you're technical enough to be spending time on Hacker News. (Also, this doesn't preclude lobbying for restrictions on government and corporate surveillance. It's not a dichotomy)
- de_keyboard 5y ago
  What about smartphones? Increasingly, an up-to-date and unmodified Android or Apple smartphone is required to interface with the modern world. Want to use a Linux phone? Sorry no banking app for you. No check-in for flights. So you either need to accept massive day-to-day inconvenience or subject yourself to surveillance and control. This era of computing is a disaster from the perspective or user-control. You know what, Stallman was right.
  - hypothesis 5y ago
    And that is why having an open web is important. Not being locked-in into apps is critical nowadays.
    - cudgy 5y ago
      How does open web make it better? Then your data is swimming on a server outside your device on an unknown operating system with god knows who looking at it. Someone earlier astutely stated the metaphor “the thin edge of the wedge”; the movement to the “cloud” via the open web over the last decade was the thinnest part of the wedge.

imwillofficial 5y ago

> Apple has basically created an API for government surveillance and can now say "see, we don't collect the data. We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you." This is straight up a lie. Comparing hashes is not anything crazy, nor is it an API for big brother

fredsir 5y ago
Except the list of hashes is a black box. Today it's child porn, tomorrow it's anti-government or something similar. It's a slippery slope that's only going in one direction.
- stetrain 5y ago
  But Apple doesn't report to authorities based only on a hash match.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    They hash the files on your device. The hashes are then sent out to for comparison to the hash table. Right now they are only comparing to the CSAM table but they can add other later. Also, how are the hashes sent? Can they be intercepted?
    - stetrain 5y ago
      Yes but there is a manual review step. A hash match does not automatically report to authorities. If the Apple reviewer looks at the images that were flagged and doesn’t see CSAM, they don’t report it.
  - stetrain 5y ago
    A human at Apple reviews thumbnails of the flagged images to see if they are actually CSAM. You do not get reported just because of a hash match.
- imwillofficial 5y ago

ballenf 5y ago

The author felt nothing like a true believer. At least not compared to coverage from MacRumors or other mainstream media sites which keep mindlessly vomiting up the "but Google's been doing basically this for ages, so it must be harmless" type logic. Intentionally misinterpreting every relevant point from critics.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Google has been doing this for ages in their cloud. As have all the other major clouds. Apple's the first to do this on your own device. Sure, only content that would have been uploaded to iCloud. For now. But this is the start of that particular slippery slope.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I'm thinking about encrypting all data in the cloud and disabling the platform specific image upload/backup altogether. Not sure how I would a) automate the backup process from our phones to the cloud and b) how to make it somewhat convenient to look at and share pictures among the family Any form of automation and convenient goes against the main point that is privacy.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I use cryptomator for this. On Android it allows auto uploading to any of the major Android-enabled clouds, while encrypting. You do need to keep your vault unlocked though for the auto upload to work, otherwise it will need to catch up whenever you unlock it. Not sure if it has this feature on iOS. If you share cryptomator and the vault to your family/friends they can access it but it's not possible to look at the pics on the web that way. The app is also paid but it's a one-time fee and not expensive.
- papito 5y ago
  Imagine if your luxury car came with cameras equipped in all the compartments, sending an alert to authorities that what looks like a baggie of cocaine was detected in the glove box, blowing away any protections from unreasonable search.

jrochkind1 5y ago

You're suggesting that Apple's motivation was "precisely" to enable general widespread government surveillance? Why would Apple have an interest in doing that? What evidence do you have that this is their motivation, how do you know what motivates them?

