4 ms·

With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?

chrischen 5y ago
Potentially something like a national security letter and they can’t reveal the real reason behind it. I agree this feature is off-brand for Apple and came out of the blue.
- vmception 5y ago
  Maybe this is the warrant canary Lets push that idea so allies in the government can go looking and void it
- underseacables 5y ago
  What would happen if Apple reveal the national security letter? What’s the government going to do, arrest Tim Cook?
- silasdavis 5y ago
  Is that consistent with the amount of time this feature took to implement?
Overton-Window 5y ago
Their handlers have them on a tight leash.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  This sounds like a conspiracy theory unless you provide more explanations with some evidence. For example, who are these handlers? What are their motives? The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The simplest explanation would be some director in Apple wants to get promoted to VP so he or she started this project, pitched it, and very few people opposed it because who wouldn't to prevent harm of children?
floatingatoll 5y ago
They're convinced that it's worth the benefit to abused children to let the tech community vent fears about the world at them for a while. I don't really blame them. My views don't align with the mob here, so it would be a waste of my time to discuss them while y'all are upset and angry about this; best just to hold my position, remain silent or reserved, and wait for the pitchfork mob to find another target or exhaust itself. I'm honestly surprised Apple even commented at all.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  > I'm honestly surprised Apple even commented at all. I think they commented because they expected a brief storm of outrage that quickly dies down, but instead it has become a growing wave that is spilling into mainstream media, with a mostly negative reaction, and threatening to completely destroy their "Privacy. That's iPhone" mantra that has been the core of their marketing campaign this year.
klipklop 5y ago
Because this is likely not about making money, it's about expanding surveillance. Once this becomes accepted they can ratchet it up bit-by-bit. Each the the outrage will be less and less. For example imagine creating a new tax for 1% of purchases. People would be outraged. Now imagine raising sales tax instead by 1% (ex 7% to 8%.) Sure some people would be upset, but it would be a smaller number than the "new" tax. The reason is because people are already used to paying a sales tax. What is "normal" is more easily accepted. If Apple can get past the initial outrage (like when sales tax was implemented in many countries in history) they can increase the surveillance once scanning local files becomes the "new normal".
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  The reason Apple actually cares about the feature though is probably to maintain sales in China (which will require this kind of surveillance soon).
  - approxim8ion 5y ago
    I love how people will jump through hoops to land on China even when discussing something that was conceptualized and first (only, as of now) implemented in the US.
- adventured 5y ago
  You can't have a massive new fake war - the War on Domestic Terorrism - without ideally having new ways to track and surveil anyone (everyone) that is going against the machine politically. They need new capabilities and they're absolutely going to put them into place, asap. Did you see their reaction to the populist Trump circus? The globalists viewed it as a mortal threat. Everything they built since WW2 was in jeopardy as far as they were concerned. Their ability to launch more forever wars, endless foreign adventurism, obsessive (psychotic) superpower global meddling, all of it under threat from rising populism (represented by both Trump and Sanders) and a growing rejection of the entirely failed decades-long approach by the globalists that has led to the US being buried under nearly $30 trillion in debt and numerous catastrophic wars. Just look at what these monsters are saying publicly on MSNBC, CNN, et al. They're telling everybody what they're planning to do, they're putting it right out there. Look at their framing: we're going to target the domestic population; they're de facto saying that. They couldn't be more open about the authoritarian nightmare they have in mind. They perceive their system as being under risk from populist revolt against them and their agenda, and they're launching a counter offensive (the empire is striking back), it's under way right now. Bet on it. It's quite simple: the culture of bureaucrats that have dominated Washington DC and its policies in the post WW2 era, they acquired a position of power the likes of which has rarely been seen in all of human history. Now, ask yourself: do you really think they're ready to give that power up? They're ready to stop treating the rest of the planet like it's their toy, to do with as they please. Then ask yourself: what do you think they're prepared to do to stave off risks to that power? The risk that they might lose their precious. And there you go, you have your answer. They're willing to do many of the same things other authoritarians have been willing to do. The US isn't Soviet Russia, that's not the suggestion; it doesn't need to be to start putting political opponents (fringe rabble rousers; whether libertarian or socialist - see: Clinton vs Sanders; that's globalist establishment vs domestic socialist) into prison and surveiling everyone in a desperate attempt to retain their power. That kind of power is an intense drug, they're addicts of the worst kind, you can tell by how they behave in regards to the rest of the world, how they treat the rest of the world. To ensure they keep their power, to keep their globalist forever war machine (and everything that goes with it), they need to put the boot on rising domestic risks to that power.
cf499 5y ago
Maybe they're telling you to run.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
They put themselves into a position where backing out is also extremely costly. a) it means they have to publicly admit that what they did was a bad idea, which will fuel another news cycle b) backing out of it will get them criticized for "protecting pedophiles", maybe even the NCMEC (who privately praised them in the "screeching voices of the minority" memo) will now publicly criticize and shame them to get what it wants c) now that they've put this idea on the table, there will be even more government pressure to mandate/implement it. Even if they back out of the implementation, just by bringing this proposal up, Apple may have just destroyed not just the privacy of their users, but of everyone.
CommieBobDole 5y ago
The thing that strikes me as most suspicious is their insistence on keeping the client-side scanning feature while wrapping it in all sorts of supposed restrictions so it's essentially server-side scanning, just implemented on the client device for some reason. If the problem is "We need to scan stuff on iCloud for CSAM" then "Let's build a client-side scanning agent and distribute it to hundreds of millions of devices and figure out a way to protect the hashes from the end user and then figure out a way to lock it down so it can't be used to scan other things even if we wanted to or somebody ordered us to" is a singularly (and suspiciously) inelegant solution to the problem. Just scan the files on your own servers, like everybody else does. Anything else is rightly going to make people suspicious that you've got some ulterior motive.
- zepto 5y ago
  I assume their goal is to turn on E2E for what gets stored on their servers. Right now, they have to hand over anyone’s photo library if they are ordered to do so. If they turn on E2E that will no longer be possible, and this will be strictly better and harder to abuse. That doesn’t mean this mechanism isn’t offensive. It just is better from a privacy point of view for them to do this and enable E2E.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Notice how they haven't done that though. It would be trivial to do. Just change all of the private keys to ones supplied by the clients. But they haven't done that. Why would you expect them to do that when they are taking steps away from individual privacy? Leaving a hypothetical option on the table that costs them nothing to do means they actively do not want to do it. So why would they do it?
    - zepto 5y ago
      They haven’t shipped this yet.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  It’s quite simple, they would like to store photos without being able to see them, only knowing they’re not CP. If they scan on server, they need to be able to see all photos, and eventually give them to any requesting authority. So the reasonable approach is to make clients that only upload photos that are not CP. The problem is that the implementation of that feels creepier than they anticipated.

