45 ms·

Delays aren’t good enough – Apple must abandon its surveillance plans

1236 points by miles 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
The problem here is similar to what happens with the War on Terror. 1) It is noted that governments could, in theory, be spying on everything. Widely dismissed as silly. 2) There is a trigger event (eg, 9/11). Inside government, a standard slips. They start spying on everything. 3) Years later it becomes public knowledge. It is too hard to monitor what is going on now though, so it is difficult to tell who specifically should be outraged about what. 4) The situation persists because it is convenient to the people in charge. 5) (TBD) It gets turned on political dissidents. I'm expecting everyone will agree on this point in 5 or so years, at the moment that is probably maybe more a partisan observation. Apple's partnering up will follow the same pattern. There just isn't enough transparency about what closed source software does.
- onethought 5y ago
  I am really missing something in this whole thing. Everyone is already partnered with gov. Gov have access to all the servers. So that doesn’t explain this outrage, Microsoft, google, Apple will all comply with warrants asking access to cloud stored data. The outrage was: Apple were spying ON the device. But then they explained, they were hash matching so they didn’t need to give unfettered access to your cloud data. The device doesn’t notify police, it has protections from false positives and is no MORE access than any company already has. This seems like outrage with no substance behind it. Gmail scans your mail, Facebook your messages (on and off device). Why is Apple suddenly terrible for doing something that seems to honestly improve the situation not make it worse?
  - avidiax 5y ago
    > no MORE access than any company already has Yes, Google and Apple are both capable of writing code to scan your device for anything. Only Apple (to our knowledge) has written this code. It's a distinction with meaning. For the moment, yes, they are only scanning things that will eventually be stored on their servers. It's just another minor policy change to scan things that you are keeping locally. My hope is that they will delay this until they can announce E2EE for iCloud, which would then at least be give and take on privacy, potentially a net win. As it stands, this is a net loss.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. This application is optional you download and install it if you want it. Who in the right mind would download and install such an application that runs in background , uses your resources and reports you to the police, no advantages for you. So the equation is clear, the user has nothing to gain, a lot to lose if the system triggers and the user also needs to blindly trust(no way to check the hashes or the binaries) that the system will not be abused. If you are a person that strongly thinks Apple should handle CSAM then ask them why they did nothing until now? They collaborate with FBI/NSA on other stuff.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      > Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. >The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.) https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-private-not-according-fine-print-1c8881731 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr... Google has been scanning everything in your account for the past decade as well. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple will only scan photos you post to iCloud Photos, and their system is set up in such a way that they cant see the scan results until a threshold of 30 matches is met, to protect you from being flagged to the government for a few false positives. (They do have a human verify there is a real issue, and that you haven't just somehow posted more than 30 false positives to iCloud) Google and Microsoft's systems have no such protection. Anyone who can issue a subpoena can maliciously use false positive data against you. We've seen the data trove companies like Google retain used to imprison innocent people before. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
  - noptd 5y ago
    To put it bluntly, because whataboutisms do not compose a valid argument for accepting a new client-side system with a high potential of abuse.
    - onethought 5y ago
      There is almost 0 potential for abuse… it’s scan workflow ends in a human verifying that it isn’t a false positive. Not whataboutism, the alternative to apples solution is companies openly scan your entire photo library. That’s what’s happening right now. People are upset because Apple suggested: “how about we only scan when we suspect there is something not right?”
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Because it's my device, it belongs to me and should obey me instead of gigantic corporations or governments. I don't care about some government agenda trying to improve whatever situation. I want my computer out of it. They can go "honestly improve the situation" elsewhere, hopefully as far away from me as possible. And we don't need to provide any other justification either. They're the ones who need damn good reasons and warrants before stepping foot in my property.
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      Device belongs to you, but software belongs to the Apple. If you want your device to fully belong to you, you need to find a device supporting software which you can control. Otherwise you're at corporation mercy when it comes to privacy and other sensitive topics.
      - feanaro 5y ago
        I agree this is effectively how it is today in some countries, but I don't consider this an acceptable stance. Software cannot be exempted from normal rules of physical ownership of sold goods. You sold me a device, which also means you sold me the software within because the device is useless without it. The software is not separate from the device, it is the device. Of course, that doesn't mean I can do whatever I see fit with the software; I cannot redistribute it under my own terms. But insofar the actions I take with the software strictly pertain to my own usage of my own device, I should be allowed to do it. And it also means you (the company) shouldn't be able to do with the software installed on my device as you see fit.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        > Otherwise you're at corporation mercy when it comes to privacy and other sensitive topics. Despite HN’s desire, the vast majority of touch points in our daily lives are NOT open source. I’d rather laws be setup to safeguard my privacy versus relying on “FOSS” as if that’s a panacea.
    - summm 5y ago
      Your own device? That ship has sailed long ago, as you decided to buy it and not root/jailbreak it. You never had any power over that device.
- hypothesis 5y ago
  So this is step 1 then and we’re basically waiting for an event for step 2, because “privacy-preserving” surveillance system is production ready at this point and is going to be deployed in near term. Just a minor update away from a ML-powered thought crime prevention as step 3.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    So… await elites making a big pedophile catch (perhaps recycling Epstein’s story, which gained a lot of popularity among the youths), and using it as a launchpad for “see, we needed an automatic iPhone search”.
  - sharken 5y ago
    You can either have privacy or surveillance, Apple is trying to sell the idea you can have both which is a false statement. Since Apple have been pushing privacy as a differentiator with Android, i can see their problem when they also want surveillance. The answer is simple: Drop all plans for surveillance also known as on-device scanning.
  - ectopod 5y ago
    Sadly, “privacy-preserving” surveillance is already a thing. After the Snowden revelations the NSA didn't stop collecting everyone's data, they just refined the legal justification. They claim that it isn't illegal surveillance if they don't look at the data. So if you become a person of interest they get a warrant and then trawl through your digital life since forever.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  This. It literally happened to me yesterday. The internet was blocked altogether and one Sim card service was allowed after a long time so I did something interesting. I asked a friend in another country to log into an old reddit account, I dictated him the text I wanted to post and he pushed it. I had kept that reddit account dormant for over 7 months for this very purpose because I remember somehwere about reddit 90 days history policy or something. This is the level of threat I am looking at. I was willing to dictate PNG base54 character by character so that the other person could reconsititute it but they reopened internet the next day but this is the level of threat facing a casual internet user https://m.thewire.in/article/media/internet-shutdown-blocks-news-in-kashmir-geelani-death https://m.thewire.in/article/media/internet-shutdown-blocks-...
  - geraltofrivia 5y ago
    I’m really sorry to know this. And I’d like to apologise for not being able to convince some of my close friends to not vote the fascists in, in the last national elections.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      Eh. You need a billion people to change their opinion. I am in a small minority which gets trampled on.
    - C19is20 5y ago
      I see your words, but what are you exactly apologising for?
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        The upcoming mau Zedong or xi is the cow in charge of India. That is what he/she is apologising for. This person is saying they did not know in 2014 the country would crumble like this,
- colordrops 5y ago
  The US government was spying on everything well before 9/11 [1]. This sort of surveillance has been happening since the dawn of civilization. It's imperative for elites that wish to stay in power. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Yes, and it's almost expected at this point. But a private corporation doing it voluntarily(apple really doesn't have to implement this, lots of articles on this point) is at least something we can discuss and hopefully vote with our wallets against. Can't do that against a government.
    - noptd 5y ago
      Exactly, and even if it's already occurring in some fashion, that doesn't mean we should sit idly by and allow it to get worse.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      That's the thing, is it really voluntary? I'm not sure if apple has as much leverage as everyone is thinking. The Chinese government certainly forces companies to do this sort of thing, and there is precedent in the US as well with national security letters and warrant canaries. AT&T has basically been an extension of the NSA, with tap rooms built into their centers, and I'm certain all kinds of things have been forced on companies using some sort of leverage behind the scenes.
      - arvinsim 5y ago
        So who is accountable? Because arguing that "it has always been this way" is not a satisfactory answer,
        danuker 5y ago
        The powers that be. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
- yunohn 5y ago
  > (TBD) It gets turned on political dissidents. This is not TBD. All the people who exposed this and similar coverups (Snowden, Assange, Manning) are being prosecuted by the USA.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    I think it meant "inactive dissidents" or "potentially one day active". Non-conformants. As is very, very frequent in history - today, with more instruments.
    - quantum_solanum 5y ago
      this is also already happening. "If you Tweeted about BLM protests last yr, there's a good chance your Tweets were forwarded to the LAPD. Even if you don't live in LA." https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1434203354696019971 https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1434203354696019971 https://www.lataco.com/lapd-social-media-surveillance-protest/ https://www.lataco.com/lapd-social-media-surveillance-protes...
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Assange is being punished by almost all western countries. Sweden had a big role in it too and so does UK. And Australia is doing absolutely nothing to prevent it from happening to their citizen.
