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A key point that needs to be mentioned: we strongly dislike being distrusted. It might well be a genetic heritage. Being trusted in a tribe is crucial to surv

by zepto 5y ago

A key point that needs to be mentioned: we strongly dislike being distrusted. It might well be a genetic heritage. Being trusted in a tribe is crucial to survival, and so is likely wired deep into our social psychology. Apple is making a mistake by ignoring that. This isn’t about people not trusting Apple. It’s about people not feeling trusted by Apple. Because of this, it doesn’t matter how trustworthy the system is or what they do to make it less abusable. It will still represent distrust of the end user, and people will still feel that in their bones. People argue about the App Store and not being trusted to install their own Apps etc. That isn’t the same. We all know we are fallible and a lot of people like the protection of the store, and having someone to ‘look after’ them. This is different and deeper than that. Nobody want to be a suspect for something they know they aren’t doing. It feels dirty.

shuckles 5y ago
But the catch is: all the incumbents already treated your data as if you were guilty until proven innocent. Apple’s transparency about that change may have led people to internalize that, but it’s been the de facto terms of most cloud relationships. What I personally don’t understand is why Apple didn’t come out with a different message: we’ve made your iPhone so secure that we’ll let it vouch for your behalf when it sends us data to store. We don’t want to see the data, and we won’t see any of it unless we find that lots of the photos you send us are fishy. Android could never contemplate this because they can’t trust the OS to send vouchers for the same photos it uploads, so instead they snoop on everything you send them. It seems like a much more win-win framing that emphasizes their strengths.
- zepto 5y ago
  I agree this is vastly better than what anyone else is doing, and you know I understand the technology. However, I don’t think any framing would have improved things. I think it was always going to feel wrong. I would prefer they don’t do this because it feels bad to be a suspect even in this abstract and in-practice harmless way. Having said that, having heard from people who have investigated how bad pedophile activity actually is, I can imagine being easily persuaded back in the other direction. I think thins is about the logic of evolutionary psychology, not the logic of cryptography. My guess is that between now and the October iPhone release we are going to see more media about the extent of the problem they are trying to solve. That is how Apple wins this.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    > Having said that, having heard from people who have investigated how bad pedophile activity actually is, I can imagine being easily persuaded back in the other direction. There are terrible things out there that we should seek to solve. They should not be solved by creating 1984 in the literal sense, and certainly not by the company that became famous for an advertisement based on that book [1]. Apple, take your own advice and Think Different [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik
    - zepto 5y ago
      > creating 1984 in the literal sense I take it you haven’t read 1984. When Craig Federighi straps a cage full of starving rats to my face, I’ll concede this point.
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        China has tiger chairs. Should we move closer to their big brother systems?
        zepto 5y ago
        No but this has nothing to do with that. In case you missed it, I think this is probably a bad move. I just don’t think these arguments about back doors and creeping totalitarianism are either accurate or likely to persuade everyday users when they weigh them up against the grotesque nature of child exploitation.
