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What I mean, that surveillance system is trivial to implement. (What the most are using as argument in here) This system is genius in terms of maintaining the

by nicce 5y ago

What I mean, that surveillance system is trivial to implement. (What the most are using as argument in here) This system is genius in terms of maintaining the user privacy and locking Apple out of your files. That is something that most refuse to see. They have invested a lot.

nullc 5y ago
I disagree. E2E encryption of files is widely implemented. Apple is years late to the game. Apple's innovation here isn't privacy, it is to compromise privacy while simultaneously shielding themselves and their data sources from accountability at the expense of even more privacy and risk of abuse. If the objective was maintaining the user's privacy they could use industry standard end to end encryption. If the objective was to offer somewhat more privacy than nothing while still acting as a vigilante crime fighter, they could make the user's software use a cleartext hash database and report the user when there are matches, and otherwise use industry standard end to end cryptography. Only when you add the requirement that the vigilante crime fighting must occur behind a mask-- that it must be cryptographiclally impossible to hold apple and its sources to account for the content of the database do you actually arrive at the need for substantial new investment. Yes, anyone can implement surveillance. Apple's innovation is kleptography. A surveillance infrastructure (somewhat) successfully disguised as privacy protecting cryptography.
- nicce 5y ago
  The core problem is in the politics and they handle it as engineering problem. Of course the perfect solution in terms of privacy E2EE is the best solution. It is impossible to predict the future perfectly, but what if the most valuable company in the world applies full E2EE services? Governments control companies with regulations, and even before this, there is a lot of talk about compromising E2EE with government access. In Germany, they just passed the law in June to do exactly this. > compromise privacy while simultaneously shielding themselves and their data sources from accountability at the expense of even more privacy and risk of abuse. It is true that they shield themselves at the same time, but as the alternative is not to encrypt at all, this is not compromise of privacy. It is a step towards more "E2EE like" data, and does not worse the situation of consumer. > If the objective was to offer somewhat more privacy than nothing while still acting as a vigilante crime fighter, they could make the user's software use a cleartext hash database and report the user when there are matches It is impossible to verify the validity of the report in such a scenario, and they have no legal base to act. This is the scenario which would bring the FBI behind your door with adversarial hash collisions, because they can't validate anything.
  - nullc 5y ago
    > It is impossible to verify the validity of the report in such a scenario Sorry I was unclear, I mean in that case it would send them a cleartext copy of the file, and if it doesn't match (otherwise) just do the standard end to end thing. It would still violate the user's privacy, but it's a simple, cheap to implement, and relatively transparent system (e.g. we could test the database against the internet to discover if they're misreporting popular images) which would continue to allow Apple to cosplay as Batman. I don't think it's good. I believe users devices have an unambiguous moral obligation to act in the user's best interest to the extent provided by the law unless directed otherwise by the user. I believe we should consider enshrining the moral obligation in the law. Unfortunately, unethical actors have moved the overton window so far over that rather than getting a device agency law we'll have to fight laws mandating backdoored encryption like Apple's. I bring up the alternative to point it out that the fancy crypto in this new system isn't there to protect the user, as the parent poster was suggesting. The fancy crypto is a mask that helps shield Apple from accountability for their vigilante actions. Even if you take for granted that Apple gets to play crime fighter there are simpler and more transparent alternatives.

by nicce 5y ago

nullc 5y ago

I disagree. E2E encryption of files is widely implemented. Apple is years late to the game. Apple's innovation here isn't privacy, it is to compromise privacy while simultaneously shielding themselves and their data sources from accountability at the expense of even more privacy and risk of abuse. If the objective was maintaining the user's privacy they could use industry standard end to end encryption. If the objective was to offer somewhat more privacy than nothing while still acting as a vigilante crime fighter, they could make the user's software use a cleartext hash database and report the user when there are matches, and otherwise use industry standard end to end cryptography. Only when you add the requirement that the vigilante crime fighting must occur behind a mask-- that it must be cryptographiclally impossible to hold apple and its sources to account for the content of the database do you actually arrive at the need for substantial new investment. Yes, anyone can implement surveillance. Apple's innovation is kleptography. A surveillance infrastructure (somewhat) successfully disguised as privacy protecting cryptography.

nicce 5y ago
The core problem is in the politics and they handle it as engineering problem. Of course the perfect solution in terms of privacy E2EE is the best solution. It is impossible to predict the future perfectly, but what if the most valuable company in the world applies full E2EE services? Governments control companies with regulations, and even before this, there is a lot of talk about compromising E2EE with government access. In Germany, they just passed the law in June to do exactly this. > compromise privacy while simultaneously shielding themselves and their data sources from accountability at the expense of even more privacy and risk of abuse. It is true that they shield themselves at the same time, but as the alternative is not to encrypt at all, this is not compromise of privacy. It is a step towards more "E2EE like" data, and does not worse the situation of consumer. > If the objective was to offer somewhat more privacy than nothing while still acting as a vigilante crime fighter, they could make the user's software use a cleartext hash database and report the user when there are matches It is impossible to verify the validity of the report in such a scenario, and they have no legal base to act. This is the scenario which would bring the FBI behind your door with adversarial hash collisions, because they can't validate anything.
- nullc 5y ago
  > It is impossible to verify the validity of the report in such a scenario Sorry I was unclear, I mean in that case it would send them a cleartext copy of the file, and if it doesn't match (otherwise) just do the standard end to end thing. It would still violate the user's privacy, but it's a simple, cheap to implement, and relatively transparent system (e.g. we could test the database against the internet to discover if they're misreporting popular images) which would continue to allow Apple to cosplay as Batman. I don't think it's good. I believe users devices have an unambiguous moral obligation to act in the user's best interest to the extent provided by the law unless directed otherwise by the user. I believe we should consider enshrining the moral obligation in the law. Unfortunately, unethical actors have moved the overton window so far over that rather than getting a device agency law we'll have to fight laws mandating backdoored encryption like Apple's. I bring up the alternative to point it out that the fancy crypto in this new system isn't there to protect the user, as the parent poster was suggesting. The fancy crypto is a mask that helps shield Apple from accountability for their vigilante actions. Even if you take for granted that Apple gets to play crime fighter there are simpler and more transparent alternatives.