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They aren’t currently scanning their servers though.

• Klonoar 5y ago
  I'd really like clarification on this from Apple, considering we know from warrants - if nothing else - that they have been doing this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/11/how-apple-intercepts-and-reads-emails-when-it-finds-child-abuse/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/11/how-a... Do they mean they haven't been doing it for iCloud Photos, but were arbitrarily doing it for other parts of iCloud?
  • zepto 5y ago
    That’s a fair question. The idea that they aren’t scanning already comes from the fact that they make very few reports compared to Google or Facebook. Literally a few hundred vs 10s of millions. If they were already scanning, you’d expect more reports since although there is no legal requirement to scan, there is a legal requirement to report detections.
    • shuckles 5y ago
      They have explicitly said they don’t scan iCloud photos in their interview with Tech Crunch.
      • zepto 5y ago
        Thanks. I didn’t know they had said so explicitly. That is helpful extra context.
  • notJim 5y ago
    > Do they mean they haven't been doing it for iCloud Photos, but were arbitrarily doing it for other parts of iCloud? I read elsewhere they they scanned Mail but not Photos.
• acdha 5y ago
  How do we know that, though? They're secretive enough that it's hard to tell — they certainly aren't reporting high numbers to NCMEC's tipline, although it's possible that some of that might be the difference between human-reviewed and aggregated reports versus other companies having a fully-automated process making one report per image or something like that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't using other channels. Which, again, really hits the need for disclosure — so much of the response to this announcement has been heavily shaped by both that secrecy and just springing it on the world without much prior public recognition of this issue.
  • notJim 5y ago
    > How do we know that, though? At some level, if you're uploading files to their servers, you have to trust them. And to a lesser extent if you're using their proprietary software (although you can monitor network traffic and so on.) > Which, again, really hits the need for disclosure Isn't that what they did?
    • acdha 5y ago
      I think there was a misunderstanding: I wasn't saying that you don't have to trust them to use their cloud services but rather that it would be a surprise to me if they were _not_ already scanning iCloud Photos (i.e. is this a change from “scanned after upload” to “scanned before upload” or from “not scanned” to “scanned”?). I've always assumed that they do scan your hosted files, just like Dropbox, Google, etc. do.
      • notJim 5y ago
        In the interview, Craig discusses this. They did not previously scan iCloud photos because they consider it too invasive. They consider this less invasive, because Apple does not look at the content of your photo, except on the device. So the change was from "not scanned" to "scanned before upload on device".
  • shuckles 5y ago
    They said so in an interview with Tech Crunch. The other articles confused iCloud Mail with iCloud Photo Library.