Potentially something like a national security letter and they can’t reveal the real reason behind it. I agree this feature is off-brand for Apple and came out of the blue.

vmception 5y ago
Maybe this is the warrant canary Lets push that idea so allies in the government can go looking and void it
underseacables 5y ago
What would happen if Apple reveal the national security letter? What’s the government going to do, arrest Tim Cook?
silasdavis 5y ago
Is that consistent with the amount of time this feature took to implement?

Overton-Window 5y ago

Their handlers have them on a tight leash.

asteroidbelt 5y ago
This sounds like a conspiracy theory unless you provide more explanations with some evidence. For example, who are these handlers? What are their motives? The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The simplest explanation would be some director in Apple wants to get promoted to VP so he or she started this project, pitched it, and very few people opposed it because who wouldn't to prevent harm of children?

floatingatoll 5y ago

They're convinced that it's worth the benefit to abused children to let the tech community vent fears about the world at them for a while. I don't really blame them. My views don't align with the mob here, so it would be a waste of my time to discuss them while y'all are upset and angry about this; best just to hold my position, remain silent or reserved, and wait for the pitchfork mob to find another target or exhaust itself. I'm honestly surprised Apple even commented at all.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> I'm honestly surprised Apple even commented at all. I think they commented because they expected a brief storm of outrage that quickly dies down, but instead it has become a growing wave that is spilling into mainstream media, with a mostly negative reaction, and threatening to completely destroy their "Privacy. That's iPhone" mantra that has been the core of their marketing campaign this year.

klipklop 5y ago

Because this is likely not about making money, it's about expanding surveillance. Once this becomes accepted they can ratchet it up bit-by-bit. Each the the outrage will be less and less. For example imagine creating a new tax for 1% of purchases. People would be outraged. Now imagine raising sales tax instead by 1% (ex 7% to 8%.) Sure some people would be upset, but it would be a smaller number than the "new" tax. The reason is because people are already used to paying a sales tax. What is "normal" is more easily accepted. If Apple can get past the initial outrage (like when sales tax was implemented in many countries in history) they can increase the surveillance once scanning local files becomes the "new normal".

