4 ms·

I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. Every single other company is riding a post-covid tidal wave of sales. as WFH becomes a reality f

I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. Every single other company is riding a post-covid tidal wave of sales. as WFH becomes a reality for so many workers, apple products are positioned to really take center stage for a massive segment of consumers... and then this. Apple intentionally injects uncertainty and controversy? what were they thinking?? sure its just phones right now but im sure mac users are wondering about workstations and laptops? the damage control being spun right now is absolutely overwhelming. im also surprised to see no other players like MS or Google rushing to take advantage of the outrage. even players like Purism seem to be ignoring the event.

lethologica 5y ago
How much of an impact do you think this will have on the non tech savvy user though? Most people already don't care about ad tracking, location tracking, etc. I think your standard user will just shrug this off and go "eh, I have nothing to hide and it's good for the kids"
- hypothesis 5y ago
  I don’t like that I have to resort to this, but I was going to mention Proles and point to Wikipedia, except that Wikipedia deleted article about that topic. Yet I can see article’s blurb in search engine’s cache! Everything is a meta nowadays… [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four...
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  "Apple is scanning every image you upload" will certainly have a measurable effect on non-tech users, even if the details are more nuanced.
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    I won’t be surprised if there’s a class action launched soon.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Which is stupid because it’s also true for all other major cloud providers.
drvdevd 5y ago
Yep there sure is something fishy about this whole thing. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...
samename 5y ago
It will come to the Mac eventually though, right? Macs can upload photos to iCloud.
- nieve 5y ago
  Sooner or later the copyright enforcement companies will find a judge whose willing to rule that since Apple has the capability they have to use it even though this system is aimed at still images only, no sound or video. Then Apple will end up fighting it for years if they're lucky and it doesn't get a quick trip up to Supreme Court that's drastically Hollywood-friendly. The legal difference between mandating that a company create a brand new scanning capability and "just apply" one they already have is significant.
  - eulenteufel 5y ago
    Apple doesn't have that capabilty though. There are countless ways to get copyrighted material on your phone that are perfectly legal. Apple would have to be able to decide if you're legally owning your files. With how the IP system works currently that's impossible. For CSAM this isn't a problem because we assume that there is no legitimate way to have CSAM files on your phone.
    - speleding 5y ago
      > we assume that there is no legitimate way to have CSAM files on your phone WhatsApp has "Save pictures to camera roll" on by default. Someone can send you a bunch of CSAM via WhatsApp and now you are in trouble.
      - modernerd 5y ago
        Or take a photo of CSAM on display on another device or printout using your iPhone camera, which is often accessible from the lock screen without a PIN.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> even players like Purism seem to be ignoring the event. Purism addressed it yesterday[1]. Here's the HN thread[2]. [1] https://puri.sm/posts/internet-of-snitches/ https://puri.sm/posts/internet-of-snitches/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158939
patmcc 5y ago
>>I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. I suspect, with no inside knowledge, that there's someone high up in Apple who feels very, very passionately about child abuse/these sorts of images due to some personal connection, and they are championing the idea internally. And tbh not the worst bugbear to have, but obviously this isn't the way to address it. As for why the big players aren't jumping on this - it's a tricky line to walk, you don't ever want to be seen as pro child abuse.
- bnj 5y ago
  Having read the coverage and the documents that Apple has been putting out to manage the … what, crisis? Backlash? … I’ve been thinking about the design of the system and how I would want CSAM to be detected, if different than this. Honestly, I’m pretty impressed by what this approach accomplishes. Your comment says this obviously isn’t the way to do it— what’s better than this? In a legal context where detecting CSAM is a strong requirement, what’s preferable to this approach?
  - patmcc 5y ago
    >>>In a legal context where detecting CSAM is a strong requirement, what’s preferable to this approach? It's not a strong requirement though? Only if the company sees it (unencrypted) do they need to report it, detecting it on-device is wholly different. It would honestly be better if they adjusted their TOS and started scanning the files on upload (on server side). They have the encryption keys already. Apple is planning to install on all (recent) iPhones software that will let them scan for any image similar (using perceptual hashing) to some set of images. Right now, that's CSAM, and only on upload to iCloud. But what do you want to bet China is salivating at the idea of including images of Tank Man and other "seditious" content? And maybe checking images anytime they're added to the phone, or sent to someone else, not just up to iCloud? It completely ruins the idea that Apple has your privacy/security in mind.
    - nonbirithm 5y ago
      Even if scanning for the content is not explicitly required by law, what happens when a pedophile ring hoarding thousands of images of CSAM on iCloud is busted, and the news gets out? The article at [1] makes it sound like Apple choosing not to scan any of its users' videos in iCloud was seen as evidence of Apple lagging behind the status quo of companies like Facebook that were proactively reporting CSAM. According to that article, in the last year Apple only submitted 265 reports to the NCEMC while Facebook submitted 20 million. Would law enforcement believe they'd be missing out on catching abusers after seeing this disparity? If a company is found to allow criminals to store CSAM on their servers for extended periods of time, the law is going to want to know why they let it pass, irrespective of the extent the company chose to scan for it. Apple probably doesn't want to deal with that fallout, so maybe they figured that being proactive about scanning for CSAM in a way that could enable the use of E2EE wouldn't hurt, and that pushing the privacy narrative would satisfy enough people - which it didn't. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-...
cyanydeez 5y ago
normalize security for children and then get paid to dmca 2.0 ip owners content.

