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Surely they could do their image matching against all photos in iCloud without telling you in advance, and then you'd be in exactly the same boat? Google was do

Surely they could do their image matching against all photos in iCloud without telling you in advance, and then you'd be in exactly the same boat? Google was doing this for email as early as 2014, for instance, with the same concerns about its extensibility raised by the ACLU: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/04/google-child-abuse-ncmec-internet-watch-gmail https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/04/google-ch... So in a world where Apple pushes you to set up icloud photos by default, and can do whatever they want there, and other platforms have been doing this sort of of thing for years, it's a bit startling that "on device before you upload" vs "on uploaded content" triggers far more discontent? Maybe it's that Apple announced it at all, vs doing it relatively silently like the others? Apple has always had access to every photo on your device, after all.

pseudalopex 5y ago
It isn't startling people trust they can opt out of iCloud photos.
- kemayo 5y ago
  If you trust that you can opt out of iCloud Photos to avoid server-side scanning, trusting that this on-device scanning only happens as part of the iCloud Photos upload process (with the only way it submits the reports being as metadata attached to the photo-upload, as far as I can tell) seems equivalent. There's certainly a slippery-slope argument, where some future update might change that scanning behavior. But the system-as-currently-presented seems similarly trustable.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    I trust Apple doesn't upload everyone's photos despite opting out because it would be hard to hide.
    - kemayo 5y ago
      I bet it'd take a while. The initial sync for someone with a large library is big, but just turning on upload for new pictures is only a few megabytes a day. Depending on how many pictures you take, of course. And if you're caught, an anodyne "a bug in iCloud Photo sync was causing increased data usage" statement and note in the next iOS patch notes would have you covered. And that's assuming they weren't actively hiding anything by e.g. splitting them up into chunks that could be slipped into legitimate traffic with Apple's servers.

pseudalopex 5y ago

It isn't startling people trust they can opt out of iCloud photos.

kemayo 5y ago
If you trust that you can opt out of iCloud Photos to avoid server-side scanning, trusting that this on-device scanning only happens as part of the iCloud Photos upload process (with the only way it submits the reports being as metadata attached to the photo-upload, as far as I can tell) seems equivalent. There's certainly a slippery-slope argument, where some future update might change that scanning behavior. But the system-as-currently-presented seems similarly trustable.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  I trust Apple doesn't upload everyone's photos despite opting out because it would be hard to hide.
  - kemayo 5y ago
    I bet it'd take a while. The initial sync for someone with a large library is big, but just turning on upload for new pictures is only a few megabytes a day. Depending on how many pictures you take, of course. And if you're caught, an anodyne "a bug in iCloud Photo sync was causing increased data usage" statement and note in the next iOS patch notes would have you covered. And that's assuming they weren't actively hiding anything by e.g. splitting them up into chunks that could be slipped into legitimate traffic with Apple's servers.