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I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a c

by pm90 5y ago

I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a consumer...all my devices are Apple devices. I have a equitable choice for cellphone network providers. I don’t really for device ecosystems. It sucks but I also think that leaving Apple has a very high cost as a consumer; that the right solution may be through regulations.

bitexploder 5y ago
I know this sounds crazy, but even 10 years ago humans happily existed in a world where we didn’t have ubiquitous cloud providers that ruled our lives. Why does it matter? I took plenty of pictures. I still have all of them. In fact there are some physical logistics, but they will probably still be around in 30-40 years. Who knows about my Dropbox account. Every so often I do ship an encrypted hard drive down to my parents house. It is a backup of everything. What is it about modern phones we actually can’t live without? Or modern cloud? The answer is not much. They are recent inventions. Not required for a convenient or fulfilled life. I do use an Apple phone, I’m typing this on one. But I’m ready for when or whenever I feel like ditching them. I recommend everyone with the means be likewise prepared. Also backblaze is a nice place to warehouse data for now. They will get bought. Another independent broker will come along. Anyhow. Don’t be a slave.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I heartily agree. I hate that Apple is effectively negating their promise of E2EE with client-side scanning, which may be the most invasive of all options. But if you aren't a slave to Apple's cloud, then no worries. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used their mobile devices - as it is, I'm Android+MacOS. Any old remote volume is fine for backups - even S3 - if your backups are encrypted client-side and your keys are somewhere physically safe. There was some real screaming when people realized Apple was doing an end-run around firewalls like Little Snitch. I don't expect that to happen again. I block every single Apple app that attempts to call home, and hosts-file-out every one of their domains I come across, and my Mac runs great. Ultimately I think Apple's trying its best to be in compliance without screwing their users. Fair warning, there is no platform you don't build yourself that you can trust. People who don't protect their own privacy may arguably deserve their privacy being violated. People in the free world need to learn this lesson the hard way, apparently, before they stop voting for clowns who want to gut encryption.
- rvense 5y ago
  I wish I could agree with you. But so many things are apps now, only available from official app stores. This goes far beyond convenience, at least in my country. You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app. Nobody uses cash here anymore, everyone uses cards, and for private transactions there's an app (yes, just one, owned by one of the banks). So if you want to buy stuff from someone who isn't a shop, say at a flea market, or split the bill for dinner when you're out with some friends, you need that app to participate. The app is tied to a bank account (in any bank), but this is not a problem since everyone has bank accounts (government mandate). Most of the big supermarket chains have their own apps now that can be used for payments. Of course, you can still by card or cash. Accepting cash is a legal requirement, but that is likely to be phased out over the next few years, and who knows what framework will replace it. If it becomes legally possible, I wouldn't rule out some places being inaccessible to the non-smartphoned here in time, since penetration is so high. We have government mandated single sign-on service that is a requirement for communicating with any public institution, as well as banks and many other places. It doesn't strictly require an app in its current form (you can get a printed one-time pad), but there's a new version just being introduced that seems to be even more tied to the app, and the alternative seems to be exclusively meant for senior citizens.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app. So? Just get a cheapo iPhone or Android and use said app. You don't have to make your phone the center of your life.
    - rvense 5y ago