lethologica 5y ago

How much of an impact do you think this will have on the non tech savvy user though? Most people already don't care about ad tracking, location tracking, etc. I think your standard user will just shrug this off and go "eh, I have nothing to hide and it's good for the kids"

hypothesis 5y ago
I don’t like that I have to resort to this, but I was going to mention Proles and point to Wikipedia, except that Wikipedia deleted article about that topic. Yet I can see article’s blurb in search engine’s cache! Everything is a meta nowadays… [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four...
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
"Apple is scanning every image you upload" will certainly have a measurable effect on non-tech users, even if the details are more nuanced.
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  I won’t be surprised if there’s a class action launched soon.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Which is stupid because it’s also true for all other major cloud providers.

drvdevd 5y ago

Yep there sure is something fishy about this whole thing. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

samename 5y ago

It will come to the Mac eventually though, right? Macs can upload photos to iCloud.

nieve 5y ago
Sooner or later the copyright enforcement companies will find a judge whose willing to rule that since Apple has the capability they have to use it even though this system is aimed at still images only, no sound or video. Then Apple will end up fighting it for years if they're lucky and it doesn't get a quick trip up to Supreme Court that's drastically Hollywood-friendly. The legal difference between mandating that a company create a brand new scanning capability and "just apply" one they already have is significant.
- eulenteufel 5y ago
  Apple doesn't have that capabilty though. There are countless ways to get copyrighted material on your phone that are perfectly legal. Apple would have to be able to decide if you're legally owning your files. With how the IP system works currently that's impossible. For CSAM this isn't a problem because we assume that there is no legitimate way to have CSAM files on your phone.
  - speleding 5y ago
    > we assume that there is no legitimate way to have CSAM files on your phone WhatsApp has "Save pictures to camera roll" on by default. Someone can send you a bunch of CSAM via WhatsApp and now you are in trouble.
    - modernerd 5y ago
      Or take a photo of CSAM on display on another device or printout using your iPhone camera, which is often accessible from the lock screen without a PIN.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> even players like Purism seem to be ignoring the event. Purism addressed it yesterday[1]. Here's the HN thread[2]. [1] https://puri.sm/posts/internet-of-snitches/ https://puri.sm/posts/internet-of-snitches/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158939

patmcc 5y ago

>>I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. I suspect, with no inside knowledge, that there's someone high up in Apple who feels very, very passionately about child abuse/these sorts of images due to some personal connection, and they are championing the idea internally. And tbh not the worst bugbear to have, but obviously this isn't the way to address it. As for why the big players aren't jumping on this - it's a tricky line to walk, you don't ever want to be seen as pro child abuse.

bnj 5y ago
Having read the coverage and the documents that Apple has been putting out to manage the … what, crisis? Backlash? … I’ve been thinking about the design of the system and how I would want CSAM to be detected, if different than this. Honestly, I’m pretty impressed by what this approach accomplishes. Your comment says this obviously isn’t the way to do it— what’s better than this? In a legal context where detecting CSAM is a strong requirement, what’s preferable to this approach?
- patmcc 5y ago
  >>>In a legal context where detecting CSAM is a strong requirement, what’s preferable to this approach? It's not a strong requirement though? Only if the company sees it (unencrypted) do they need to report it, detecting it on-device is wholly different. It would honestly be better if they adjusted their TOS and started scanning the files on upload (on server side). They have the encryption keys already. Apple is planning to install on all (recent) iPhones software that will let them scan for any image similar (using perceptual hashing) to some set of images. Right now, that's CSAM, and only on upload to iCloud. But what do you want to bet China is salivating at the idea of including images of Tank Man and other "seditious" content? And maybe checking images anytime they're added to the phone, or sent to someone else, not just up to iCloud? It completely ruins the idea that Apple has your privacy/security in mind.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    Even if scanning for the content is not explicitly required by law, what happens when a pedophile ring hoarding thousands of images of CSAM on iCloud is busted, and the news gets out? The article at [1] makes it sound like Apple choosing not to scan any of its users' videos in iCloud was seen as evidence of Apple lagging behind the status quo of companies like Facebook that were proactively reporting CSAM. According to that article, in the last year Apple only submitted 265 reports to the NCEMC while Facebook submitted 20 million. Would law enforcement believe they'd be missing out on catching abusers after seeing this disparity? If a company is found to allow criminals to store CSAM on their servers for extended periods of time, the law is going to want to know why they let it pass, irrespective of the extent the company chose to scan for it. Apple probably doesn't want to deal with that fallout, so maybe they figured that being proactive about scanning for CSAM in a way that could enable the use of E2EE wouldn't hurt, and that pushing the privacy narrative would satisfy enough people - which it didn't. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-...

cyanydeez 5y ago

normalize security for children and then get paid to dmca 2.0 ip owners content.