- varjag 5y ago
  To be fair the (5) been professed for decades and is yet to happen. I've been hearing that all my life and my hair is greying. The worst hit democracy has taken was not from sinister NSA bureaucrats but from kooks calling themselves citizen journalists, real estate developers, one-book activists and Crossfit trainers.
  - noelsusman 5y ago
    I've been wondering for decades if privacy advocates are ever going to go back and examine the dystopian proclamations they've been making to see how many actually turned out to be true.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  This is happening with Extinction Rebellion in the UK now. The Home Secretary is using the police to harass groups she disagrees with and changing the law to stop protests she doesn’t like. I think having “infinite surveillance” with someone like this in charge is a terrifying idea.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Ever since Theresa May, I've always thought that the Home Secretary is one of the most dangerous people in the UK - they always want more surveillance and anti-privacy measures, it's never enough for them.
    - snthd 5y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/13/cruel-paranoid-failing-priti-patel-inside-the-home-office https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/13/cruel-paran... >The long read: Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office Some of the why (at least, according to The Guardian).
      - GordonS 5y ago
        A good read covering immigration policies over the years - thanks for pointing me at it. This quote stood out: “They are terrified of the thought that any concession by them that can be perceived as soft or liberal or sympathetic, might leak out and be another set of Daily Mail or Sun or Telegraph stories,” There is a really toxic and dangerous relationship between a large segment of the British media (especially the tabloid press), a large segment of the British public, and the government. It very often feels like the likes of the Daily Mail are the tail that wags the dog, and I just can't see how this long-running status quo can ever end.
        collaborative 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  This sort of reminds me of the whole thing with lockdowns 1) It is noted that governments could, in theory, be requiring and enforcing lockdowns not because they're scientifically better for public health. Widely dismissed as silly and "anti-science". 2) Some scientists come out in opposition of lockdowns, evidence from other countries shows that lockdowns don't help, both get banned/censored or painted as lunacy. 3) Years later, it becomes public knowledge that lockdowns did not in fact help, and countries that had zero lockdown policy did just the same as those that did. It is also too hard to know what went through exactly and to hold people accountable, technically everyone was complicit. 4) The situation persists because it is convenient to the people in charge. 5) It gets turned turned on political dissidents. If a government wants to get rid of your noise, they can paint you as an endangerment to public health and suggest to the public to "cancel" you by banning or by being painted as a "conspiracy theorist". Australia is following this plan almost to the letter at the moment. People getting arrested for not wearing a mask while they're with their daughters and government officials "advising" the public not to talk to their neighbors and to avoid interacting with them socially, even in public, and even if wearing a mask. People are still treating this like "oh we don't know what's going on" or "it's still dangerous" while in a few decade or so, the way we're headed (if nothing changes) seems to be a form of soft-occupation by CCP ideology. It'll be too late to change anything, and then people wonder how can the Australian government pass a bill that allows police to add, delete, and modify your data during an investigation.
  - hakfoo 5y ago
    I know there is a case to be made as to whether lockdowns are effective, but as someone who is not trained in epidemiology, it seems like something that you can try that's well-intentioned and within your available set of tools. This would be especially true during the early phases of a pandemic, when you don't necessarily have great models for disease transmission, preventing more precise restrictions. If the goal is to single out and persecute some specific opposition, this seems like an incredibly clunky and inefficient way to do so. Surely it's easier to tie them up ny having some proxies bury them in court actions or plant some drugs on them, than to throw the entire country into rictus. If nothing else, they're having to personally pay for the economic blowback of declaring a lockdown and all the inevitable egg-on-their-face moments when they themselves break it.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > Inside government, a standard slips. They start spying on everything. There is no slippage. Wholesale surveillance has always been the aspirational standard.
- zionic 5y ago
  Per number 5, even sticking to just the verified stuff it is well known Obama used these powers to spy on Trump’s campaign, and Trump used them to spy on Biden/force Apple to be silent giving up Biden-people’s iCloud data via NSL gags.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    Even if it's well-known, and I'm not convinced it is since this is news to me, it won't be forever. Sharing some sources would help a lot both for people now and people finding this post 10, 20, 30 years from now.
    - hypothesis 5y ago
      It’s going to be hard to avoid bit rot on that scale. Anyhow, I would guess he’s talking about “unmasking” issue with respect to Trump adjacent figures. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210813094317/https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/kevin-clinesmith-sentencing-durham/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210813094317/https://www.cnn.c...
  - BugWatch 5y ago
    "...force Apple to be silent giving up Biden-people’s iCloud data via NSL gags." I terribly misread that as SNL gags. My brain was awfully (in hindsing - hilariously) confused for a good two minutes... trying to figure out how exactly was Apple sidetracking the imposed silence coalmine-canary-style by creatively leaking some data to Biden's people - via the medium of Saturday Night Live gags. (My only defense is a self-eyeroll.)
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  > 3) Years later it becomes public knowledge. And Edward Snowden is still exiled in Russia for fear of retaliation (and considered a traitor by some).
BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago
No matter what Apple does, I'm moving away from Apple products in the near future.
- davesque 5y ago
  Seems like a reasonable response. Apple has now revealed that they were capable of failing to consider the optics on this one which is worrying regardless of what happens next. It's really unbelievable that we now live in a world like this. Yet another reason that I feel like I stumbled into a dystopian novel these past six years or so. Never imagined I would live to see something like it.
- DiabloD3 5y ago
  Better yesterday than today. Better today than tommorow.
- alexashka 5y ago
  Me too. I am moving into the forest to be with animals and insects, because no matter where I go, humans do naughty things and I will not stand for it.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    There are still solutions, even though the situation is dire. The problem is, those solutions should not eat up too much of one's time, and the naughters not past the naught of one's energies, preferably. Of course one may finance malicious endeavours hence encourage them - but since this is against the most basic rule of "do not encourage undesirable behaviour", that one may be shortsighted, while in fact antisocial. Is it possible that the poster defends antisocial behaviour coating the opposite as antisocial?
coolspot 5y ago
I am afraid they can not even if all their top heads decide so. Governments saw it can be done, so there is no reason Apple won’t do it for them. China&co probably already busy writing laws mandating on-device scanning of all media and messages for anything remotely matching Winnie-The-Pooh. Apple won’t have a choice when it is a law of land. They can’t quit China.
- systemsignal 5y ago
  China can make that regardless of what Apple thinks, that’s totally unrelated to this. Also this technology does not develop similar images, the image has to be essentially identical…
  - gzer0 5y ago
    This is incorrect. The images in this link [1], are completely different. One is a cat, one is a dog. Same hash produced for both. [1] https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider
    - djrogers 5y ago
      That’s a hash collision on the first of two distinct perceptual hashing algorithms that are used before a human review. It’s mind-numbingly unlikely that 2 images would match 2 unique perceptual hashes and a human review and not be the same image.
    - robertoandred 5y ago
      Do you have an example using a version of NeuralHash from less than 9 months ago?
  - coolspot 5y ago
    Previously there was no precendent of an on-device content scanning protocol proposed by the top phone manufacturer themselves and even deemed privacy-preserving and secure by them. Now please idividually hash every word of every message on the phone. Then give us all illegal messages that contain _exact_ hash match with the dangerous word “Tianamen”. Government abuse is impossible though: our team of Apple employees here at iCloud-China will manually review them before passing the list to firing squads. Thanks!
noptd 5y ago
Here's an interesting thought experiment for anyone who disagrees that the proposed system is problematic. Let's say the police installs a new device in your house. This device could be capable of seeing or hearing anything that happens in your entire home. However, the police claim that the device is only watching a specific door in your house and forwarding encrypted low resolution photos to their servers "just in case" some criteria is met and they need to take a look. Nevermind that it would only take a policy change and an OTA update that you have no visibility into, or chance of blocking, before it's watching your entire house in real-time and sending practically anything to their servers. After all, they did release a carefully worded statement regarding what the device supposedly does. But hey, you have several other doors to enter or exit your house from so what's the big deal right? You could seal that door and never be subjected to the system _as advertised_. Would you trust the police in that scenario, regardless of whether you have anything to hide?
- Joeri 5y ago
  It’s not just your house, it’s everyone’s house. Our smartphones and computers are our digital homes. When something is installed in those homes which monitors everyone for potential crimes, that is what I would label as an unreasonable search and a violation of privacy. It doesn’t matter what they’re looking for, our personal devices should be inviolate unless there is a suspicion of crime, and even then a court order should be involved. What apple doesn’t understand is that scanning on the device is worse for privacy than scanning on the server, not better.
  - hypothesis 5y ago
    > What apple doesn’t understand is that scanning on the device is worse for privacy than scanning on the server, not better. We don’t have to excuse one of the most valuable corp around. They do understand, but are willing to cash-in some of the “privacy budget”.
  - chuckee 5y ago
    > our personal devices should be inviolate unless there is a suspicion of crime, and even then a court order should be involved. Even with a court order, your devices should not cooperate with a search, unless instructed to do so by you, their owner.
midrus 5y ago
