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In years previous, take the San Bernadino shooter for instance, Apple argued in the court of law that creating backdoors or reversible encryption was insecure a

In years previous, take the San Bernadino shooter for instance, Apple argued in the court of law that creating backdoors or reversible encryption was insecure and also subject to exploits by malicious actors, and thus not reasonable and was "unreasonably burdensome". As well, they made the argument that compelling them to do write back doors also violated the first amendment. It was most likely a winning strategy that the FBI actively avoided getting rulings on and found a workaround. What apple is creating here is an avenue for the FBI/NSA/Alphabet agency to create a FISA warrant and NDL to mandate hits on anything. The argument its gotta be pre-icloud upload or subject to manual review or on some arbitrary threshold is something is just the marketing to get the public to accept it. All of that can easily be ordered to be bypassed. So it can be a scan, single hit for x, report. Ill take the downvotes, but if anything, someone more conspiracy minded could easily take this as a warrant canary. Given the backlash apple ahs faced and ignored, it doesnt make much good business sense for them not to back off unless they are A) betting on it being a vocal minority to resorts to action (which is entirely possible, especially given the alternatives and technical hurdles to get to a suitable alternative) B) Being pressured by governments now. (also entirely possible given their history with the FBI and previous investigations). [1] https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/apple-and-the-san-bernardino-terror-attack https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/apple-and-the-san-b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute#Apple's_opposition_to_the_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

nicce 5y ago
> What apple is creating here is an avenue for the FBI/NSA/Alphabet agency to create a FISA warrant and NDL to mandate hits on anything. The argument its gotta be pre-icloud upload or subject to manual review or on some arbitrary threshold is something is just the marketing to get the public to accept it. Why would they make things even more complicated with limited access, since they can already access everything in cloud? Let’s leave out the argument for expanding scan to whole device. If that is what happens, then people start really discarding their phones.
- klipklop 5y ago
  Well for one scanning on-device lets them expand the amount of stuff they search for without an impact on their servers. We can all assume they will eventually start scanning for more things than just photos only before they are sent to iCloud. It can easily and _silently_ be expanded to be any file on the phone.
  - nicce 5y ago
    You can do silently every imaginable thing right now. iOS is not exactly open-source system.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      Except that right now thy don't have a plausible reason to be scanning things, and any indication of something like that happening without prior expectation would be an even bigger deal than this is. Setting the expectation that this is acceptable is how you hide overstepping and abuse. Just because my neighbor physically can run out and physically attack me every time he sees me exit my house isn't a valid defense of him running out and verbally abusing and threatening me every time I leave, not is it a valid excuse not to worry about it escalating to that.
      - nicce 5y ago
        We were talking about silent things here. So there is no prior expectation for them? Silently expanding scan for every file for example would count still overstepping similar way for the most of the people. Because that is abuse, and usually there is zero tolerance. Apple has avoided marks of the abuse in the past pretty well. But anyway, Photos spotlight, Files app or Siri are already scanning you files and getting metadata. Metadata is even stored to iCloud to be able to keep sync process working. There are excuses if you want to make them.
      - iamtedd 5y ago
        > Except that right now thy don't have a plausible reason to be scanning things, and any indication of something like that happening without prior expectation would be an even bigger deal than this is. Setting the expectation that this is acceptable is how you hide overstepping and abuse. How do we know Apple isn't doing this right now? How do we know if and when they do? Are people keeping track of everything the phone sends back to Apple's servers? Is it even possible any more? Considering Apple doesn't let you have full access to the device, the phone could do anything, encrypt the message and send it. The only way I know would be by monitoring the traffic off-device on the network all the time, which means only while on Wifi. And that wouldn't give you content, only metadata, as by then it's encrypted and you don't have the key.

nicce 5y ago

> What apple is creating here is an avenue for the FBI/NSA/Alphabet agency to create a FISA warrant and NDL to mandate hits on anything. The argument its gotta be pre-icloud upload or subject to manual review or on some arbitrary threshold is something is just the marketing to get the public to accept it. Why would they make things even more complicated with limited access, since they can already access everything in cloud? Let’s leave out the argument for expanding scan to whole device. If that is what happens, then people start really discarding their phones.

klipklop 5y ago
Well for one scanning on-device lets them expand the amount of stuff they search for without an impact on their servers. We can all assume they will eventually start scanning for more things than just photos only before they are sent to iCloud. It can easily and _silently_ be expanded to be any file on the phone.
- nicce 5y ago
  You can do silently every imaginable thing right now. iOS is not exactly open-source system.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Except that right now thy don't have a plausible reason to be scanning things, and any indication of something like that happening without prior expectation would be an even bigger deal than this is. Setting the expectation that this is acceptable is how you hide overstepping and abuse. Just because my neighbor physically can run out and physically attack me every time he sees me exit my house isn't a valid defense of him running out and verbally abusing and threatening me every time I leave, not is it a valid excuse not to worry about it escalating to that.
    - nicce 5y ago
      We were talking about silent things here. So there is no prior expectation for them? Silently expanding scan for every file for example would count still overstepping similar way for the most of the people. Because that is abuse, and usually there is zero tolerance. Apple has avoided marks of the abuse in the past pretty well. But anyway, Photos spotlight, Files app or Siri are already scanning you files and getting metadata. Metadata is even stored to iCloud to be able to keep sync process working. There are excuses if you want to make them.
    - iamtedd 5y ago
      > Except that right now thy don't have a plausible reason to be scanning things, and any indication of something like that happening without prior expectation would be an even bigger deal than this is. Setting the expectation that this is acceptable is how you hide overstepping and abuse. How do we know Apple isn't doing this right now? How do we know if and when they do? Are people keeping track of everything the phone sends back to Apple's servers? Is it even possible any more? Considering Apple doesn't let you have full access to the device, the phone could do anything, encrypt the message and send it. The only way I know would be by monitoring the traffic off-device on the network all the time, which means only while on Wifi. And that wouldn't give you content, only metadata, as by then it's encrypted and you don't have the key.