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > I just don’t think these arguments about back doors and creeping totalitarianism are either accurate or likely to persuade everyday users when they weigh them up against the grotesque nature of child exploitation. Agree to disagree. This opens the door to something much worse in my opinion.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > What I personally don’t understand is why Apple didn’t come out with a different message: we’ve made your iPhone so secure that we’ll let it vouch for your behalf when it sends us data to store. We don’t want to see the data, and we won’t see any of it unless we find that lots of the photos you send us are fishy. That is PR speak that would have landed worse in tech forums. I respect them more for not doing this. The core issue is this performs scans, without your approval, on your local device. Viruses already do that and it's something techies have always feared governments might impose. That private companies are apparently being strong-armed into doing it is concerning because it means the government is trying to circumvent the process of public discussion that is typically facilitated by proposing legislation.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > without your approval This isn’t true. You can always turn off iCloud Photo Library and just store the photos locally or use a different cloud provider.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      Let's not pretend anyone is really "opting in" on this feature.
      - zepto 5y ago
        Anyone who doesn’t like it can switch off iCloud Photo Library. I can imagine many people doing that in response to this news.
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        The fact that you can opt out for now does not set me at ease.
        zepto 5y ago
        Nor me. I will not opt out because I think there is no threat to me and I like iCloud photos. That doesn’t mean I like the presence of this mechanism.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
The part Federighi's "interview" where he can't understand how people perceive this as a back door [1] seems incredibly out of touch. The back door is what everyone is talking about. Someone at Apple should at least be able to put themselves in their critics' shoes for a moment. I guess we need to wait to hear Tim Cook explain how this is not what he described 5 years ago [2]. [1] https://youtu.be/OQUO1DSwYN0?t=425 https://youtu.be/OQUO1DSwYN0?t=425 [2] https://youtu.be/rQebmygKq7A?t=57 https://youtu.be/rQebmygKq7A?t=57
- zepto 5y ago
  It’s not a back door in any sense of the word. That’s why he is surprised people see it as one. It really only does what they say it does, and it really is hard to abuse. But that doesn’t matter. The point is that even so, it makes everyone into a suspect, and that feels wrong.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    > It’s not a back door in any sense of the word. It is. It's a simple matter for two foreign governments to decide they don't want their people to criticize the head of state with memes, and then insert such images into the database Apple uses for scanning. Apple's previous position on privacy was to make such snooping impossible because they don't have access to the data. Now they are handing over access. What I and thousands of others online are describing ought to be understandable by anyone at Apple. The fact that an Apple exec can sit there in a prepared interview and look perplexed about how people could see this as a back door is something I don't understand at all. This "closing his ears" attitude may indicate he is full of it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - zepto 5y ago
      Edit: I reconsidered my previous reply. That really doesn’t sound like anything I’d describe as a “back door”. A back door implies general purpose access. A system which required the collision of multiple governments and Apple and their child abuse agencies simply is not that. One of the casualties of this debate is that people are using terms that make things sound worse than they are. If you can’t get at my filesystem, you don’t have a back door. I understand the motive for stating the case as harshly as possible, but I think it’s misguided. Having said this, I would find it interesting to hear what Federighi would say about this potential abuse case.
tzs 5y ago
That's not at all clear. A lot of people like strong border controls for instance, even if it means when they return to their country from abroad they have to go through more checks or present more documents to get in. Or consider large gated communities where you have to be checked by a guard to get in. Many peoples seem fine with being distrusted as long as the distrust is part of a mechanism to weed out those who they feel really are not trustworthy and it is not too annoying for them to prove that they are not one of those people when they encounter a trust check.
- zepto 5y ago
  Your examples are not a good analogy. The distrust is transient and then you are cleared. This is a stare of permanently being a suspect. However, it may certainly be the case that in the end people in general do accept this as a price worth paying to fight pedophiles.

