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I wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually are confused. Consider from Apple's perspective. They were being criticized for allowing CSAM to be uploaded to

by notJim 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually are confused. Consider from Apple's perspective. They were being criticized for allowing CSAM to be uploaded to iCloud, since they don't scan for it. They see two options: * Start scanning all images uploaded to iCloud * Start scanning on-device, but only photos that are to be uploaded, and only alerting after some threshold is reached No matter what HN says, for them, not scanning is not an option. If you look at it this way, maybe the latter option looks better than the former?

BoorishBears 5y ago
Can I know why not scanning is not an option? What happens, DoJ fines Apple? Police walk into Apple HQ and arrest Tim Cook? Not speaking rhetorically here to be clear, I'm actually curious why it's not an option.
- notJim 5y ago
  Note that I said "for them". In other words, from their PoV. This is an assumption on my part. Of course you can disagree. Apple has been criticized for lax enforcement of anti-CSAM policies. Facebook and Google reported more CSAM images than Apple does, because Apple didn't previously scan iCloud images.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    Well I guess what I'm asking is why you think it's not an option then. Is criticism they didn't have as many CSAM matches per year why? Because I don't believe it was nearly as strong as the criticism this garnered. In fact at this point it's fairly clear they could roll back the change and get more kudos than criticism
    - notJim 5y ago
      Personally, I would not want to be the major cloud photo provider who is most friendly to hosting CSAM. For me that would be reason enough. As a company, there is also PR risk, and risk that laws will be passed requiring enforcement. This could be a way to get ahead of those laws. But it's really wild to me that people on HN would be so comfortable hosting CSAM on their servers.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Let's pretend you didn't just do that... you're talking about PR risk, but here we're seeing that risk blow up into a full blown scandal on the other side. Apple already was the most friendly hoster to CSAM, and the bad PR from it was quantifiable and minimal compared to the current PR they're getting. This isn't a new thing, encryption helps bad guys too. The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be.
        notJim 5y ago
        > This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Fair enough, I could have phrased this more carefully. But my point stands, so I'll rephrase it. To put it more carefully, people here are saying they would prefer the tradeoff of hosting CSAM compared against the tradeoff of the privacy implications of scanning users photos when they're uploaded to iCloud. I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. > The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be. iCloud photos are not E2E encrypted [1]. iCloud photos allows you to share photo albums with others and publicly. This is the reason I feel strongly about this, because if you don't scan for CSAM, iCloud will be used to distributed it. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        I'm not saying iCloud Photos is using end-to-end encryption. I'm saying that the same arguments you're making against their at rest encryption scheme apply to all E2EE communication The idea being we already went through the "think of the kids" moment for that and now iMessage for example doesn't come up as being a defender of illegal content (at least not as often) - And your refined point isn't much better. You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. It's like saying people who are against banning matches are pro-forest fires. It doesn't pass a sniff test.

by notJim 5y ago

BoorishBears 5y ago

Can I know why not scanning is not an option? What happens, DoJ fines Apple? Police walk into Apple HQ and arrest Tim Cook? Not speaking rhetorically here to be clear, I'm actually curious why it's not an option.

notJim 5y ago
Note that I said "for them". In other words, from their PoV. This is an assumption on my part. Of course you can disagree. Apple has been criticized for lax enforcement of anti-CSAM policies. Facebook and Google reported more CSAM images than Apple does, because Apple didn't previously scan iCloud images.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Well I guess what I'm asking is why you think it's not an option then. Is criticism they didn't have as many CSAM matches per year why? Because I don't believe it was nearly as strong as the criticism this garnered. In fact at this point it's fairly clear they could roll back the change and get more kudos than criticism
  - notJim 5y ago
    Personally, I would not want to be the major cloud photo provider who is most friendly to hosting CSAM. For me that would be reason enough. As a company, there is also PR risk, and risk that laws will be passed requiring enforcement. This could be a way to get ahead of those laws. But it's really wild to me that people on HN would be so comfortable hosting CSAM on their servers.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Let's pretend you didn't just do that... you're talking about PR risk, but here we're seeing that risk blow up into a full blown scandal on the other side. Apple already was the most friendly hoster to CSAM, and the bad PR from it was quantifiable and minimal compared to the current PR they're getting. This isn't a new thing, encryption helps bad guys too. The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be.
      - notJim 5y ago
        > This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Fair enough, I could have phrased this more carefully. But my point stands, so I'll rephrase it. To put it more carefully, people here are saying they would prefer the tradeoff of hosting CSAM compared against the tradeoff of the privacy implications of scanning users photos when they're uploaded to iCloud. I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. > The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be. iCloud photos are not E2E encrypted [1]. iCloud photos allows you to share photo albums with others and publicly. This is the reason I feel strongly about this, because if you don't scan for CSAM, iCloud will be used to distributed it. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        I'm not saying iCloud Photos is using end-to-end encryption. I'm saying that the same arguments you're making against their at rest encryption scheme apply to all E2EE communication The idea being we already went through the "think of the kids" moment for that and now iMessage for example doesn't come up as being a defender of illegal content (at least not as often) - And your refined point isn't much better. You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. It's like saying people who are against banning matches are pro-forest fires. It doesn't pass a sniff test.