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What did the EFF lie about? Missed that…

shuckles 5y ago
2/3rds of their original letter was spent describing a parental control over sensitive content detection in iMessage as an end to end encryption back door. At best, that is highly cynical. At worst, it is an intentional conflation of different features to raise false alarm.
- dannyobrien 5y ago
  It's not cynical at all. It's what EFF has been warning about since 2019 and before. (Disclosure: I worked at EFF during this period. We were extremely concerned about the potential role of client-side scanners and the concerted push being made at that time by the intelligence community to present this as a "solution" to end-to-end encryption's privacy features.) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/why-adding-client-side-scanning-breaks-end-end-encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/why-adding-client-side... It's also the consensus position of a very large number of other digital rights groups and infosec experts. Do you believe they are also cynical and raising a false alarm?
  - shuckles 5y ago
    Your link and most of the concern is about known CSAM detection announced for iCloud Photo Library, yet, again, 2/3rds of the original letter was about iMessage. Point me to the expert consensus that the parental control features announced were a threat to end to end encryption. The iMessage feature is a parental control feature where kids over 13 receiving on-device classified sensitive images have to click through to unblur them, and kids under 13 will do the same and also have their parents receive a notification that such an action was taken. The parent in any case does not receive a copy of the image. The EFF described it as such: “Whatever Apple Calls It, It’s No Longer Secure Messaging” and “Apple is planning to build a backdoor into…its messaging system.” The Center for Democracy and Technology who wrote this letter they have co-signed said: “Plan to replace its industry-standard encrypted messaging system creates new risks in US and globally” I, respectfully, don’t see much evidence that these are consensus views. Furthermore, I don’t see how you can characterize this feature as a back door without believing safe browsing checks on links received in iMessage is an encryption back door.

2/3rds of their original letter was spent describing a parental control over sensitive content detection in iMessage as an end to end encryption back door. At best, that is highly cynical. At worst, it is an intentional conflation of different features to raise false alarm.

dannyobrien 5y ago
It's not cynical at all. It's what EFF has been warning about since 2019 and before. (Disclosure: I worked at EFF during this period. We were extremely concerned about the potential role of client-side scanners and the concerted push being made at that time by the intelligence community to present this as a "solution" to end-to-end encryption's privacy features.) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/why-adding-client-side-scanning-breaks-end-end-encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/why-adding-client-side... It's also the consensus position of a very large number of other digital rights groups and infosec experts. Do you believe they are also cynical and raising a false alarm?
- shuckles 5y ago
  Your link and most of the concern is about known CSAM detection announced for iCloud Photo Library, yet, again, 2/3rds of the original letter was about iMessage. Point me to the expert consensus that the parental control features announced were a threat to end to end encryption. The iMessage feature is a parental control feature where kids over 13 receiving on-device classified sensitive images have to click through to unblur them, and kids under 13 will do the same and also have their parents receive a notification that such an action was taken. The parent in any case does not receive a copy of the image. The EFF described it as such: “Whatever Apple Calls It, It’s No Longer Secure Messaging” and “Apple is planning to build a backdoor into…its messaging system.” The Center for Democracy and Technology who wrote this letter they have co-signed said: “Plan to replace its industry-standard encrypted messaging system creates new risks in US and globally” I, respectfully, don’t see much evidence that these are consensus views. Furthermore, I don’t see how you can characterize this feature as a back door without believing safe browsing checks on links received in iMessage is an encryption back door.