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Google was not standing on a pedestal preaching privacy. In contrast Apple was trying to appear as the privacy conscious hardware/software vendor. To now implem

Google was not standing on a pedestal preaching privacy. In contrast Apple was trying to appear as the privacy conscious hardware/software vendor. To now implement such a blatantly obvious stepping stone to dragnet surveillance of actual devices is such a hypocritical move that it beggars belief. Ignoring the whataboutism in your question, we know that privacy once lost is practically impossible to get back. Once the genie is out of the bottle and Apple is doing on device scanning, what's to stop 3 letter agencies and governments around the world to start demanding ever more access? Because that's exactly what's going to happen. "Oh it's not a big deal, we just need slightly more access than we have now." 10 years down the line, we'd have people's phones datamining every piece of info they have and silently reporting to an unknowable set of entities. All in the name of fighting crime. There needs to be pushback on this crap. Every single one of these attempts must be met with absolute and unconditional refusal. Mere inaction means things will inevitably and invariably get worse over time.

UncleMeat 5y ago
It just seems to me that there are two very different conversations happening at the same time, with people swapping back and forth between them 1. There can be false positives or other mechanisms for innocent people to get flagged. 2. It is bad to do this sort of check on the local disk. The discussion at hand started as entirely #1. But now you've swapped to #2, talking about government spying on local files. It makes it very difficult to have a conversation because any pushback against arguments made for one point is assumed to be pushback against arguments made for the other point.
- stetrain 5y ago
  This exactly. I am mostly convinced based on the technical details that have (slowly) come out from Apple that they have made this system sufficiently inconvenient to use as a direct surveillance system by a malicious government. Yes a government could secretly order Apple to make changes to the system, but they could also order them to just give them all of your iCloud photos and backups, or send data directly from the Camera or Messages app, or any number of things that would be easier and more useful for the government. If you don't trust your government don't use a mobile device on a public cell network or store your data on servers. But all of that said there is a still a line being crossed on principle and precedent for scanning images locally on device and then reporting out when something "bad" is found. Apple thinks this is more private than just directly rifling through your photos in iCloud, but I can draw a line between what is on my device and what I send to Apple's servers and be comfortable with that.
  - short_sells_poo 5y ago
    Yes of course it is more private than outright scanning all photos but how does that relate to the ground state of private photos simply not being scanned at all? And please do not bring in whataboutist arguments like "but other cloud providers are already doing it". I'm honestly taken aback by how many people on HN are completely OK with what Apple is pulling here. In my mind, it's irrelevant that the current system is "sufficiently inconvenient to use as a dragnet surveillance system", because it's the first step towards one that is convenient to use and if we extrapolate all the other similar efforts, we know full well what is going to happen.
    - stetrain 5y ago
      I don't think "All user data on device and in the cloud is not scannable for CSAM or retrievable with a warrant" is a tenable position in the current US political landscape, and even less so in other countries. And my point is that if the government wanted a dragnet they could just legislate or secretly order one. Just like they have done in various forms over the last 20 years. And Apple might not even be allowed to tell us it is happening.
      - short_sells_poo 5y ago
        > "All user data on device and in the cloud is not scannable for CSAM or retrievable with a warrant" Who said anything about warrants? As far as I know the proposed system is proactive and requires no warrants at all. More to the point, anyone remotely sophisticated can just encrypt CSAM into a binary blob and plaster it all over the cloud providers servers. Ie, this system will possibly catch some small time perverts at the cost of even more potential of government misuse of the current technical landscape. I consider it a similar situation to governments trying to legislate backdoors into encryption. A remotely sophisticated baddie will just ignore the laws, and all it does is add risks for innocents. > And my point is that if the government wanted a dragnet they could just legislate or secretly order one. Just like they have done in various forms over the last 20 years. And Apple might not even be allowed to tell us it is happening. I don't understand how is this an argument against the pushback at all. So just because it could be worse, we should just throw our hands in the air and say "Oh it's all fine, it could be worse so the (so far) mild intrusion into privacy is nothing to worry about." The thing is, these things seem to happen step by step so the outrage is minimized. Insert your favorite "frog being boiled slowly" anecdote here. You don't push back on the mild stuff, and before you realize things have gotten so much worse.
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  I'd argue they are both important points that are tightly interconnected. #2 is bad on it's own and in my mind it shouldn't even get to the merits of discussing #1 because at that point the debate is already lost in favor of surveillance. But beyond that, #1 is highly problematic, doubly so given the fact that government surveillance is basically a non-decreasing function.
  - cyanite 5y ago
    I’d argue that #2 is good, since it offers much more privacy than scanning in the cloud. This is based on reading and understanding the technical summary and paper linked from there.