My next phone was going to be an iphone because I'm tired of all the Google tracking (and Android itself). But now I'm holding up my purchase until they release (or hopefully abort it). I'm happy to pay more for a robust and privacy protecting device. I won't pay more for the same bullshit.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  There are many threads on HN about contemporary pocket-sized personal assistants with telephony not using Google Android or iOS. Some of them are at their early stages, but some may be usable. It is something most of us will have to go to sooner or later.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Solution is to buy Chinese phone before its against the law.
- nullc 5y ago
  One can live without a phone. And outlaw phones won't likely be allowed on local phone networks. :P
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    LTE is quite standardized, although VoLTE is far from it. IMEIs can be spoofed. VoIP numbers are a thing (e.g. voip.ms, or google voice if you can go without emergency services). I forget if IMEI spoofing is a felony. So much policy on the books it would take me months to know for sure.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > outlaw phones won't likely be allowed on local phone networks Why is it even possible for them to know what sort of phone is trying to connect?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  We won't ever be free until we can manufacture computers at home just like we can write our own software at home. Right now, manufacturing computer hardware requires billions of dollars. Governments will target these centralized operations. We must decentralize hardware manufacturing.
  - no_time 5y ago
    So..... Never?
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Who knows? Maybe one day.
- 5y ago
dainiusse 5y ago
This approach just guarantees one - all the privacy talks from them is just marketing. You can not be serious about privacy and do this at the same time...
- sekathlon 5y ago
  Yes you obviously can.
z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
Apple has been a part of the NSA's PRISM program since like 2012. Why would you think they stopped spying since then?
bni 5y ago
Why is Google and others getting a pass? Google have blog posts from 2019 about scanning gmail and google drive for CSAM in the same way. All cloud providers scan user content, most for mining advertisement gold.
- roenxi 5y ago
  Google is an intentional privacy disaster. Apple was claiming to have standards.
- Jabbles 5y ago
  I feel that scanning data that is present on a server the company owns is very different to scanning data that is present on a device that they have sold to a user.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    Even if the only data scanned on device is data that is in the process of being uploaded to a cloud server?
- gigel82 5y ago
  It most definitely isn't "in the same way". Not even "privacy slumlord supreme" Google dared scan files on your device. Yes, they scan stuff in the cloud (we all know this) as does Microsoft OneDrive / Outlook, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. but none of them dared to add code on your device to look at your private data.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Not even Google had the audacity to scan files stored on my physical phone. They can do whatever they want with their own computers, just leave my device alone.
- meibo 5y ago
  Apple is running "the phone that respects your privacy" ads in prime time slots for 3 years now. A lot of people have chosen apple devices based on this promise. You know what you get when you use Google accounts.
Cort3z 5y ago
The main argument here is that we are afraid that governments can demand, through court, that Apple should add some other hashes than the ones they start with. What is preventing those said governments from going through the same legal process demanding that Apple should implement such a system from scratch?
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Elections. If people start demanding maximum security, it can become a popular opinion. This can definitely happen but at the moment implementation of listening devices to everyone is unpopular. It's useful to remember that organisations are made of people with individual aspirations. Some would really want to have listening devices implemented to everyone so that they can do their jobs better(usually the intelligence people, the police etc), others will want it for less "Acceptable" reasons but at the end of the day the people who can allow or disallow it will have their careers determined by the general population in a very public manner.
  - Cort3z 5y ago
    I would assume that elections isn't a guaranteed option in this though experiment.
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      Of course, you can coups, you can have wars etc. That's why people should watch out to keep the Democracy intact, go vote and have a healthy level of interest to the political processes.
  - amelius 5y ago
    > Elections. The problem: at least 90% of the population doesn't care about privacy, and scandals (see Facebook etc) have no influence on this whatsoever, so awareness-campaigns are not likely to work either.
- beermonster 5y ago
  Whistleblowers
JacksonGariety 5y ago
If you want to always be on the side of truth, learn Hegel's Logic. See my blog for more info: https://hegelsbagels.net/ https://hegelsbagels.net/
ashildr 5y ago
Google: We scan all the data you upload to us and store it unencrypted so we can scan it again if we feel like it. Apple: We scan only the data you decide to upload to us before you do so and store it encrypted so nobody, even us can see what it is. Press / FBI: Apple bad!
- tyfon 5y ago
  One has marketed it self as the privacy champion, the other has never pretended. That is the main difference. I'm still sticking to iphone due to it since it was not going to be implemented where I live anyway, but switching back to google would not be a good option. I'm currently looking at the pro 1x[1] phone though. [1] https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
  - rambambram 5y ago
    Only because "Do no evil" is basically the lowest threshold one can think of.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Their motto was actually "don't be evil," but the shine wore off that apple pretty quick. It was dropped shortly after the dotcom explosion.
- feanaro 5y ago
  You're making it sound like stuff stored in the iCloud is E2E encrypted. And yes, both are bad, let's have none of that.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Yeah this is basically my take too. It really reveals how low quality most public discussion is on any complex or nuanced topic - specifics be damned.
  - willis936 5y ago
tempodox 5y ago
> Apple has abandoned its once-famous commitment to security and privacy. The cat's out of the bag now that this has never been more than a marketing gimmick. You can rely on Apple to protect your data from their competition, but other than that they'll be at least as happy to implement dystopian surveillance nightmares as the next megacorp. This time they even won the prize for the worst idea ever.
- askafriend 5y ago
  Which cloud provider can you store your images on that does CSAM compliance in a more privacy friendly way? None. All the main ones scan your entire library of content you upload. Apple’s solution is the most privacy conscious by far.
  - coolspot 5y ago
    Mega.io does CSAM compliance in a more privacy-friendly way: they scan their cloud day and night, but it is end-to-end encrypted, so the scan always returns exactly 0 results.
    - askafriend 5y ago
      Mega absolutely complies with law enforcement and does issue takedown requests. It’s all built into their policies. https://mega.io/takedown https://mega.io/takedown
      - coolspot 5y ago
        Takedown != content scanning
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    And why is this normal? Why can't they offer zero knowledge cloud storage? Encrypt before upload and decrypt after download. The less they know about the data, the less liable they are for anything. Data is and should be a massive liability for companies. They should aim to know as little as possible.
xedarius 5y ago
At this point I feel unsurpringly betrayed. As others have pointed out there is no going back. With little to no visibility on what the phone, the ipad, the mac-mini is doing, are they safe? I hear there's no device level scanning, has that been confirmed by someone other than Apple? What are you guys also doing? Is there a website that helpfully details how to get yourself out of the eco system? I can tell you what I have done so far, but it's very much work in progress. - Removed all photos from iCloud and turn off all iCloud stuff. - Backup up phones to my mac (encrypted), will transfer to nextcloud and NAS. - Built a NAS and now storing photos there - looking at. running PhotoPrism, but haven't made that work yet. - Transfered useful cloudstuff to Hetzner's NextCloud hosted. and enabled E2EE on certain folders. - I use NordVPN but I always have done. I realise it's a lot of effort to go to so I can privately store a pictures of me eating an ice cream in Rome ... but as we all know that's not really the point.
- abacadaba 5y ago
  Ya but now you're flagged as someone who has something to hide, possibly trying to clear off devices before the change was implemented. Hmm maybe that's their game. You don't need to scan, just need to see who deleted all their photo's over the last few days. A higher than random hit rate I'd guess.
  - willis936 5y ago
    And what about all the people like me: imminently following the same path but never having used iCloud photos? You're suggesting they are faking one violation of the 4th amendment for a much more egregious violation of the 4th amendment. They (AAPL) have nothing to gain by doing this.
    - abacadaba 5y ago
      Just sayin, it's not a _completely_ unimaginable situation. If the FBI was somehow able to access to those delete logs.. Anecdotal: One year my brother was coming back from spring break and there was a sign that said "drug checkpoint 1 mile." right before an exit. Everyone that got off at the exit got searched.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
One must ask: What are they gaining from this technical garbage and publicity nightmare? It's not about the children, that's for sure.
- cube00 5y ago
  That's a very wide selection of services you're offering your customers, and they're very seamlessly integrated, and secured from open development (looking at you PWAs in Safari) it'd be a shame if they needed to be broken up or opened up with new legislation.
jasonlfunk 5y ago
The majority of these discussions are starting in the wrong place, I think. Instead of asking whether this specific feature is good or bad, we should start by asking whether Apple should be doing anything to try to stop the sexual exploitation of children. If the answer is "no, it's not Apple's job." then of course these plans are terrible. If the answer is "yes, Apple should try to use it's immense power and wealth to try to stop a terrible evil" - then the obvious follow up question is "How?". They could do whatever ever other company is doing and just looking at all of your data, but Apple didn't want to do that. So they came up with a system that they felt was a good compromise between privacy and trying to stop the spread of CSAM. If you want to quibble about the implementation details, that's fine. But if your position is that they shouldn't be looking at your data at all, then you have to go back to the first question and say "Apple should not be trying to stop the exploitation of children." Now you might say, "Yes, but 'what about the children?' has been used to justify terrible things." Granted. But... "what about the children?" is a very important question to ask and shouldn't be used as a cliche to dismiss Apple's attempt to make the world a better place in this area.
- jasonlfunk 5y ago
  If you say, 'Yes, apple should be doing something, but not this." I'd love to hear your ideas about how Apple can do more to stop CSAM while better protecting your privacy.
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    Detecting CSAM on a phone is not stopping exploitation of children. Just as detecting images of violence isn't stopping violence. Violence and abuse have existed before phones and cloud storage, and will continue to be ever after. And Apple cannot stop exploitation of children. Anything they try is trivial to circumvent, a massive breach of privacy, or both.
- barbecue_sauce 5y ago