Aunche 5y ago
An SRE friend told me that they're pretty confident that a three letter organization have attempted a serious breach at a data center. There's a good chance that Apple has negotiated a deal so they'll stop attempting hacks in the future.
- jdlshore 5y ago
  “A SRE friend” is “pretty confident?” That’s a very bold claim to make on hearsay. Does your friend work at Apple? Are they just speculating, or do they have actual evidence? Why do you believe them? C’mon, people, I know this is a knee-jerk issue, but exercise some basic critical thinking skills.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    Basic critical thinking skills would tell you that Apple would spend millions of dollars developing something that isn't making them any more money. The most obvious explanation is that the government is pressuring them to somehow. As far as the attack goes, I have a few more details, but I'd rather no reveal them since I could be violating confidentiality somehow. I understand why you'd be skeptical.
- meroes 5y ago
  So the gov't it got exactly what it wanted and instead of getting Congress to actually pass a law, they just effected a much simpler solution by force. Winning!
lijogdfljk 5y ago
I would suspect because governments repeatedly want this surveillance and as the GP comment correctly pointed out, this gives governments what they want while Apple sits on the side and acts innocent. Given pressure from governments for this type of surveillance is, i think, well agreed upon - Apple giving in while avoiding direct responsibility seems quite the incentive in my view.

lovelyviking 5y ago

>This general pattern won't disappear, ever. It should disappear due to active push back because freedom, democracy and human rights cannot coexist with such surveillance. Privacy is where independent thinking is happening and generated and if it's not guarded properly the whole idea of democracy is not possible. More on that here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084578

sharken 5y ago
Yes, it should be obvious by now why Apple must back down. But to convince Apple there needs to be plenty more articles about CSAM and where it leads.
conception 5y ago
And yet... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite... Apple has just created a product that slowed the government down and they wouldn't stand for it and so they compromised. But America talks a good talk about pushing back against surveillance but if it doesn't affect people day to day, no one will care. Hell, almost a million Americans are dead and about half care more about being able to go to a bar than the easily preventable deaths.
papito 5y ago
For some reason, people living from paycheck to paycheck are expected to be "good citizens", but if you make billions (and pay much less in tax, percentage-wise), your obligation to not be a shitbag is, well, waived. Everyone here is hating on Apple, but looking at what Peter Thiel is involved in - oh, that's FINE. He is rich, he is better than you, obviously. Don't believe me? Watch the Peter Thiel shrine that is HN downvote this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db4ad/google-bans-safegraph-former-saudi-intelligence https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db4ad/google-bans-safegraph...

lijogdfljk 5y ago

Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. Corporations have done nothing but repeatedly invade my privacy, exploit my data and attempt to squeeze money out of me at every turn. The relationship has seemed adversarial for quite a few years. So what should i expect from Apple here? It sort of feels like the alternative is for Apple to stand up to governments. To fight for the people.. But this seems super, super hopeful. A desperate plea founded in wishful thinking that corporations have any incentive aligned with ours. So what in your eyes is the right solution here? Apple letting us down here is par for the course here to me. But i also don't see an alternative where i'm not just blindly hoping some corporation will defend my freedoms for me. I've lost all trust in literally every other corporation.. honestly, should i have trusted Apple?

dwater 5y ago
> Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. They are sitting on ~$200B in cash. If they want to continue to be viewed as protecting users data and privacy, that is exactly what they should do. Spend some of that money in court, defending the privacy of their users. But they won't, and they will lose the thing that differentiates them for some subset of their users.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  Even $200B is minuscule when compared to the money that governments can spend to make this a requirement for everyone. People need to push back on the situation that led to Apple even thinking they needed to do something like this. We need to go against the root cause, not the solution one company came up with to try and fight against that cause.
Ensorceled 5y ago
> Honest question though - but what _should_ Apple do here? I'm moving away from Apple due to this decision so i'm no fan of it.. but i also don't think it's on some corporation to spend their money to defend my freedom. Honest question, were are you going that has less privacy issues than this?

smilespray 5y ago

I think the author, amongst others, speculates that Apple will announce E2E encryption of your iCloud data, such as backups, in the future. This is not an unreasonable speculation, nor does it imply support of the whole CSAM scheme. BTW: I've been an Apple fanboy since the mid-80s, but I find the whole concept of my phone suspecting me of child pornography appalling. It's the thin end of the wedge, and IMHO Apple have made a huge mistake.