UncleMeat 5y ago

It just seems to me that there are two very different conversations happening at the same time, with people swapping back and forth between them 1. There can be false positives or other mechanisms for innocent people to get flagged. 2. It is bad to do this sort of check on the local disk. The discussion at hand started as entirely #1. But now you've swapped to #2, talking about government spying on local files. It makes it very difficult to have a conversation because any pushback against arguments made for one point is assumed to be pushback against arguments made for the other point.

stetrain 5y ago
This exactly. I am mostly convinced based on the technical details that have (slowly) come out from Apple that they have made this system sufficiently inconvenient to use as a direct surveillance system by a malicious government. Yes a government could secretly order Apple to make changes to the system, but they could also order them to just give them all of your iCloud photos and backups, or send data directly from the Camera or Messages app, or any number of things that would be easier and more useful for the government. If you don't trust your government don't use a mobile device on a public cell network or store your data on servers. But all of that said there is a still a line being crossed on principle and precedent for scanning images locally on device and then reporting out when something "bad" is found. Apple thinks this is more private than just directly rifling through your photos in iCloud, but I can draw a line between what is on my device and what I send to Apple's servers and be comfortable with that.
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  Yes of course it is more private than outright scanning all photos but how does that relate to the ground state of private photos simply not being scanned at all? And please do not bring in whataboutist arguments like "but other cloud providers are already doing it". I'm honestly taken aback by how many people on HN are completely OK with what Apple is pulling here. In my mind, it's irrelevant that the current system is "sufficiently inconvenient to use as a dragnet surveillance system", because it's the first step towards one that is convenient to use and if we extrapolate all the other similar efforts, we know full well what is going to happen.
  - stetrain 5y ago
    I don't think "All user data on device and in the cloud is not scannable for CSAM or retrievable with a warrant" is a tenable position in the current US political landscape, and even less so in other countries. And my point is that if the government wanted a dragnet they could just legislate or secretly order one. Just like they have done in various forms over the last 20 years. And Apple might not even be allowed to tell us it is happening.
    - short_sells_poo 5y ago
      > "All user data on device and in the cloud is not scannable for CSAM or retrievable with a warrant" Who said anything about warrants? As far as I know the proposed system is proactive and requires no warrants at all. More to the point, anyone remotely sophisticated can just encrypt CSAM into a binary blob and plaster it all over the cloud providers servers. Ie, this system will possibly catch some small time perverts at the cost of even more potential of government misuse of the current technical landscape. I consider it a similar situation to governments trying to legislate backdoors into encryption. A remotely sophisticated baddie will just ignore the laws, and all it does is add risks for innocents. > And my point is that if the government wanted a dragnet they could just legislate or secretly order one. Just like they have done in various forms over the last 20 years. And Apple might not even be allowed to tell us it is happening. I don't understand how is this an argument against the pushback at all. So just because it could be worse, we should just throw our hands in the air and say "Oh it's all fine, it could be worse so the (so far) mild intrusion into privacy is nothing to worry about." The thing is, these things seem to happen step by step so the outrage is minimized. Insert your favorite "frog being boiled slowly" anecdote here. You don't push back on the mild stuff, and before you realize things have gotten so much worse.
short_sells_poo 5y ago
I'd argue they are both important points that are tightly interconnected. #2 is bad on it's own and in my mind it shouldn't even get to the merits of discussing #1 because at that point the debate is already lost in favor of surveillance. But beyond that, #1 is highly problematic, doubly so given the fact that government surveillance is basically a non-decreasing function.
- cyanite 5y ago
  I’d argue that #2 is good, since it offers much more privacy than scanning in the cloud. This is based on reading and understanding the technical summary and paper linked from there.