      It's an interesting argument, because you're saying it's fine that we're forced to have one of these devices, and that we're expected to carry it everywhere, or face being excluded from many aspects of society. For some things I can accept it (parking is a grey area to me personally since I don't actually know how to drive), but for e.g. person-to-person payments, I find the current situation untenable.
  - lrvick 5y ago
- bamboozled 5y ago
  I absolutely 100% agree with this, I can also more and more see the value in the web. At one stage I was like, screw the web experience, I enjoyed using an App, but this is what happens. We're locked into the Apple cco-system because we're hooked on apps. This is such a disaster on so many levels. The USA is looking more like China to me now, the Government now wants to monitor your phone intimately. Fuck off. I need a new phone, I've decided that I'm going to break my dependency on Apple because of this. I'll buy a second hand iPad to call my family on Facetime, and that's it. I will likely go for a Purism.
- Taurenking 5y ago
demux 5y ago
I don't understand this argument, in fact I'd argue the opposite. Non-Apple devices are way cheaper, both for the device itself and considering the fact that one isn't paying a premium for each peripheral (headphones, freakin charger etc). And if you're referring to the interconnectedness of devices this is attainable with alternatives (even FOSS like KDE connect) albeit with some setup time.
- taeric 5y ago
  I mean. I don't disagree with your points. But I still highly suspect that time would prove the apple ecosystem fairly well established.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  The only Apple device I use is my mac, but I probably wouldn't switch off it unless there was a more compelling option. There are other viable options, but viable only matters if there's some pressure. I certainly wouldn't sell my car if I had one because another car is equally good or marginally better, it would have to be way better and at least as nice to use in some way. In the future, a new mac is still the most compelling option, for my purposes. The phone is basically a commodity though. I like Android enough, but I get the best value thing I can for under $500.
- pm90 5y ago
  The cost I mention is the time/labor cost of switching over to a new ecosystem and making it work in the way I expect it to. I’m just not technically capable (or have the inclination) to spend an insignificant amount of time in getting this custom thing set up. When I buy a TV I don’t really want to care about how the internals work, It’s a black box that I expect to work as designed.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    >The time/labor cost of switching You're tech savvy or you aren't.
- thrashh 5y ago
  For me, I always had to worry about my Android phone being out of battery because some background app sucked it all dry. And I used Android for years and Google always promised improvements in their releases, but they never really fixed it for me. Switching to iOS meant that I couldn’t run background apps anymore at all but that honestly was a worthwhile compromise for me. I also honestly have like 100 apps on my iPhone and it handles it like a champ. I could never do half of that with my Android.
eddyg 5y ago
> I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. Do you prefer the server-side scanning that every other “big player” that stores end-user data in their data centers is already doing?
- pm90 5y ago
  No. I’m not ok with ad targeting either. It’s just another reality that I’ve accepted as the status quo.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I don't prefer any scanning but it is so much to make client side scanning the norm without a search warrant.
lovelyviking 5y ago
>I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. ... It sucks but I also think that leaving Apple has a very high cost as a consumer; Isn't it a big mistake that many people unfortunately make when they are trying to evaluate personal freedoms rights and values in terms of consumer costs? "I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem." One thing to consider is that if you would not you'll pay much more later even though at the moment it decisively appears relatively safe. Nevertheless by staying with them in such case you'll give them a clear sign that they can abuse you much more and they will. Why not? >that the right solution may be through regulations. The full control of devices you own is absolutely essential. It requires a complete transparency of basic components like cpu micro-code, firmware and hardware otherwise it can and will be abused. Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way.
- pm90 5y ago
  > Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way. Sure, why can’t eg the EFF sue Apple to force them to abandon this practice? I would donate to that cause.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Because it will not help. Maybe they will obtain a small victory so that Apple will not do today that. But the war is lost.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    There's nothing to sue for, the fourth amendment / warrantless search is about government action and does not prohibit Apple to do that with hardware/software they make, it is not legal grounds to force them to abandon this practice.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way. Depends on the country/laws. In the US, I'd say, as soon as judges got to decide for the people what "privacy" means, with BS "expectation of privacy" interpretations, anything goes...
tomrod 5y ago
What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave? There are some switching costs to be sure. I wrote a custom MP3 tag identifier at one point when switching off an Ipod. But do they just make exports cumbersome, expensive, or what?
- pm90 5y ago
  They’re really dumb and simple and their shit works without too much fiddling.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  > What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave? It's a weird phenomenon. I don't use Apple devices, but my wife does. When she got into photography, I asked several tech forums as well as photography forums if there was an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader[1] for Macs. It's a nice Linux program that lets you conveniently rename images you're transferring from your camera, and put them in a folder that follows some rule you define. Nothing complex. The responses I got just drove me nuts. Universally I was told I was doing it all wrong. I should use the standard Mac way of doing things. I forget the details, but it was basically "Let the standard Mac app import it into its library." Well, where in the HD are the files, so we can do backups? "You don't need to know that. Just let iCloud handle it." What if I don't want to use iCloud? No good responses to that other than "Why wouldn't you use iCloud?" My wife wanted to use Darktable which wasn't inherently aware of the Mac way of doing things and insisted on simple folders and files. The responses I got were: "You can export from the Mac app to a folder, and then point Darktable to it. Then when Darktable exports to JPEG, make sure you import the output files back into the Mac app." But wouldn't that consume double the space? "Yes." When I explained that wasn't a viable option, I got a lot of hate. And everyone told me setting up a folder/file structure for photos was Wrong and I didn't get the Mac way of doing things. Now I'm sure there are simple ways of doing what I wanted on Macs. What surprised me was how much push back I was getting, and how even otherwise tech savvy folks (e.g. who know Linux quite well) couldn't answer my basic questions. Reminded me of an Oakland cult[2] where the cult had set up their own parallel institutions that handled everything for its members (banks, paying bills, groceries, etc). They lived right in the city - not in a remote land they purchased, but the cult members had no idea how to function with the rest of society. People who decided to leave the cult had no idea how to pay electric bills or do banking. [1] https://damonlynch.net/rapid/ https://damonlynch.net/rapid/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Black_Muslim_Bakery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Black_Muslim_Bakery
crystalmeph 5y ago
“.. the right solution may be through regulations.” I’m unclear, are you saying that regulators should prevent Apple from doing client-side scanning? If so, that’s entirely unrealistic. Government regulators would love to require even more intrusive capabilities.
- pm90 5y ago
  I’m sure FBI would; but there are other agencies that fight for consumer rights like the FCC/FTC; plus Legislators who care about privacy.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I will leave. I'm already all linux on PCs I gave my two macbooks to relatives. If they push the full project on iphone they will completely lose me as a customer. I'll move my data and forget about them as an option. If you want to give up that's fine I guess.
coldtea 5y ago
>But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a consumer...all my devices are Apple devices. So? You can use any of those with a Linux or Windows box.