  >But if your position is that they shouldn't be looking at your data at all, then you have to go back to the first question and say "Apple should not be trying to stop the exploitation of children." You're getting pretty far into "affirming the consequent" territory here.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
Nobody has ever brought up this argument, but isn't it odd, despite all the self imposed backdoors in China, Apple is targeting the us market for the pedophilia stuff? Why is that so? No such thing for Android. Must be pressure from the government I suppose. Or did they somehow think this would pass the clients sniff test and can be sold as additional safety measure? The real why was never disclosed as far I am aware.
- MontagFTB 5y ago
  US legislation states that cloud storage providers are liable for storing/transmitting CSAM via their services. They are legally bound to identify and report it.
Sandro_Linux 5y ago
I agree with this one like I usually do with EFF
deleted 5y ago
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nbzso 5y ago
I will share my solution: If I have something that spies 24/7 in my home or around me I throw it in the recycle bin. No more tech talk, implementation talk on closed software and dark pattern designed products by any company. Apple is using its market leader in "user convenience" position to normalize on device user behavior analysis and data processing and active policing. This is madness. I expect police and three letter agencies to use their own hacking tools and budget. I will not pay the bill on a multiple levels to be monitored and classified. Yes you can vote with your wallet as first reaction, as second you can push your representatives for political and legislative reaction. Imagine this news in 2010. For sure some Apple stores will be burned down to the ground. But make no mistake: If you don't buy products created from the get go to snoop around and extract your data, you will have more privacy. The only way into the future for people who want peace of mind is not to buy into smart home, smart appliances, smart cars and smart surveillance. Period. They are called smart for a reason. Because we are becoming stupider. Start self-hosting and local backups, there are tech savvy people who are moving away from surveillance state and building more private and sustainable future for themselves. Apple is the big writing on the wall. They act as political entity now, the users are their voters and as a classic politics move they are selling the audience to the highest bidder. Checks and balances.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Have you tried to buy a new car or a home appliance recently? Its nigh impossible to buy something new that is plain old and dumb.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    Yes, and this is a challenge. And nothing will change until your refrigerator reports you to the police for having too much beer in your possession:) Than all the "nothing to hide" people will revolt.
    - 5y ago
pachico 5y ago
My solution is simpler: I will never buy an Apple product.
KaiserPro 5y ago
What people have so far missed is the nugget burried way down in the small print. Apple are doing this because they have a child porn problem. The biggest suprise of this whole bruhaha is that _facebook_ of all the companies come out looking better than apple. Whatsapp essentially had the same issue: people using it to share nasty stuff. despite similar encryption issues, whatsapp manage to report hundreds of thousands of instances of nasty stuff, without putting in client side filters.
- specialist 5y ago
  Yes and: > Apple are doing this because they have a child porn problem. They're also under relentless pressure. From governments, who demand backdoors and full access. From hackers, who are pwning the entire stack. Like the EFF, I oppose the image scanning. But I'd like someone, anyone propose what Apple (Google, Facebook, ...) is supposed to do? My hunch is that Apple is trying to thread the needle. Do the absolute bare minimum, to fend off the inevitable governmental policy overreaches. Find some technical solution to mollify all the would be tyrants. If Apple's attempts to find a balance don't work, the default position is backdoors, not Matrix-style end-to-end full encryption. I'm not saying EFF should stfu. EFF and others should be savvy enough to see the meta game and advocate their own policy (platform) accordingly. Edit: u/dhx makes similar points https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28412861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28412861
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    > But I'd like someone, anyone propose what Apple (Google, Facebook, ...) is supposed to do? I think what apple should do is follow Facebook/google's lead: the "report this message" button that _everyone_ else has. Obviously google doesn't encrypt user's stuff, so do server side scanning. Whatsapp supposedly relies entirely on reported messages. Given that iCloud accounts are tied directly to ID, it doesn't seem all that difficult for apple to get their report rate up just by letting users report stuff. > EFF and others should be savvy enough to see the meta game and advocate their own policy (platform) accordingly. agreed, the "EWWW NO NEVER EVER EVER" approach is counter productive, it just allows people to paint them as people that hide kiddyfiddlers. the wider public supports apple's drive a lot more than I would like. But apple do need to do something more, they apparently reported less than a thousand people for having illegal images.
nikkinana 5y ago
Absolutely not. Go Tim Apple! I have nothing to hide. Do you?
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
Oh well, even if Apple backs off they'll just try something else. Even though surveillance has always been a thing, the ability to both collect and parse the data is unparalleled. No need for Walsingham's secret police, or at least not so much anymore. The loose coalition that actually runs matters will do whatever it takes. I'd say that a lot of what drives this at the mass level is the need for revenge, that's a lot more fun than being for something. 9/11 occurs, lets get the bastids. The forces of the State are now arrayed at the evil TrumpWhiteSupremacistGuysWithFlags regardless of the lack of their actual presence on the street. You enemies need to be ground to dust. I doubt that boycotting Apple will make a lick of difference. In a time of turmoil your optimal solution is to cut dependencies on the system. It's a battle that should be watched from a distance and the soul-rot that comes through computer screens and cell phones is best kept to a minimum.
antattack 5y ago
This is not a delay, it's anoffensive to build up support - just look at the headlines: "Apple delays child abuse detection" "Apple delays plan to scan iPhones for child exploitation images" "Apple Delays Rollout of Child Safety Features" None headlines I could find pronounce that Apple is delaying their spying tool. None of the media seem to be on board with that characterization.
mmastrac 5y ago
I've been pondering the idea of an offline-first experience on a laptop for my own mental health for a while. I feel like computing was just so much better without the internet as a distraction. Who is in?
- kongin 5y ago
  Everyone who can't reply to you because they are offline.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I'm already there! I loaded up a distraction-free work laptop with Ubuntu, i3, 20 gigs of ambient Spotify playlists and all the documentation it's poor little SSD could hold. I seldom connect that machine to the internet, when I do it's only to clone a repo or install a package.
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
Perhaps someone here could lend some insight. Just exactly why is Apple doing this? I doubt that it was due to some huge upsurge in demand from it's customers. The arguments against are easy enough. This kind of tech is not ethically different from adding an all-seeing AI to your home that looks for illegal behavior. If something sketchy occurs, it calls the cops. 'It's for the children' is mockable, but isn't an unreasonable talking point. ...but what is the real driver and who is behind it? Merely guessing the cause is not particularly useful.
- deepdmistry 5y ago
  Probably the 3 letter agencies
- MontagFTB 5y ago
  As an ill-conceived means of holding both privacy and oversight at the same time? The main sticking point (as you know) isn’t what it looks like now, but how small a leap is required before the privacy is stripped away and all that’s left is oversight.
- sigmar 5y ago
  Lots of governments have been pushing it recently. Not sure who is pushing it in Apple (or why). Here's Matthew Green's thread from 4 months ago https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1392814211122843651 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13928142111228436... which is referencing this article that describes the recent push https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-encryption-child-abuse https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-encryption-child-ab...
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    It would be great if someone from Apple spilled the beans on what actually went down. No doubt the Apple Internal Affairs Department would be all over that. It would be a good test for Apple Privacy(tm).
max_ 5y ago
The real problem is that their are no real replacements to apple products.
memetomancer 5y ago
This is so frustrating, I generally expected the Hacker News community to observe a more sophisticated take on this topic. Let's get it straight: the other Big Tech companies have done this CSAM scanning for many, many years. Their users have been reported. Arrests have been made. Microsoft had this sorted in 2009 with PhotoDNA, and made it available to everyone else in 2014[1]. I doubt very much this has stopped any of you from working at Microsoft or the FAANGs when given the chance. The ONLY distinctions here are that Apple has opted to do the mundane hashing part on the device prior to upload, have been up front about the plan, have take comments from the public and are saying that they will work out a more satisfying scheme. Apple even appears to be responsive to the shady claims that a 'reverse engineered (old) version of NeuralHash' might have resulted in some novel collisions, and spend the money to improve their current implementation. The other big tech concerns did not do these things; they simply imposed it all and started informing the police. As far as I can see, the only real misstep Apple has taken is being explicit about their plans and assuming people could understand the scope of the subject at hand. Instead they've stepped into a bear-trap of outraged hysteria, a moral panic from people who should know better. The take away lesson here is "Do not announce stuff like this, the general public will flip out if you try to keep them informed". Is that anyone's goal here? [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna
- blagie 5y ago
  There are two possibilities: 1) You're missing something. 2) Everyone else is missing something. That includes organizations like the EFF. In terms of missing nuance: What Facebook is doing absolutely and completely different from what Apple is doing. You should take time to understand why Apple's approach is so utterly repulsive, while I'm 100% in support of Facebook's. There are distinctions other than your "ONLY distinctions." You should take time to understand what those are, and why they're important. As a hint, those have to do with where users might or might not have expectations of privacy, with due process, and with who owns what.
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    The EFF's goal is to get donations. Hence why they've lied about the system since the beginning to stoke outrage.
nothrowaways 5y ago
Porn is apple's new terrorism
AHappyCamper 5y ago
I am adding my comment for what it's worth. This reckless grab for power is immoral and contradicts Apple's core values. They must stop all attempts at surveilling their users or lose their user-base altogether. Apple, stop this evil plan!
fidesomnes 5y ago
"No, you cannot make more money with your new thing!" scolds the toothless banshee of grift.