headmelted 5y ago
“It’s the thin end of the wedge” This is the biggest worry. Apple essentially waved their hand in their FAQ and said something to the effect of they’d never do something like that. Yes you would. You’ll get called to congress and told in no uncertain terms what you’re expected to do, you’ll say no, the law will be changed, then the gentleman in a suit that people don’t say no to will call to your nice headquarters for you to walk him through his shiny new surveillance tools.
- avalys 5y ago
  Yes, Apple's defense is literally the "If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" line that is universally recognized as laughable.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    Not only that, when they suggest that morally they would or would not do something they’re either being dishonest (which to be fair I don’t think is the case) or genuinely naive as to the limits of their control here, even over their own products. Once the tool exists, they’ll add whatever features governments in major economies tell them to or they’ll be forced into adding them. All this said, I don’t blame Apple alone here and I have mixed feelings about it still - as I really do believe in their fight against CSAM. I just don’t think this is the magic solution to solving CSAM while preserving an innocent user’s right to privacy that they’re selling it as. I’m also certain there are engineers who worked on this system who also share these concerns.
- 5y ago

usefulcat 5y ago

> 'Apple ... can now say "see, we don't collect the data. We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you."' I don't know what Apple is thinking, but I doubt it's that, because people who care about being surveilled are very unlikely to be persuaded by that argument. (And obviously people who don't care much about being surveilled are unlikely to care very much whether such surveillance happens on device or in the cloud.)

5faulker 5y ago

Scary.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
Dystopian.

robertoandred 5y ago

> We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. No, we don't. Your refusal to understand how any of this actually works, your desperation to conflate this process with the worst hypotheticals, does more damage than Apple ever could.

cudgy 5y ago
Are you refusing to see how this opens Pandora’s box of surveillance on a device that many people store there most personal communications, memories, and other data?
- robertoandred 5y ago
  If everything is a Pandora’s box, then nothing is.

stetrain 5y ago

I think there are a lot of great arguments to be made against this system, and the road that it is going down. But I think your arguments would be improved by actually reading and understanding the current system Apple is proposing. Which, for example, does not include automatic reporting to authorities based only on a hash detection. At the end of the day this is mostly an issue of political and legal requirements. Apple is doing what they think they need to do to cover their bases as they wrestle with governments over things like E2E encryption policies.

Clubber 5y ago
Think of it this way. Ever see the movie where they put the neck shackles on people that blow up if they do something wrong? Running Man is an example. With local device scanning, I feel apple is putting a neck bomb on me, but promising they won't blow it up unless I do so and so. I can't take the neck bomb off and never should have let them put it on in the first place. My head is now at the mercy of Apple now and forever because it's locked on. Now Apple can change the terms of service, boom. Apple has a bug, boom. Why in the hell would I want this neck bomb on me?!
- stetrain 5y ago
  Sure. I'm not saying this is good. I'm saying there are a lot of kneejerk arguments being made that directly conflict with Apple's description of the system.
  - postoak 5y ago
    The problem is that you have to trust their description when the technology is a black box. And trust that it won't change in the future.
    - stetrain 5y ago
      Sure. But like I said the causes are mostly political and legal. A utopia of GPL-only mobile devices with no proprietary cloud service connections doesn't seem like a valid option. At least not for a large enough share of users to make a societal difference.

fluidcruft 5y ago

I can actually see it as something that encourages parents to have fewer qualms about giving their kids iPhones. I don't know how the thing works but if it makes it annoying for my kids to take/send nudes, then great. Edit: I guess at worst Apple's just sending a cryptographic hash of unencrypted data so that the known childporn can be flagged. It's basically like sending a hashdeep record of the data. It's an interesting concept with at lot of implications for tracing the spread of files within networks without knowing what they contain. Presumably if it was expanded to all files in cloud storage then LE could say something like "Give be a list of everyone that has object XDFAECXDZE" when LE knows that XDFAECXDZE is Catcher_in_the_Rye.pdf and Apple does not.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago
>I don't know how the thing works but if it makes it annoying for my kids to take/send nudes, then great. My understanding is that this only works for known abuse images and even then only if the files are identical. So apple has no way to know if high schoolers are sending nudes to each other.