by pm90 5y ago

bitexploder 5y ago

I know this sounds crazy, but even 10 years ago humans happily existed in a world where we didn’t have ubiquitous cloud providers that ruled our lives. Why does it matter? I took plenty of pictures. I still have all of them. In fact there are some physical logistics, but they will probably still be around in 30-40 years. Who knows about my Dropbox account. Every so often I do ship an encrypted hard drive down to my parents house. It is a backup of everything. What is it about modern phones we actually can’t live without? Or modern cloud? The answer is not much. They are recent inventions. Not required for a convenient or fulfilled life. I do use an Apple phone, I’m typing this on one. But I’m ready for when or whenever I feel like ditching them. I recommend everyone with the means be likewise prepared. Also backblaze is a nice place to warehouse data for now. They will get bought. Another independent broker will come along. Anyhow. Don’t be a slave.

noduerme 5y ago
I heartily agree. I hate that Apple is effectively negating their promise of E2EE with client-side scanning, which may be the most invasive of all options. But if you aren't a slave to Apple's cloud, then no worries. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used their mobile devices - as it is, I'm Android+MacOS. Any old remote volume is fine for backups - even S3 - if your backups are encrypted client-side and your keys are somewhere physically safe. There was some real screaming when people realized Apple was doing an end-run around firewalls like Little Snitch. I don't expect that to happen again. I block every single Apple app that attempts to call home, and hosts-file-out every one of their domains I come across, and my Mac runs great. Ultimately I think Apple's trying its best to be in compliance without screwing their users. Fair warning, there is no platform you don't build yourself that you can trust. People who don't protect their own privacy may arguably deserve their privacy being violated. People in the free world need to learn this lesson the hard way, apparently, before they stop voting for clowns who want to gut encryption.
rvense 5y ago
I wish I could agree with you. But so many things are apps now, only available from official app stores. This goes far beyond convenience, at least in my country. You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app. Nobody uses cash here anymore, everyone uses cards, and for private transactions there's an app (yes, just one, owned by one of the banks). So if you want to buy stuff from someone who isn't a shop, say at a flea market, or split the bill for dinner when you're out with some friends, you need that app to participate. The app is tied to a bank account (in any bank), but this is not a problem since everyone has bank accounts (government mandate). Most of the big supermarket chains have their own apps now that can be used for payments. Of course, you can still by card or cash. Accepting cash is a legal requirement, but that is likely to be phased out over the next few years, and who knows what framework will replace it. If it becomes legally possible, I wouldn't rule out some places being inaccessible to the non-smartphoned here in time, since penetration is so high. We have government mandated single sign-on service that is a requirement for communicating with any public institution, as well as banks and many other places. It doesn't strictly require an app in its current form (you can get a printed one-time pad), but there's a new version just being introduced that seems to be even more tied to the app, and the alternative seems to be exclusively meant for senior citizens.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app. So? Just get a cheapo iPhone or Android and use said app. You don't have to make your phone the center of your life.
  - rvense 5y ago
    It's an interesting argument, because you're saying it's fine that we're forced to have one of these devices, and that we're expected to carry it everywhere, or face being excluded from many aspects of society. For some things I can accept it (parking is a grey area to me personally since I don't actually know how to drive), but for e.g. person-to-person payments, I find the current situation untenable.
- lrvick 5y ago
bamboozled 5y ago
I absolutely 100% agree with this, I can also more and more see the value in the web. At one stage I was like, screw the web experience, I enjoyed using an App, but this is what happens. We're locked into the Apple cco-system because we're hooked on apps. This is such a disaster on so many levels. The USA is looking more like China to me now, the Government now wants to monitor your phone intimately. Fuck off. I need a new phone, I've decided that I'm going to break my dependency on Apple because of this. I'll buy a second hand iPad to call my family on Facetime, and that's it. I will likely go for a Purism.
Taurenking 5y ago

demux 5y ago

I don't understand this argument, in fact I'd argue the opposite. Non-Apple devices are way cheaper, both for the device itself and considering the fact that one isn't paying a premium for each peripheral (headphones, freakin charger etc). And if you're referring to the interconnectedness of devices this is attainable with alternatives (even FOSS like KDE connect) albeit with some setup time.

taeric 5y ago
I mean. I don't disagree with your points. But I still highly suspect that time would prove the apple ecosystem fairly well established.
brailsafe 5y ago
The only Apple device I use is my mac, but I probably wouldn't switch off it unless there was a more compelling option. There are other viable options, but viable only matters if there's some pressure. I certainly wouldn't sell my car if I had one because another car is equally good or marginally better, it would have to be way better and at least as nice to use in some way. In the future, a new mac is still the most compelling option, for my purposes. The phone is basically a commodity though. I like Android enough, but I get the best value thing I can for under $500.
pm90 5y ago
The cost I mention is the time/labor cost of switching over to a new ecosystem and making it work in the way I expect it to. I’m just not technically capable (or have the inclination) to spend an insignificant amount of time in getting this custom thing set up. When I buy a TV I don’t really want to care about how the internals work, It’s a black box that I expect to work as designed.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  >The time/labor cost of switching You're tech savvy or you aren't.
thrashh 5y ago
For me, I always had to worry about my Android phone being out of battery because some background app sucked it all dry. And I used Android for years and Google always promised improvements in their releases, but they never really fixed it for me. Switching to iOS meant that I couldn’t run background apps anymore at all but that honestly was a worthwhile compromise for me. I also honestly have like 100 apps on my iPhone and it handles it like a champ. I could never do half of that with my Android.

eddyg 5y ago

> I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. Do you prefer the server-side scanning that every other “big player” that stores end-user data in their data centers is already doing?

pm90 5y ago
No. I’m not ok with ad targeting either. It’s just another reality that I’ve accepted as the status quo.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I don't prefer any scanning but it is so much to make client side scanning the norm without a search warrant.

