The apple system is a dangerous surveillance apparatus at many levels. The fact that I pointed out one element was broken in a post doesn't mean that I don't c

The apple system is a dangerous surveillance apparatus at many levels. The fact that I pointed out one element was broken in a post doesn't mean that I don't consider others broken. My primary concern about its ethics has always been the breach of your devices obligation to act faithfully as your agent. My secondary concern was the use of strong cryptography to protect Apple and its sources from accountability. Unfortunately, the broken hash function means that even if they weren't using crypto to conceal the database, it wouldn't create accountability. Attacks on the hash-function are still relevant because: 1. the weak hash function allows state actors to denyably include non-child porn images in their database and even get non-cooperating states to include those hashes too. 2. The attack is lower risk for the attacker if they never need to handle unlawful images themselves. E.g. they make a bunch of porn images into matches, if they get caught with them they just point to the lawful origin of the images. While the victim won't know where they came from.