Covzire 5y ago

I remember a decade ago that Freedom of Speech was a pretty common sentiment shared here and pretty much everywhere online. Today though, that freedom is no longer even prized over the rights of private mega corps, sometimes doing the bidding of the government. On one hand it's encouraging to read your take, but I have no faith that in another 10 years, the government scanning all our devices for "misinformation" that the then regime deems as such, will be anything but hand waved away by the majority of SV employees as "it's the law".

Digory 5y ago
“They’re just consequences for abusing your right to privacy,” they’ll eventually explain.

mightybyte 5y ago

Oh the irony... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

notJim 5y ago

> We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. Wait a second, but only if you're uploading photos to iCloud? They were presumably already doing this once you upload them, so what is the big difference? I have totally missed this detail in a lot of the coverage, and it changes my view of it.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
It's my understanding that they weren't actually checking photos on their servers against the CSAM database, which is why Apple's reporting of CSAM on their network has historically been orders of magnitude less than other companies -- Facebook last year reported ~20M, other companies reported tens or hundreds of thousands, and Apple reported, IIRC, 265. I'm aware the general sentiment here is "don't assume governments are putting pressure on Apple to step up their reporting, this is all on Apple bad bad bad bad bad," but sorry -- those numbers do indeed lead me to strongly suspect governments are putting pressure on Apple to step up their reporting. And I don't think Jason Snell (the author of the linked article, who probably knows more about Apple's world view and internal politics than almost anyone outside the executive team does) is wrong to theorize that Apple sees this CSAM-hash-detection system as a way to meet that pressure while protecting user privacy as much as possible, because they've convinced themselves that "protecting user privacy" means "do as much on device and as little in the cloud as possible". To be clear, I don't think this is a good idea -- letting the camel's nose in the tent through a different opening is still letting the camel's nose in the tent. The irony, though, is that I think Apple's inventively bad solution comes from the most canonically Silicon Valley mindset ever: all problems are engineering problems.
- notJim 5y ago
  Yeah it's kind of odd, because now law enforcement/the courts can say "well, you have the capability to scan content on device, you just choose not to in some cases", which would seem to open Apple up to being forced to do it in far more cases. I think we have to look at this through the lens of governments around the world attempting to ban E2E encryption. E2E encryption has both security and privacy benefits, and IMO most people are far more affected by the security benefits, given the frequency of data leaks/hacks. So maybe Apple is saying "let's preserve some of the E2E encryption benefits", but show it can be compatible with LEO demands. I think the unfortunate reality may be that that is the least bad option.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

>We now live in a world, where our personal computers come with "AI" that detects illegal use of those computers and automatically turns us in to the authorities. Nah. Everybody else will live in that world because they are addicted to convenience. Personally, I'll be scrapping my iPhone and buying something with free software.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago
For my edification, what are you going to buy? I want to look at it and if it fits my requirements for a device, I might get right in line behind you.
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  I don't know yet, I'm aware of the Librem 5 and Pinephone, the former being more attractive to me because of the isolated baseband modem. But let's be real, the user experience of these devices doesn't come close to an iPhone, so it will be a tough transition I reckon. But one I deem necessary.
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    I looked at the Pinephone and, user experience not coming close is an understatement. Looking at the table of OSes, it looks like getting it working would be like installing Linux on a laptop circa 2008. Librem 5 looks a bit better, but a 6mo lead time for a $900 phone with a 720p screen and n WiFi? I’m going to continue my search.

shuckles 5y ago

The proposal is the exact opposite of how you characterize it. > Apple just side-stepped the question on how to reconcile trust in propietary software and surveillance requests from the government. They actually inserted themselves into the process, not side-stepped it. They could’ve kept status quo (no scanning) and kept supplying iCloud Backups to governments at large rates. As part of this, they’re also forced to add a greatly increased human review function. > We don't even know what big brother wants to know about you. They’ve explicitly stated what they’re scanning for and went further to say they will not scan for other types of content. You may not believe them, but this is not a content-neutral or blind justification.

m3kw9 5y ago

Very well articulated, in a worse prose, it would be “you will have less and less privacy as you depend on more technology because the govt will want more and more power.”