1236 points by miles 5y ago

The problem here is similar to what happens with the War on Terror. 1) It is noted that governments could, in theory, be spying on everything. Widely dismissed as silly. 2) There is a trigger event (eg, 9/11). Inside government, a standard slips. They start spying on everything. 3) Years later it becomes public knowledge. It is too hard to monitor what is going on now though, so it is difficult to tell who specifically should be outraged about what. 4) The situation persists because it is convenient to the people in charge. 5) (TBD) It gets turned on political dissidents. I'm expecting everyone will agree on this point in 5 or so years, at the moment that is probably maybe more a partisan observation. Apple's partnering up will follow the same pattern. There just isn't enough transparency about what closed source software does.

onethought 5y ago
I am really missing something in this whole thing. Everyone is already partnered with gov. Gov have access to all the servers. So that doesn’t explain this outrage, Microsoft, google, Apple will all comply with warrants asking access to cloud stored data. The outrage was: Apple were spying ON the device. But then they explained, they were hash matching so they didn’t need to give unfettered access to your cloud data. The device doesn’t notify police, it has protections from false positives and is no MORE access than any company already has. This seems like outrage with no substance behind it. Gmail scans your mail, Facebook your messages (on and off device). Why is Apple suddenly terrible for doing something that seems to honestly improve the situation not make it worse?
- avidiax 5y ago
  > no MORE access than any company already has Yes, Google and Apple are both capable of writing code to scan your device for anything. Only Apple (to our knowledge) has written this code. It's a distinction with meaning. For the moment, yes, they are only scanning things that will eventually be stored on their servers. It's just another minor policy change to scan things that you are keeping locally. My hope is that they will delay this until they can announce E2EE for iCloud, which would then at least be give and take on privacy, potentially a net win. As it stands, this is a net loss.
- simion314 5y ago
  Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. This application is optional you download and install it if you want it. Who in the right mind would download and install such an application that runs in background , uses your resources and reports you to the police, no advantages for you. So the equation is clear, the user has nothing to gain, a lot to lose if the system triggers and the user also needs to blindly trust(no way to check the hashes or the binaries) that the system will not be abused. If you are a person that strongly thinks Apple should handle CSAM then ask them why they did nothing until now? They collaborate with FBI/NSA on other stuff.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    > Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. >The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.) https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-private-not-according-fine-print-1c8881731 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr... Google has been scanning everything in your account for the past decade as well. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple will only scan photos you post to iCloud Photos, and their system is set up in such a way that they cant see the scan results until a threshold of 30 matches is met, to protect you from being flagged to the government for a few false positives. (They do have a human verify there is a real issue, and that you haven't just somehow posted more than 30 false positives to iCloud) Google and Microsoft's systems have no such protection. Anyone who can issue a subpoena can maliciously use false positive data against you. We've seen the data trove companies like Google retain used to imprison innocent people before. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
- noptd 5y ago
  To put it bluntly, because whataboutisms do not compose a valid argument for accepting a new client-side system with a high potential of abuse.
  - onethought 5y ago
    There is almost 0 potential for abuse… it’s scan workflow ends in a human verifying that it isn’t a false positive. Not whataboutism, the alternative to apples solution is companies openly scan your entire photo library. That’s what’s happening right now. People are upset because Apple suggested: “how about we only scan when we suspect there is something not right?”
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Because it's my device, it belongs to me and should obey me instead of gigantic corporations or governments. I don't care about some government agenda trying to improve whatever situation. I want my computer out of it. They can go "honestly improve the situation" elsewhere, hopefully as far away from me as possible. And we don't need to provide any other justification either. They're the ones who need damn good reasons and warrants before stepping foot in my property.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    Device belongs to you, but software belongs to the Apple. If you want your device to fully belong to you, you need to find a device supporting software which you can control. Otherwise you're at corporation mercy when it comes to privacy and other sensitive topics.
    - feanaro 5y ago
      I agree this is effectively how it is today in some countries, but I don't consider this an acceptable stance. Software cannot be exempted from normal rules of physical ownership of sold goods. You sold me a device, which also means you sold me the software within because the device is useless without it. The software is not separate from the device, it is the device. Of course, that doesn't mean I can do whatever I see fit with the software; I cannot redistribute it under my own terms. But insofar the actions I take with the software strictly pertain to my own usage of my own device, I should be allowed to do it. And it also means you (the company) shouldn't be able to do with the software installed on my device as you see fit.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > Otherwise you're at corporation mercy when it comes to privacy and other sensitive topics. Despite HN’s desire, the vast majority of touch points in our daily lives are NOT open source. I’d rather laws be setup to safeguard my privacy versus relying on “FOSS” as if that’s a panacea.
  - summm 5y ago
    Your own device? That ship has sailed long ago, as you decided to buy it and not root/jailbreak it. You never had any power over that device.
hypothesis 5y ago
So this is step 1 then and we’re basically waiting for an event for step 2, because “privacy-preserving” surveillance system is production ready at this point and is going to be deployed in near term. Just a minor update away from a ML-powered thought crime prevention as step 3.
- laurent92 5y ago
  So… await elites making a big pedophile catch (perhaps recycling Epstein’s story, which gained a lot of popularity among the youths), and using it as a launchpad for “see, we needed an automatic iPhone search”.
- sharken 5y ago
  You can either have privacy or surveillance, Apple is trying to sell the idea you can have both which is a false statement. Since Apple have been pushing privacy as a differentiator with Android, i can see their problem when they also want surveillance. The answer is simple: Drop all plans for surveillance also known as on-device scanning.
- ectopod 5y ago
  Sadly, “privacy-preserving” surveillance is already a thing. After the Snowden revelations the NSA didn't stop collecting everyone's data, they just refined the legal justification. They claim that it isn't illegal surveillance if they don't look at the data. So if you become a person of interest they get a warrant and then trawl through your digital life since forever.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
This. It literally happened to me yesterday. The internet was blocked altogether and one Sim card service was allowed after a long time so I did something interesting. I asked a friend in another country to log into an old reddit account, I dictated him the text I wanted to post and he pushed it. I had kept that reddit account dormant for over 7 months for this very purpose because I remember somehwere about reddit 90 days history policy or something. This is the level of threat I am looking at. I was willing to dictate PNG base54 character by character so that the other person could reconsititute it but they reopened internet the next day but this is the level of threat facing a casual internet user https://m.thewire.in/article/media/internet-shutdown-blocks-news-in-kashmir-geelani-death https://m.thewire.in/article/media/internet-shutdown-blocks-...
- geraltofrivia 5y ago
  I’m really sorry to know this. And I’d like to apologise for not being able to convince some of my close friends to not vote the fascists in, in the last national elections.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    Eh. You need a billion people to change their opinion. I am in a small minority which gets trampled on.
  - C19is20 5y ago
    I see your words, but what are you exactly apologising for?
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      The upcoming mau Zedong or xi is the cow in charge of India. That is what he/she is apologising for. This person is saying they did not know in 2014 the country would crumble like this,
colordrops 5y ago
The US government was spying on everything well before 9/11 [1]. This sort of surveillance has been happening since the dawn of civilization. It's imperative for elites that wish to stay in power. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
- gambiting 5y ago
  Yes, and it's almost expected at this point. But a private corporation doing it voluntarily(apple really doesn't have to implement this, lots of articles on this point) is at least something we can discuss and hopefully vote with our wallets against. Can't do that against a government.
  - noptd 5y ago
    Exactly, and even if it's already occurring in some fashion, that doesn't mean we should sit idly by and allow it to get worse.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    That's the thing, is it really voluntary? I'm not sure if apple has as much leverage as everyone is thinking. The Chinese government certainly forces companies to do this sort of thing, and there is precedent in the US as well with national security letters and warrant canaries. AT&T has basically been an extension of the NSA, with tap rooms built into their centers, and I'm certain all kinds of things have been forced on companies using some sort of leverage behind the scenes.
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      So who is accountable? Because arguing that "it has always been this way" is not a satisfactory answer,
      - danuker 5y ago
        The powers that be. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
yunohn 5y ago
> (TBD) It gets turned on political dissidents. This is not TBD. All the people who exposed this and similar coverups (Snowden, Assange, Manning) are being prosecuted by the USA.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  I think it meant "inactive dissidents" or "potentially one day active". Non-conformants. As is very, very frequent in history - today, with more instruments.
  - quantum_solanum 5y ago
    this is also already happening. "If you Tweeted about BLM protests last yr, there's a good chance your Tweets were forwarded to the LAPD. Even if you don't live in LA." https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1434203354696019971 https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1434203354696019971 https://www.lataco.com/lapd-social-media-surveillance-protest/ https://www.lataco.com/lapd-social-media-surveillance-protes...
- busymom0 5y ago
  Assange is being punished by almost all western countries. Sweden had a big role in it too and so does UK. And Australia is doing absolutely nothing to prevent it from happening to their citizen.
varjag 5y ago
To be fair the (5) been professed for decades and is yet to happen. I've been hearing that all my life and my hair is greying. The worst hit democracy has taken was not from sinister NSA bureaucrats but from kooks calling themselves citizen journalists, real estate developers, one-book activists and Crossfit trainers.
- noelsusman 5y ago
  I've been wondering for decades if privacy advocates are ever going to go back and examine the dystopian proclamations they've been making to see how many actually turned out to be true.
andy_ppp 5y ago
This is happening with Extinction Rebellion in the UK now. The Home Secretary is using the police to harass groups she disagrees with and changing the law to stop protests she doesn’t like. I think having “infinite surveillance” with someone like this in charge is a terrifying idea.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GordonS 5y ago
  Ever since Theresa May, I've always thought that the Home Secretary is one of the most dangerous people in the UK - they always want more surveillance and anti-privacy measures, it's never enough for them.
  - snthd 5y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/13/cruel-paranoid-failing-priti-patel-inside-the-home-office https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/13/cruel-paran... >The long read: Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office Some of the why (at least, according to The Guardian).
    - GordonS 5y ago
      A good read covering immigration policies over the years - thanks for pointing me at it. This quote stood out: “They are terrified of the thought that any concession by them that can be perceived as soft or liberal or sympathetic, might leak out and be another set of Daily Mail or Sun or Telegraph stories,” There is a really toxic and dangerous relationship between a large segment of the British media (especially the tabloid press), a large segment of the British public, and the government. It very often feels like the likes of the Daily Mail are the tail that wags the dog, and I just can't see how this long-running status quo can ever end.
      - collaborative 5y ago
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throwawayswede 5y ago
This sort of reminds me of the whole thing with lockdowns 1) It is noted that governments could, in theory, be requiring and enforcing lockdowns not because they're scientifically better for public health. Widely dismissed as silly and "anti-science". 2) Some scientists come out in opposition of lockdowns, evidence from other countries shows that lockdowns don't help, both get banned/censored or painted as lunacy. 3) Years later, it becomes public knowledge that lockdowns did not in fact help, and countries that had zero lockdown policy did just the same as those that did. It is also too hard to know what went through exactly and to hold people accountable, technically everyone was complicit. 4) The situation persists because it is convenient to the people in charge. 5) It gets turned turned on political dissidents. If a government wants to get rid of your noise, they can paint you as an endangerment to public health and suggest to the public to "cancel" you by banning or by being painted as a "conspiracy theorist". Australia is following this plan almost to the letter at the moment. People getting arrested for not wearing a mask while they're with their daughters and government officials "advising" the public not to talk to their neighbors and to avoid interacting with them socially, even in public, and even if wearing a mask. People are still treating this like "oh we don't know what's going on" or "it's still dangerous" while in a few decade or so, the way we're headed (if nothing changes) seems to be a form of soft-occupation by CCP ideology. It'll be too late to change anything, and then people wonder how can the Australian government pass a bill that allows police to add, delete, and modify your data during an investigation.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I know there is a case to be made as to whether lockdowns are effective, but as someone who is not trained in epidemiology, it seems like something that you can try that's well-intentioned and within your available set of tools. This would be especially true during the early phases of a pandemic, when you don't necessarily have great models for disease transmission, preventing more precise restrictions. If the goal is to single out and persecute some specific opposition, this seems like an incredibly clunky and inefficient way to do so. Surely it's easier to tie them up ny having some proxies bury them in court actions or plant some drugs on them, than to throw the entire country into rictus. If nothing else, they're having to personally pay for the economic blowback of declaring a lockdown and all the inevitable egg-on-their-face moments when they themselves break it.
Ansil849 5y ago
> Inside government, a standard slips. They start spying on everything. There is no slippage. Wholesale surveillance has always been the aspirational standard.
zionic 5y ago
Per number 5, even sticking to just the verified stuff it is well known Obama used these powers to spy on Trump’s campaign, and Trump used them to spy on Biden/force Apple to be silent giving up Biden-people’s iCloud data via NSL gags.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  Even if it's well-known, and I'm not convinced it is since this is news to me, it won't be forever. Sharing some sources would help a lot both for people now and people finding this post 10, 20, 30 years from now.
  - hypothesis 5y ago
    It’s going to be hard to avoid bit rot on that scale. Anyhow, I would guess he’s talking about “unmasking” issue with respect to Trump adjacent figures. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210813094317/https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/kevin-clinesmith-sentencing-durham/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210813094317/https://www.cnn.c...
- BugWatch 5y ago
  "...force Apple to be silent giving up Biden-people’s iCloud data via NSL gags." I terribly misread that as SNL gags. My brain was awfully (in hindsing - hilariously) confused for a good two minutes... trying to figure out how exactly was Apple sidetracking the imposed silence coalmine-canary-style by creatively leaking some data to Biden's people - via the medium of Saturday Night Live gags. (My only defense is a self-eyeroll.)
yodsanklai 5y ago
> 3) Years later it becomes public knowledge. And Edward Snowden is still exiled in Russia for fear of retaliation (and considered a traitor by some).

BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago

No matter what Apple does, I'm moving away from Apple products in the near future.

davesque 5y ago
Seems like a reasonable response. Apple has now revealed that they were capable of failing to consider the optics on this one which is worrying regardless of what happens next. It's really unbelievable that we now live in a world like this. Yet another reason that I feel like I stumbled into a dystopian novel these past six years or so. Never imagined I would live to see something like it.
DiabloD3 5y ago
Better yesterday than today. Better today than tommorow.
alexashka 5y ago
Me too. I am moving into the forest to be with animals and insects, because no matter where I go, humans do naughty things and I will not stand for it.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  There are still solutions, even though the situation is dire. The problem is, those solutions should not eat up too much of one's time, and the naughters not past the naught of one's energies, preferably. Of course one may finance malicious endeavours hence encourage them - but since this is against the most basic rule of "do not encourage undesirable behaviour", that one may be shortsighted, while in fact antisocial. Is it possible that the poster defends antisocial behaviour coating the opposite as antisocial?

coolspot 5y ago

I am afraid they can not even if all their top heads decide so. Governments saw it can be done, so there is no reason Apple won’t do it for them. China&co probably already busy writing laws mandating on-device scanning of all media and messages for anything remotely matching Winnie-The-Pooh. Apple won’t have a choice when it is a law of land. They can’t quit China.

systemsignal 5y ago
China can make that regardless of what Apple thinks, that’s totally unrelated to this. Also this technology does not develop similar images, the image has to be essentially identical…
- gzer0 5y ago
  This is incorrect. The images in this link [1], are completely different. One is a cat, one is a dog. Same hash produced for both. [1] https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider
  - djrogers 5y ago
    That’s a hash collision on the first of two distinct perceptual hashing algorithms that are used before a human review. It’s mind-numbingly unlikely that 2 images would match 2 unique perceptual hashes and a human review and not be the same image.
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    Do you have an example using a version of NeuralHash from less than 9 months ago?
- coolspot 5y ago
  Previously there was no precendent of an on-device content scanning protocol proposed by the top phone manufacturer themselves and even deemed privacy-preserving and secure by them. Now please idividually hash every word of every message on the phone. Then give us all illegal messages that contain _exact_ hash match with the dangerous word “Tianamen”. Government abuse is impossible though: our team of Apple employees here at iCloud-China will manually review them before passing the list to firing squads. Thanks!

noptd 5y ago

Here's an interesting thought experiment for anyone who disagrees that the proposed system is problematic. Let's say the police installs a new device in your house. This device could be capable of seeing or hearing anything that happens in your entire home. However, the police claim that the device is only watching a specific door in your house and forwarding encrypted low resolution photos to their servers "just in case" some criteria is met and they need to take a look. Nevermind that it would only take a policy change and an OTA update that you have no visibility into, or chance of blocking, before it's watching your entire house in real-time and sending practically anything to their servers. After all, they did release a carefully worded statement regarding what the device supposedly does. But hey, you have several other doors to enter or exit your house from so what's the big deal right? You could seal that door and never be subjected to the system _as advertised_. Would you trust the police in that scenario, regardless of whether you have anything to hide?

Joeri 5y ago
It’s not just your house, it’s everyone’s house. Our smartphones and computers are our digital homes. When something is installed in those homes which monitors everyone for potential crimes, that is what I would label as an unreasonable search and a violation of privacy. It doesn’t matter what they’re looking for, our personal devices should be inviolate unless there is a suspicion of crime, and even then a court order should be involved. What apple doesn’t understand is that scanning on the device is worse for privacy than scanning on the server, not better.
- hypothesis 5y ago
  > What apple doesn’t understand is that scanning on the device is worse for privacy than scanning on the server, not better. We don’t have to excuse one of the most valuable corp around. They do understand, but are willing to cash-in some of the “privacy budget”.
- chuckee 5y ago
  > our personal devices should be inviolate unless there is a suspicion of crime, and even then a court order should be involved. Even with a court order, your devices should not cooperate with a search, unless instructed to do so by you, their owner.

midrus 5y ago

My next phone was going to be an iphone because I'm tired of all the Google tracking (and Android itself). But now I'm holding up my purchase until they release (or hopefully abort it). I'm happy to pay more for a robust and privacy protecting device. I won't pay more for the same bullshit.

mdp2021 5y ago
There are many threads on HN about contemporary pocket-sized personal assistants with telephony not using Google Android or iOS. Some of them are at their early stages, but some may be usable. It is something most of us will have to go to sooner or later.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Solution is to buy Chinese phone before its against the law.

