6 ms·

It's not like this is some new fancy technology no one could do before. There has never been any technical barriers to scanning your phone for insert-reason as

by omikun 5y ago

It's not like this is some new fancy technology no one could do before. There has never been any technical barriers to scanning your phone for insert-reason as part of the OS. The slippery slope argument could be made from the first smart phone. The government could always pressure any company to put a backdoor in any OS. Apple hasn't done this (to our knowledge) so far and this new CSAM scanning feature doesn't remove any non-existing barriers to that end. They just gave a talk at the USENIX Security Symposium on how this works and the safeguards put in place. The scanning functionality is part of the icloud photo upload module. Security researchers can determine if they change the scanning algorithm in future updates. I don't know what else you can hope for. Going back to the slipper slope argument, you could say nothing stops them (or Google on Android) from uploading your passcode and share it with X. It's all just software in the end that they write that powers the lock screen and security checks.

roenxi 5y ago
> Going back to the slipper slope argument, you could say nothing stops them (or Google on Android) from uploading your passcode and share it with X. It's all just software in the end that they write that powers the lock screen and security checks. If they start claiming they do that then I'll get angry about that too. You'll notice that only the fringe is accusing Apple of being liars or acting in bad faith here. Apple are pretty up front about what they do. The problem with this plan is they're claiming they are only going to do selective law enforcement (only 1 US law, only things that are strongly supported by consensus and even then only sometimes). That isn't a position with a reasonable foundation, they are going to change their mind. I want them to change it in the "we don't snoop on people's phones" direction rather than open season.
- jkaplowitz 5y ago
  A possible workaround - but not remotely one I expect them to do - is for them to amend their own terms of use to forbid themselves from expanding this feature without explicit opt-in consent, forbid themselves from making any expanded version mandatory to continue using the device with their software, contractually agree to liquidated damages in case of breach equal to three times the greater of original phone MSRP or actual purchase price plus included taxes/fees and inflation and interest and attorney/court fees, and remove their right to amend this provision without that same non-mandatory opt-in consent. Again, I don't expect them to do this. But they could add a useful level of trust if they were really motivated to do so.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Then they could just change their ToS when they wanted to add more.
    - jkaplowitz 5y ago
      Not true. If they had previously adopted my suggestion in the old ToS, that itself would either be a breach of that ToS (leading to liability for prohibitively large contractual damages) or would be an invalid change. I suggested that they explicitly remove their right to make this kind of change unilaterally. Terms of Service don't have to allow their authors an unfettered unilateral right of amendment.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        And what’s the recourse if a company breaks their own ToS? Also no company will give up any rights as they have no real way in knowing if the gov will come force more images to be added. What then?
        jkaplowitz 5y ago
        The main recourse in practice with the arrangement I described would be a class action lawsuit alleging on breach of contract. I'm quite sure courts would have no problem with the lawsuit, assuming there were no arbitration clause or class action waiver. As for no company giving up rights, I did say I didn't expect Apple to actually do this, only that they could. Though, companies do actually make binding contractual promises all the time. It's just that they don't tend to do it with consumers or small businesses who have no negotiating leverage and/or no desire to insist on those promises. Regarding your hypothetical, anything that's actually legally mandated by the government generally overrides contract law since the courts won't enforce illegal contracts and illegality is a defense to breach of contract. They can always do what the law actually requires. But we're not talking about the government mandating things, since both the iOS 14 behavior and the iOS 15 behavior comply with the law.
gameswithgo 5y ago
Quit talking down to people who don’t want Apple messing with their private party. Just accept that they have different opinions that you do.
JohnFen 5y ago
> I don't know what else you can hope for. I could hope for being able to trust that an intensely personal device such as a smartphone isn't something that I have to be constantly suspicious of. Admittedly, that ship sailed a long time ago, but I could still hope.
- onethought 5y ago
  That ship was never in port. Apple control the hardware and software and always have. You being able to trust them is a personal choice. It seems people are happy to trust companies that don’t talk about what they do with their data rather than the ones that do. Which, while understandable seems counter intuitive.
PixyMisa 5y ago
> I don't know what else you can hope for. You cannot be serious.
noduerme 5y ago
I keep hearing this argument and I don't understand it. The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives. I don't trust them, I know they don't do that - and we would know pretty quickly if they did. Now they're saying they will. Could they write and deploy something overnight that hoovered up everyone's data? Maybe on iOS, less so on OS X, but now they're going to ship with that capability. I don't understand how some people can't see the difference between "they could always push some nasty update," versus literally shipping hardware and software with a backdoor.
- mordnis 5y ago
  People do know the difference. The point of disagreement is in what you said firtst. You say that you know they don't currently ship with a backdoor, while others say you cannot possibly know that.
- brongondwana 5y ago
  > I keep hearing this argument and I don't understand it. The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives. I don't trust them, I know they don't do that - and we would know pretty quickly if they did. Do you know this for certain about any vendor? If a company the size of Apple were pushing the same update to everybody, then it would likely be known about by the world pretty quickly. But... if a targeted signed update is sent to a handful of selected devices, that's harder for the world to find out about. It's risky, but it's definitely technically possible.
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  > The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives But it would be very hard to spot new weights of the neural network and a new list of target hashes. These are pretty much guaranteed to change regularly as they retrain the embedding network and/or change the list of known target images. So it will be very hard if not impossible to see what they're searching for. That latest update could just add the ability to recognize CSAM pictures that had meme texts added to them. Or it could change the embeddings and target list to spot unlicensed posting of copyrighted still frames from movies. Or it could now retrieve any picture of people in police uniform. No way to know if you don't have a hunch and a targeted picture you want to test with.

