5 ms·

Apple defends iPhone photo scanning, calls it an “advancement” in privacy

33 points by vanburen 5y ago

gentleman11 5y ago
This isn’t entirely a privacy issue. It’s mostly an issue of near future automated authoritarian censorship Being able to help regimes censor, and punish people for, content in the future will help apple financially in the long run. Better market access to those countries if you assist them with their suppression
- cyanydeez 5y ago
  we all know they only care about dcma 2.0 yall aint gonna be censored for being trumpian nut jobs, but if you sharing trump ip, you better pay up chub
notquitehuman 5y ago
My opinion of Apple falls pretty substantially with every new justification and explanation. They invented a fancy back door. Privacy-preserving software cannot trigger third party content review under any circumstances, no matter how vile. It cannot fail in a way that results in an arrest or legal expenses. If Apple won’t indemnify customers against false positives produced by this system, then it isn’t reliable enough for me to entrust them with my data.
- alwillis 5y ago
  They just revealed that the threshold is around 30 CSAM images that would result in Apple knowing anything about your device. And even then, humans at Apple do a review to see what’s happening; if it’s not CSAM, nothing else happens. It doesn’t seem that false positives are possible—either it’s CSAM from the database or it’s not. But even in the event of some unforeseen edge case, humans at Apple check things out before anything else can happen. But that would have to be quite the edge case to meet the threshold of around 30 possible CSAM images before Apple can know anything about a user.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    All of which is irrelevant to what I consider the largest problem with this scheme: that it's being done on-device instead of on the server. This is little different than putting surveillance equipment in people's homes to see what they're putting into boxes that are going to be be mailed, as opposed to examining the contents of the boxes at the post office. In either case, the surveillance itself is equally problematic, but in the case of doing it in your home, a dangerous precedent has been set that makes it easier to implement other, perhaps more questionable, home surveillance.
    - alwillis 5y ago
      All of which is irrelevant to what I consider the largest problem with this scheme: that it's being done on-device instead of on the server. There are components that run on the device and the server. One can't function without the other. That's why not using iCloud Photos disables the entire thing.
fsflover 5y ago
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168695
exabrial 5y ago
I love how when you "buy" a phone from Apple, they still consider it "theirs", as they frequently use the term "our platform" and "our systems".
- 2fast4you 5y ago
  They aren’t scanning images stored on the device. Only images stored in iCloud, right? In this case I think “our platform” and “our systems” are accurate descriptions
  - javagram 5y ago
    They are scanning the images stored on the device, IF the images are going to be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library. But the actual scanning happens on device. FWIW, I had assumed iCloud Photo Library images were already scanned since they are stored on Apple’s servers and are accessible to law enforcement with a warrant, as are iCloud backups. Apparently this was not the case. The only way for your data to be safe from authorities’ surveillance on iOS is to exclusively back up to iTunes on a local PC or Mac, and not use iCloud.
type0 5y ago
Apple to their users: the technology is so advanced so you don't even have to understand it /s How long before Apples will start putting digital "yellow dots" to documents so that we can catch those pesky whistleblowers
gremloni 5y ago
So I have a couple of years sticking with the current iOS version before I switch to another ecosystem I guess. It’s a shame, Apple did privacy mostly well and I love the ecosystem.
villgax 5y ago
I'd love to know what their plan is for false positives when someone maliciously AirDrops or auto downloads from a website images of "culpable" nature

33 points by vanburen 5y ago

This isn’t entirely a privacy issue. It’s mostly an issue of near future automated authoritarian censorship Being able to help regimes censor, and punish people for, content in the future will help apple financially in the long run. Better market access to those countries if you assist them with their suppression

cyanydeez 5y ago
we all know they only care about dcma 2.0 yall aint gonna be censored for being trumpian nut jobs, but if you sharing trump ip, you better pay up chub

notquitehuman 5y ago

My opinion of Apple falls pretty substantially with every new justification and explanation. They invented a fancy back door. Privacy-preserving software cannot trigger third party content review under any circumstances, no matter how vile. It cannot fail in a way that results in an arrest or legal expenses. If Apple won’t indemnify customers against false positives produced by this system, then it isn’t reliable enough for me to entrust them with my data.

alwillis 5y ago
They just revealed that the threshold is around 30 CSAM images that would result in Apple knowing anything about your device. And even then, humans at Apple do a review to see what’s happening; if it’s not CSAM, nothing else happens. It doesn’t seem that false positives are possible—either it’s CSAM from the database or it’s not. But even in the event of some unforeseen edge case, humans at Apple check things out before anything else can happen. But that would have to be quite the edge case to meet the threshold of around 30 possible CSAM images before Apple can know anything about a user.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  All of which is irrelevant to what I consider the largest problem with this scheme: that it's being done on-device instead of on the server. This is little different than putting surveillance equipment in people's homes to see what they're putting into boxes that are going to be be mailed, as opposed to examining the contents of the boxes at the post office. In either case, the surveillance itself is equally problematic, but in the case of doing it in your home, a dangerous precedent has been set that makes it easier to implement other, perhaps more questionable, home surveillance.
  - alwillis 5y ago
    All of which is irrelevant to what I consider the largest problem with this scheme: that it's being done on-device instead of on the server. There are components that run on the device and the server. One can't function without the other. That's why not using iCloud Photos disables the entire thing.

fsflover 5y ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168695

exabrial 5y ago

I love how when you "buy" a phone from Apple, they still consider it "theirs", as they frequently use the term "our platform" and "our systems".

2fast4you 5y ago
They aren’t scanning images stored on the device. Only images stored in iCloud, right? In this case I think “our platform” and “our systems” are accurate descriptions
- javagram 5y ago
  They are scanning the images stored on the device, IF the images are going to be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library. But the actual scanning happens on device. FWIW, I had assumed iCloud Photo Library images were already scanned since they are stored on Apple’s servers and are accessible to law enforcement with a warrant, as are iCloud backups. Apparently this was not the case. The only way for your data to be safe from authorities’ surveillance on iOS is to exclusively back up to iTunes on a local PC or Mac, and not use iCloud.

type0 5y ago

Apple to their users: the technology is so advanced so you don't even have to understand it /s How long before Apples will start putting digital "yellow dots" to documents so that we can catch those pesky whistleblowers

gremloni 5y ago

So I have a couple of years sticking with the current iOS version before I switch to another ecosystem I guess. It’s a shame, Apple did privacy mostly well and I love the ecosystem.

villgax 5y ago

I'd love to know what their plan is for false positives when someone maliciously AirDrops or auto downloads from a website images of "culpable" nature