nullc 5y ago
One can live without a phone. And outlaw phones won't likely be allowed on local phone networks. :P
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  LTE is quite standardized, although VoLTE is far from it. IMEIs can be spoofed. VoIP numbers are a thing (e.g. voip.ms, or google voice if you can go without emergency services). I forget if IMEI spoofing is a felony. So much policy on the books it would take me months to know for sure.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > outlaw phones won't likely be allowed on local phone networks Why is it even possible for them to know what sort of phone is trying to connect?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
We won't ever be free until we can manufacture computers at home just like we can write our own software at home. Right now, manufacturing computer hardware requires billions of dollars. Governments will target these centralized operations. We must decentralize hardware manufacturing.
- no_time 5y ago
  So..... Never?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Who knows? Maybe one day.
5y ago

dainiusse 5y ago

This approach just guarantees one - all the privacy talks from them is just marketing. You can not be serious about privacy and do this at the same time...

sekathlon 5y ago
Yes you obviously can.

z3ncyberpunk 5y ago

Apple has been a part of the NSA's PRISM program since like 2012. Why would you think they stopped spying since then?

bni 5y ago

Why is Google and others getting a pass? Google have blog posts from 2019 about scanning gmail and google drive for CSAM in the same way. All cloud providers scan user content, most for mining advertisement gold.

roenxi 5y ago
Google is an intentional privacy disaster. Apple was claiming to have standards.
Jabbles 5y ago
I feel that scanning data that is present on a server the company owns is very different to scanning data that is present on a device that they have sold to a user.
- djrogers 5y ago
  Even if the only data scanned on device is data that is in the process of being uploaded to a cloud server?
gigel82 5y ago
It most definitely isn't "in the same way". Not even "privacy slumlord supreme" Google dared scan files on your device. Yes, they scan stuff in the cloud (we all know this) as does Microsoft OneDrive / Outlook, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. but none of them dared to add code on your device to look at your private data.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Not even Google had the audacity to scan files stored on my physical phone. They can do whatever they want with their own computers, just leave my device alone.
meibo 5y ago
Apple is running "the phone that respects your privacy" ads in prime time slots for 3 years now. A lot of people have chosen apple devices based on this promise. You know what you get when you use Google accounts.

Cort3z 5y ago

The main argument here is that we are afraid that governments can demand, through court, that Apple should add some other hashes than the ones they start with. What is preventing those said governments from going through the same legal process demanding that Apple should implement such a system from scratch?

mrtksn 5y ago
Elections. If people start demanding maximum security, it can become a popular opinion. This can definitely happen but at the moment implementation of listening devices to everyone is unpopular. It's useful to remember that organisations are made of people with individual aspirations. Some would really want to have listening devices implemented to everyone so that they can do their jobs better(usually the intelligence people, the police etc), others will want it for less "Acceptable" reasons but at the end of the day the people who can allow or disallow it will have their careers determined by the general population in a very public manner.
- Cort3z 5y ago
  I would assume that elections isn't a guaranteed option in this though experiment.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    Of course, you can coups, you can have wars etc. That's why people should watch out to keep the Democracy intact, go vote and have a healthy level of interest to the political processes.
- amelius 5y ago
  > Elections. The problem: at least 90% of the population doesn't care about privacy, and scandals (see Facebook etc) have no influence on this whatsoever, so awareness-campaigns are not likely to work either.
beermonster 5y ago
Whistleblowers

JacksonGariety 5y ago

If you want to always be on the side of truth, learn Hegel's Logic. See my blog for more info: https://hegelsbagels.net/ https://hegelsbagels.net/

ashildr 5y ago

Google: We scan all the data you upload to us and store it unencrypted so we can scan it again if we feel like it. Apple: We scan only the data you decide to upload to us before you do so and store it encrypted so nobody, even us can see what it is. Press / FBI: Apple bad!

tyfon 5y ago
One has marketed it self as the privacy champion, the other has never pretended. That is the main difference. I'm still sticking to iphone due to it since it was not going to be implemented where I live anyway, but switching back to google would not be a good option. I'm currently looking at the pro 1x[1] phone though. [1] https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
- rambambram 5y ago
  Only because "Do no evil" is basically the lowest threshold one can think of.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Their motto was actually "don't be evil," but the shine wore off that apple pretty quick. It was dropped shortly after the dotcom explosion.
feanaro 5y ago
You're making it sound like stuff stored in the iCloud is E2E encrypted. And yes, both are bad, let's have none of that.
fossuser 5y ago
Yeah this is basically my take too. It really reveals how low quality most public discussion is on any complex or nuanced topic - specifics be damned.
- willis936 5y ago

tempodox 5y ago

> Apple has abandoned its once-famous commitment to security and privacy. The cat's out of the bag now that this has never been more than a marketing gimmick. You can rely on Apple to protect your data from their competition, but other than that they'll be at least as happy to implement dystopian surveillance nightmares as the next megacorp. This time they even won the prize for the worst idea ever.

askafriend 5y ago
Which cloud provider can you store your images on that does CSAM compliance in a more privacy friendly way? None. All the main ones scan your entire library of content you upload. Apple’s solution is the most privacy conscious by far.
- coolspot 5y ago
  Mega.io does CSAM compliance in a more privacy-friendly way: they scan their cloud day and night, but it is end-to-end encrypted, so the scan always returns exactly 0 results.
  - askafriend 5y ago
    Mega absolutely complies with law enforcement and does issue takedown requests. It’s all built into their policies. https://mega.io/takedown https://mega.io/takedown
    - coolspot 5y ago
      Takedown != content scanning
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  And why is this normal? Why can't they offer zero knowledge cloud storage? Encrypt before upload and decrypt after download. The less they know about the data, the less liable they are for anything. Data is and should be a massive liability for companies. They should aim to know as little as possible.

xedarius 5y ago

At this point I feel unsurpringly betrayed. As others have pointed out there is no going back. With little to no visibility on what the phone, the ipad, the mac-mini is doing, are they safe? I hear there's no device level scanning, has that been confirmed by someone other than Apple? What are you guys also doing? Is there a website that helpfully details how to get yourself out of the eco system? I can tell you what I have done so far, but it's very much work in progress. - Removed all photos from iCloud and turn off all iCloud stuff. - Backup up phones to my mac (encrypted), will transfer to nextcloud and NAS. - Built a NAS and now storing photos there - looking at. running PhotoPrism, but haven't made that work yet. - Transfered useful cloudstuff to Hetzner's NextCloud hosted. and enabled E2EE on certain folders. - I use NordVPN but I always have done. I realise it's a lot of effort to go to so I can privately store a pictures of me eating an ice cream in Rome ... but as we all know that's not really the point.

abacadaba 5y ago
Ya but now you're flagged as someone who has something to hide, possibly trying to clear off devices before the change was implemented. Hmm maybe that's their game. You don't need to scan, just need to see who deleted all their photo's over the last few days. A higher than random hit rate I'd guess.
- willis936 5y ago
  And what about all the people like me: imminently following the same path but never having used iCloud photos? You're suggesting they are faking one violation of the 4th amendment for a much more egregious violation of the 4th amendment. They (AAPL) have nothing to gain by doing this.
  - abacadaba 5y ago
    Just sayin, it's not a _completely_ unimaginable situation. If the FBI was somehow able to access to those delete logs.. Anecdotal: One year my brother was coming back from spring break and there was a sign that said "drug checkpoint 1 mile." right before an exit. Everyone that got off at the exit got searched.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

One must ask: What are they gaining from this technical garbage and publicity nightmare? It's not about the children, that's for sure.

cube00 5y ago
That's a very wide selection of services you're offering your customers, and they're very seamlessly integrated, and secured from open development (looking at you PWAs in Safari) it'd be a shame if they needed to be broken up or opened up with new legislation.

jasonlfunk 5y ago

The majority of these discussions are starting in the wrong place, I think. Instead of asking whether this specific feature is good or bad, we should start by asking whether Apple should be doing anything to try to stop the sexual exploitation of children. If the answer is "no, it's not Apple's job." then of course these plans are terrible. If the answer is "yes, Apple should try to use it's immense power and wealth to try to stop a terrible evil" - then the obvious follow up question is "How?". They could do whatever ever other company is doing and just looking at all of your data, but Apple didn't want to do that. So they came up with a system that they felt was a good compromise between privacy and trying to stop the spread of CSAM. If you want to quibble about the implementation details, that's fine. But if your position is that they shouldn't be looking at your data at all, then you have to go back to the first question and say "Apple should not be trying to stop the exploitation of children." Now you might say, "Yes, but 'what about the children?' has been used to justify terrible things." Granted. But... "what about the children?" is a very important question to ask and shouldn't be used as a cliche to dismiss Apple's attempt to make the world a better place in this area.

jasonlfunk 5y ago
If you say, 'Yes, apple should be doing something, but not this." I'd love to hear your ideas about how Apple can do more to stop CSAM while better protecting your privacy.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Detecting CSAM on a phone is not stopping exploitation of children. Just as detecting images of violence isn't stopping violence. Violence and abuse have existed before phones and cloud storage, and will continue to be ever after. And Apple cannot stop exploitation of children. Anything they try is trivial to circumvent, a massive breach of privacy, or both.
barbecue_sauce 5y ago
>But if your position is that they shouldn't be looking at your data at all, then you have to go back to the first question and say "Apple should not be trying to stop the exploitation of children." You're getting pretty far into "affirming the consequent" territory here.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Nobody has ever brought up this argument, but isn't it odd, despite all the self imposed backdoors in China, Apple is targeting the us market for the pedophilia stuff? Why is that so? No such thing for Android. Must be pressure from the government I suppose. Or did they somehow think this would pass the clients sniff test and can be sold as additional safety measure? The real why was never disclosed as far I am aware.