by zepto 5y ago

shuckles 5y ago

But the catch is: all the incumbents already treated your data as if you were guilty until proven innocent. Apple’s transparency about that change may have led people to internalize that, but it’s been the de facto terms of most cloud relationships. What I personally don’t understand is why Apple didn’t come out with a different message: we’ve made your iPhone so secure that we’ll let it vouch for your behalf when it sends us data to store. We don’t want to see the data, and we won’t see any of it unless we find that lots of the photos you send us are fishy. Android could never contemplate this because they can’t trust the OS to send vouchers for the same photos it uploads, so instead they snoop on everything you send them. It seems like a much more win-win framing that emphasizes their strengths.

zepto 5y ago
I agree this is vastly better than what anyone else is doing, and you know I understand the technology. However, I don’t think any framing would have improved things. I think it was always going to feel wrong. I would prefer they don’t do this because it feels bad to be a suspect even in this abstract and in-practice harmless way. Having said that, having heard from people who have investigated how bad pedophile activity actually is, I can imagine being easily persuaded back in the other direction. I think thins is about the logic of evolutionary psychology, not the logic of cryptography. My guess is that between now and the October iPhone release we are going to see more media about the extent of the problem they are trying to solve. That is how Apple wins this.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > Having said that, having heard from people who have investigated how bad pedophile activity actually is, I can imagine being easily persuaded back in the other direction. There are terrible things out there that we should seek to solve. They should not be solved by creating 1984 in the literal sense, and certainly not by the company that became famous for an advertisement based on that book [1]. Apple, take your own advice and Think Different [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik
  - zepto 5y ago
    > creating 1984 in the literal sense I take it you haven’t read 1984. When Craig Federighi straps a cage full of starving rats to my face, I’ll concede this point.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      China has tiger chairs. Should we move closer to their big brother systems?
      - zepto 5y ago
        No but this has nothing to do with that. In case you missed it, I think this is probably a bad move. I just don’t think these arguments about back doors and creeping totalitarianism are either accurate or likely to persuade everyday users when they weigh them up against the grotesque nature of child exploitation.
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > I just don’t think these arguments about back doors and creeping totalitarianism are either accurate or likely to persuade everyday users when they weigh them up against the grotesque nature of child exploitation. Agree to disagree. This opens the door to something much worse in my opinion.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
> What I personally don’t understand is why Apple didn’t come out with a different message: we’ve made your iPhone so secure that we’ll let it vouch for your behalf when it sends us data to store. We don’t want to see the data, and we won’t see any of it unless we find that lots of the photos you send us are fishy. That is PR speak that would have landed worse in tech forums. I respect them more for not doing this. The core issue is this performs scans, without your approval, on your local device. Viruses already do that and it's something techies have always feared governments might impose. That private companies are apparently being strong-armed into doing it is concerning because it means the government is trying to circumvent the process of public discussion that is typically facilitated by proposing legislation.
- zepto 5y ago
  > without your approval This isn’t true. You can always turn off iCloud Photo Library and just store the photos locally or use a different cloud provider.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    Let's not pretend anyone is really "opting in" on this feature.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Anyone who doesn’t like it can switch off iCloud Photo Library. I can imagine many people doing that in response to this news.
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        The fact that you can opt out for now does not set me at ease.
        zepto 5y ago
        Nor me. I will not opt out because I think there is no threat to me and I like iCloud photos. That doesn’t mean I like the presence of this mechanism.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

The part Federighi's "interview" where he can't understand how people perceive this as a back door [1] seems incredibly out of touch. The back door is what everyone is talking about. Someone at Apple should at least be able to put themselves in their critics' shoes for a moment. I guess we need to wait to hear Tim Cook explain how this is not what he described 5 years ago [2]. [1] https://youtu.be/OQUO1DSwYN0?t=425 https://youtu.be/OQUO1DSwYN0?t=425 [2] https://youtu.be/rQebmygKq7A?t=57 https://youtu.be/rQebmygKq7A?t=57

zepto 5y ago
It’s not a back door in any sense of the word. That’s why he is surprised people see it as one. It really only does what they say it does, and it really is hard to abuse. But that doesn’t matter. The point is that even so, it makes everyone into a suspect, and that feels wrong.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > It’s not a back door in any sense of the word. It is. It's a simple matter for two foreign governments to decide they don't want their people to criticize the head of state with memes, and then insert such images into the database Apple uses for scanning. Apple's previous position on privacy was to make such snooping impossible because they don't have access to the data. Now they are handing over access. What I and thousands of others online are describing ought to be understandable by anyone at Apple. The fact that an Apple exec can sit there in a prepared interview and look perplexed about how people could see this as a back door is something I don't understand at all. This "closing his ears" attitude may indicate he is full of it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zepto 5y ago
    Edit: I reconsidered my previous reply. That really doesn’t sound like anything I’d describe as a “back door”. A back door implies general purpose access. A system which required the collision of multiple governments and Apple and their child abuse agencies simply is not that. One of the casualties of this debate is that people are using terms that make things sound worse than they are. If you can’t get at my filesystem, you don’t have a back door. I understand the motive for stating the case as harshly as possible, but I think it’s misguided. Having said this, I would find it interesting to hear what Federighi would say about this potential abuse case.

tzs 5y ago

That's not at all clear. A lot of people like strong border controls for instance, even if it means when they return to their country from abroad they have to go through more checks or present more documents to get in. Or consider large gated communities where you have to be checked by a guard to get in. Many peoples seem fine with being distrusted as long as the distrust is part of a mechanism to weed out those who they feel really are not trustworthy and it is not too annoying for them to prove that they are not one of those people when they encounter a trust check.

zepto 5y ago
Your examples are not a good analogy. The distrust is transient and then you are cleared. This is a stare of permanently being a suspect. However, it may certainly be the case that in the end people in general do accept this as a price worth paying to fight pedophiles.