by omikun 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

> Going back to the slipper slope argument, you could say nothing stops them (or Google on Android) from uploading your passcode and share it with X. It's all just software in the end that they write that powers the lock screen and security checks. If they start claiming they do that then I'll get angry about that too. You'll notice that only the fringe is accusing Apple of being liars or acting in bad faith here. Apple are pretty up front about what they do. The problem with this plan is they're claiming they are only going to do selective law enforcement (only 1 US law, only things that are strongly supported by consensus and even then only sometimes). That isn't a position with a reasonable foundation, they are going to change their mind. I want them to change it in the "we don't snoop on people's phones" direction rather than open season.

jkaplowitz 5y ago
A possible workaround - but not remotely one I expect them to do - is for them to amend their own terms of use to forbid themselves from expanding this feature without explicit opt-in consent, forbid themselves from making any expanded version mandatory to continue using the device with their software, contractually agree to liquidated damages in case of breach equal to three times the greater of original phone MSRP or actual purchase price plus included taxes/fees and inflation and interest and attorney/court fees, and remove their right to amend this provision without that same non-mandatory opt-in consent. Again, I don't expect them to do this. But they could add a useful level of trust if they were really motivated to do so.
- tekknik 5y ago
  Then they could just change their ToS when they wanted to add more.
  - jkaplowitz 5y ago
    Not true. If they had previously adopted my suggestion in the old ToS, that itself would either be a breach of that ToS (leading to liability for prohibitively large contractual damages) or would be an invalid change. I suggested that they explicitly remove their right to make this kind of change unilaterally. Terms of Service don't have to allow their authors an unfettered unilateral right of amendment.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      And what’s the recourse if a company breaks their own ToS? Also no company will give up any rights as they have no real way in knowing if the gov will come force more images to be added. What then?
      - jkaplowitz 5y ago
        The main recourse in practice with the arrangement I described would be a class action lawsuit alleging on breach of contract. I'm quite sure courts would have no problem with the lawsuit, assuming there were no arbitration clause or class action waiver. As for no company giving up rights, I did say I didn't expect Apple to actually do this, only that they could. Though, companies do actually make binding contractual promises all the time. It's just that they don't tend to do it with consumers or small businesses who have no negotiating leverage and/or no desire to insist on those promises. Regarding your hypothetical, anything that's actually legally mandated by the government generally overrides contract law since the courts won't enforce illegal contracts and illegality is a defense to breach of contract. They can always do what the law actually requires. But we're not talking about the government mandating things, since both the iOS 14 behavior and the iOS 15 behavior comply with the law.

gameswithgo 5y ago

Quit talking down to people who don’t want Apple messing with their private party. Just accept that they have different opinions that you do.

JohnFen 5y ago

> I don't know what else you can hope for. I could hope for being able to trust that an intensely personal device such as a smartphone isn't something that I have to be constantly suspicious of. Admittedly, that ship sailed a long time ago, but I could still hope.

onethought 5y ago
That ship was never in port. Apple control the hardware and software and always have. You being able to trust them is a personal choice. It seems people are happy to trust companies that don’t talk about what they do with their data rather than the ones that do. Which, while understandable seems counter intuitive.

PixyMisa 5y ago

> I don't know what else you can hope for. You cannot be serious.

noduerme 5y ago

I keep hearing this argument and I don't understand it. The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives. I don't trust them, I know they don't do that - and we would know pretty quickly if they did. Now they're saying they will. Could they write and deploy something overnight that hoovered up everyone's data? Maybe on iOS, less so on OS X, but now they're going to ship with that capability. I don't understand how some people can't see the difference between "they could always push some nasty update," versus literally shipping hardware and software with a backdoor.

mordnis 5y ago
People do know the difference. The point of disagreement is in what you said firtst. You say that you know they don't currently ship with a backdoor, while others say you cannot possibly know that.
brongondwana 5y ago
> I keep hearing this argument and I don't understand it. The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives. I don't trust them, I know they don't do that - and we would know pretty quickly if they did. Do you know this for certain about any vendor? If a company the size of Apple were pushing the same update to everybody, then it would likely be known about by the world pretty quickly. But... if a targeted signed update is sent to a handful of selected devices, that's harder for the world to find out about. It's risky, but it's definitely technically possible.
black_puppydog 5y ago
> The entire world would know within about 30 minutes if Apple ever pushed some malware update that did an end run around security and started grabbing files off people's hard drives But it would be very hard to spot new weights of the neural network and a new list of target hashes. These are pretty much guaranteed to change regularly as they retrain the embedding network and/or change the list of known target images. So it will be very hard if not impossible to see what they're searching for. That latest update could just add the ability to recognize CSAM pictures that had meme texts added to them. Or it could change the embeddings and target list to spot unlicensed posting of copyrighted still frames from movies. Or it could now retrieve any picture of people in police uniform. No way to know if you don't have a hunch and a targeted picture you want to test with.