bpodgursky 5y ago
The reason Apple actually cares about the feature though is probably to maintain sales in China (which will require this kind of surveillance soon).
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  I love how people will jump through hoops to land on China even when discussing something that was conceptualized and first (only, as of now) implemented in the US.
adventured 5y ago
You can't have a massive new fake war - the War on Domestic Terorrism - without ideally having new ways to track and surveil anyone (everyone) that is going against the machine politically. They need new capabilities and they're absolutely going to put them into place, asap. Did you see their reaction to the populist Trump circus? The globalists viewed it as a mortal threat. Everything they built since WW2 was in jeopardy as far as they were concerned. Their ability to launch more forever wars, endless foreign adventurism, obsessive (psychotic) superpower global meddling, all of it under threat from rising populism (represented by both Trump and Sanders) and a growing rejection of the entirely failed decades-long approach by the globalists that has led to the US being buried under nearly $30 trillion in debt and numerous catastrophic wars. Just look at what these monsters are saying publicly on MSNBC, CNN, et al. They're telling everybody what they're planning to do, they're putting it right out there. Look at their framing: we're going to target the domestic population; they're de facto saying that. They couldn't be more open about the authoritarian nightmare they have in mind. They perceive their system as being under risk from populist revolt against them and their agenda, and they're launching a counter offensive (the empire is striking back), it's under way right now. Bet on it. It's quite simple: the culture of bureaucrats that have dominated Washington DC and its policies in the post WW2 era, they acquired a position of power the likes of which has rarely been seen in all of human history. Now, ask yourself: do you really think they're ready to give that power up? They're ready to stop treating the rest of the planet like it's their toy, to do with as they please. Then ask yourself: what do you think they're prepared to do to stave off risks to that power? The risk that they might lose their precious. And there you go, you have your answer. They're willing to do many of the same things other authoritarians have been willing to do. The US isn't Soviet Russia, that's not the suggestion; it doesn't need to be to start putting political opponents (fringe rabble rousers; whether libertarian or socialist - see: Clinton vs Sanders; that's globalist establishment vs domestic socialist) into prison and surveiling everyone in a desperate attempt to retain their power. That kind of power is an intense drug, they're addicts of the worst kind, you can tell by how they behave in regards to the rest of the world, how they treat the rest of the world. To ensure they keep their power, to keep their globalist forever war machine (and everything that goes with it), they need to put the boot on rising domestic risks to that power.

cf499 5y ago

Maybe they're telling you to run.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

They put themselves into a position where backing out is also extremely costly. a) it means they have to publicly admit that what they did was a bad idea, which will fuel another news cycle b) backing out of it will get them criticized for "protecting pedophiles", maybe even the NCMEC (who privately praised them in the "screeching voices of the minority" memo) will now publicly criticize and shame them to get what it wants c) now that they've put this idea on the table, there will be even more government pressure to mandate/implement it. Even if they back out of the implementation, just by bringing this proposal up, Apple may have just destroyed not just the privacy of their users, but of everyone.

CommieBobDole 5y ago

The thing that strikes me as most suspicious is their insistence on keeping the client-side scanning feature while wrapping it in all sorts of supposed restrictions so it's essentially server-side scanning, just implemented on the client device for some reason. If the problem is "We need to scan stuff on iCloud for CSAM" then "Let's build a client-side scanning agent and distribute it to hundreds of millions of devices and figure out a way to protect the hashes from the end user and then figure out a way to lock it down so it can't be used to scan other things even if we wanted to or somebody ordered us to" is a singularly (and suspiciously) inelegant solution to the problem. Just scan the files on your own servers, like everybody else does. Anything else is rightly going to make people suspicious that you've got some ulterior motive.

zepto 5y ago
I assume their goal is to turn on E2E for what gets stored on their servers. Right now, they have to hand over anyone’s photo library if they are ordered to do so. If they turn on E2E that will no longer be possible, and this will be strictly better and harder to abuse. That doesn’t mean this mechanism isn’t offensive. It just is better from a privacy point of view for them to do this and enable E2E.
- willis936 5y ago
  Notice how they haven't done that though. It would be trivial to do. Just change all of the private keys to ones supplied by the clients. But they haven't done that. Why would you expect them to do that when they are taking steps away from individual privacy? Leaving a hypothetical option on the table that costs them nothing to do means they actively do not want to do it. So why would they do it?
  - zepto 5y ago
    They haven’t shipped this yet.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
It’s quite simple, they would like to store photos without being able to see them, only knowing they’re not CP. If they scan on server, they need to be able to see all photos, and eventually give them to any requesting authority. So the reasonable approach is to make clients that only upload photos that are not CP. The problem is that the implementation of that feels creepier than they anticipated.