MontagFTB 5y ago
US legislation states that cloud storage providers are liable for storing/transmitting CSAM via their services. They are legally bound to identify and report it.

Sandro_Linux 5y ago

I agree with this one like I usually do with EFF

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nbzso 5y ago

I will share my solution: If I have something that spies 24/7 in my home or around me I throw it in the recycle bin. No more tech talk, implementation talk on closed software and dark pattern designed products by any company. Apple is using its market leader in "user convenience" position to normalize on device user behavior analysis and data processing and active policing. This is madness. I expect police and three letter agencies to use their own hacking tools and budget. I will not pay the bill on a multiple levels to be monitored and classified. Yes you can vote with your wallet as first reaction, as second you can push your representatives for political and legislative reaction. Imagine this news in 2010. For sure some Apple stores will be burned down to the ground. But make no mistake: If you don't buy products created from the get go to snoop around and extract your data, you will have more privacy. The only way into the future for people who want peace of mind is not to buy into smart home, smart appliances, smart cars and smart surveillance. Period. They are called smart for a reason. Because we are becoming stupider. Start self-hosting and local backups, there are tech savvy people who are moving away from surveillance state and building more private and sustainable future for themselves. Apple is the big writing on the wall. They act as political entity now, the users are their voters and as a classic politics move they are selling the audience to the highest bidder. Checks and balances.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
monkeybutton 5y ago
Have you tried to buy a new car or a home appliance recently? Its nigh impossible to buy something new that is plain old and dumb.
- nbzso 5y ago
  Yes, and this is a challenge. And nothing will change until your refrigerator reports you to the police for having too much beer in your possession:) Than all the "nothing to hide" people will revolt.
  - 5y ago

pachico 5y ago

My solution is simpler: I will never buy an Apple product.

KaiserPro 5y ago

What people have so far missed is the nugget burried way down in the small print. Apple are doing this because they have a child porn problem. The biggest suprise of this whole bruhaha is that _facebook_ of all the companies come out looking better than apple. Whatsapp essentially had the same issue: people using it to share nasty stuff. despite similar encryption issues, whatsapp manage to report hundreds of thousands of instances of nasty stuff, without putting in client side filters.

specialist 5y ago
Yes and: > Apple are doing this because they have a child porn problem. They're also under relentless pressure. From governments, who demand backdoors and full access. From hackers, who are pwning the entire stack. Like the EFF, I oppose the image scanning. But I'd like someone, anyone propose what Apple (Google, Facebook, ...) is supposed to do? My hunch is that Apple is trying to thread the needle. Do the absolute bare minimum, to fend off the inevitable governmental policy overreaches. Find some technical solution to mollify all the would be tyrants. If Apple's attempts to find a balance don't work, the default position is backdoors, not Matrix-style end-to-end full encryption. I'm not saying EFF should stfu. EFF and others should be savvy enough to see the meta game and advocate their own policy (platform) accordingly. Edit: u/dhx makes similar points https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28412861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28412861
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > But I'd like someone, anyone propose what Apple (Google, Facebook, ...) is supposed to do? I think what apple should do is follow Facebook/google's lead: the "report this message" button that _everyone_ else has. Obviously google doesn't encrypt user's stuff, so do server side scanning. Whatsapp supposedly relies entirely on reported messages. Given that iCloud accounts are tied directly to ID, it doesn't seem all that difficult for apple to get their report rate up just by letting users report stuff. > EFF and others should be savvy enough to see the meta game and advocate their own policy (platform) accordingly. agreed, the "EWWW NO NEVER EVER EVER" approach is counter productive, it just allows people to paint them as people that hide kiddyfiddlers. the wider public supports apple's drive a lot more than I would like. But apple do need to do something more, they apparently reported less than a thousand people for having illegal images.

nikkinana 5y ago

Absolutely not. Go Tim Apple! I have nothing to hide. Do you?

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

Oh well, even if Apple backs off they'll just try something else. Even though surveillance has always been a thing, the ability to both collect and parse the data is unparalleled. No need for Walsingham's secret police, or at least not so much anymore. The loose coalition that actually runs matters will do whatever it takes. I'd say that a lot of what drives this at the mass level is the need for revenge, that's a lot more fun than being for something. 9/11 occurs, lets get the bastids. The forces of the State are now arrayed at the evil TrumpWhiteSupremacistGuysWithFlags regardless of the lack of their actual presence on the street. You enemies need to be ground to dust. I doubt that boycotting Apple will make a lick of difference. In a time of turmoil your optimal solution is to cut dependencies on the system. It's a battle that should be watched from a distance and the soul-rot that comes through computer screens and cell phones is best kept to a minimum.

antattack 5y ago

This is not a delay, it's anoffensive to build up support - just look at the headlines: "Apple delays child abuse detection" "Apple delays plan to scan iPhones for child exploitation images" "Apple Delays Rollout of Child Safety Features" None headlines I could find pronounce that Apple is delaying their spying tool. None of the media seem to be on board with that characterization.

mmastrac 5y ago

I've been pondering the idea of an offline-first experience on a laptop for my own mental health for a while. I feel like computing was just so much better without the internet as a distraction. Who is in?

kongin 5y ago
Everyone who can't reply to you because they are offline.
smoldesu 5y ago
I'm already there! I loaded up a distraction-free work laptop with Ubuntu, i3, 20 gigs of ambient Spotify playlists and all the documentation it's poor little SSD could hold. I seldom connect that machine to the internet, when I do it's only to clone a repo or install a package.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

Perhaps someone here could lend some insight. Just exactly why is Apple doing this? I doubt that it was due to some huge upsurge in demand from it's customers. The arguments against are easy enough. This kind of tech is not ethically different from adding an all-seeing AI to your home that looks for illegal behavior. If something sketchy occurs, it calls the cops. 'It's for the children' is mockable, but isn't an unreasonable talking point. ...but what is the real driver and who is behind it? Merely guessing the cause is not particularly useful.

deepdmistry 5y ago
Probably the 3 letter agencies
MontagFTB 5y ago
As an ill-conceived means of holding both privacy and oversight at the same time? The main sticking point (as you know) isn’t what it looks like now, but how small a leap is required before the privacy is stripped away and all that’s left is oversight.
sigmar 5y ago
Lots of governments have been pushing it recently. Not sure who is pushing it in Apple (or why). Here's Matthew Green's thread from 4 months ago https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1392814211122843651 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13928142111228436... which is referencing this article that describes the recent push https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-encryption-child-abuse https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-encryption-child-ab...
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  It would be great if someone from Apple spilled the beans on what actually went down. No doubt the Apple Internal Affairs Department would be all over that. It would be a good test for Apple Privacy(tm).

max_ 5y ago

The real problem is that their are no real replacements to apple products.

memetomancer 5y ago

This is so frustrating, I generally expected the Hacker News community to observe a more sophisticated take on this topic. Let's get it straight: the other Big Tech companies have done this CSAM scanning for many, many years. Their users have been reported. Arrests have been made. Microsoft had this sorted in 2009 with PhotoDNA, and made it available to everyone else in 2014[1]. I doubt very much this has stopped any of you from working at Microsoft or the FAANGs when given the chance. The ONLY distinctions here are that Apple has opted to do the mundane hashing part on the device prior to upload, have been up front about the plan, have take comments from the public and are saying that they will work out a more satisfying scheme. Apple even appears to be responsive to the shady claims that a 'reverse engineered (old) version of NeuralHash' might have resulted in some novel collisions, and spend the money to improve their current implementation. The other big tech concerns did not do these things; they simply imposed it all and started informing the police. As far as I can see, the only real misstep Apple has taken is being explicit about their plans and assuming people could understand the scope of the subject at hand. Instead they've stepped into a bear-trap of outraged hysteria, a moral panic from people who should know better. The take away lesson here is "Do not announce stuff like this, the general public will flip out if you try to keep them informed". Is that anyone's goal here? [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

blagie 5y ago
There are two possibilities: 1) You're missing something. 2) Everyone else is missing something. That includes organizations like the EFF. In terms of missing nuance: What Facebook is doing absolutely and completely different from what Apple is doing. You should take time to understand why Apple's approach is so utterly repulsive, while I'm 100% in support of Facebook's. There are distinctions other than your "ONLY distinctions." You should take time to understand what those are, and why they're important. As a hint, those have to do with where users might or might not have expectations of privacy, with due process, and with who owns what.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  The EFF's goal is to get donations. Hence why they've lied about the system since the beginning to stoke outrage.

nothrowaways 5y ago

Porn is apple's new terrorism

AHappyCamper 5y ago

I am adding my comment for what it's worth. This reckless grab for power is immoral and contradicts Apple's core values. They must stop all attempts at surveilling their users or lose their user-base altogether. Apple, stop this evil plan!

fidesomnes 5y ago

"No, you cannot make more money with your new thing!" scolds the toothless banshee of grift.