lovelyviking 5y ago

>I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. ... It sucks but I also think that leaving Apple has a very high cost as a consumer; Isn't it a big mistake that many people unfortunately make when they are trying to evaluate personal freedoms rights and values in terms of consumer costs? "I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem." One thing to consider is that if you would not you'll pay much more later even though at the moment it decisively appears relatively safe. Nevertheless by staying with them in such case you'll give them a clear sign that they can abuse you much more and they will. Why not? >that the right solution may be through regulations. The full control of devices you own is absolutely essential. It requires a complete transparency of basic components like cpu micro-code, firmware and hardware otherwise it can and will be abused. Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way.

pm90 5y ago
> Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way. Sure, why can’t eg the EFF sue Apple to force them to abandon this practice? I would donate to that cause.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Because it will not help. Maybe they will obtain a small victory so that Apple will not do today that. But the war is lost.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  There's nothing to sue for, the fourth amendment / warrantless search is about government action and does not prohibit Apple to do that with hardware/software they make, it is not legal grounds to force them to abandon this practice.
coldtea 5y ago
>Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way. Depends on the country/laws. In the US, I'd say, as soon as judges got to decide for the people what "privacy" means, with BS "expectation of privacy" interpretations, anything goes...

tomrod 5y ago

What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave? There are some switching costs to be sure. I wrote a custom MP3 tag identifier at one point when switching off an Ipod. But do they just make exports cumbersome, expensive, or what?

pm90 5y ago
They’re really dumb and simple and their shit works without too much fiddling.
BeetleB 5y ago
> What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave? It's a weird phenomenon. I don't use Apple devices, but my wife does. When she got into photography, I asked several tech forums as well as photography forums if there was an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader[1] for Macs. It's a nice Linux program that lets you conveniently rename images you're transferring from your camera, and put them in a folder that follows some rule you define. Nothing complex. The responses I got just drove me nuts. Universally I was told I was doing it all wrong. I should use the standard Mac way of doing things. I forget the details, but it was basically "Let the standard Mac app import it into its library." Well, where in the HD are the files, so we can do backups? "You don't need to know that. Just let iCloud handle it." What if I don't want to use iCloud? No good responses to that other than "Why wouldn't you use iCloud?" My wife wanted to use Darktable which wasn't inherently aware of the Mac way of doing things and insisted on simple folders and files. The responses I got were: "You can export from the Mac app to a folder, and then point Darktable to it. Then when Darktable exports to JPEG, make sure you import the output files back into the Mac app." But wouldn't that consume double the space? "Yes." When I explained that wasn't a viable option, I got a lot of hate. And everyone told me setting up a folder/file structure for photos was Wrong and I didn't get the Mac way of doing things. Now I'm sure there are simple ways of doing what I wanted on Macs. What surprised me was how much push back I was getting, and how even otherwise tech savvy folks (e.g. who know Linux quite well) couldn't answer my basic questions. Reminded me of an Oakland cult[2] where the cult had set up their own parallel institutions that handled everything for its members (banks, paying bills, groceries, etc). They lived right in the city - not in a remote land they purchased, but the cult members had no idea how to function with the rest of society. People who decided to leave the cult had no idea how to pay electric bills or do banking. [1] https://damonlynch.net/rapid/ https://damonlynch.net/rapid/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Black_Muslim_Bakery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Black_Muslim_Bakery

crystalmeph 5y ago

“.. the right solution may be through regulations.” I’m unclear, are you saying that regulators should prevent Apple from doing client-side scanning? If so, that’s entirely unrealistic. Government regulators would love to require even more intrusive capabilities.

pm90 5y ago
I’m sure FBI would; but there are other agencies that fight for consumer rights like the FCC/FTC; plus Legislators who care about privacy.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I will leave. I'm already all linux on PCs I gave my two macbooks to relatives. If they push the full project on iphone they will completely lose me as a customer. I'll move my data and forget about them as an option. If you want to give up that's fine I guess.

coldtea 5y ago

>But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a consumer...all my devices are Apple devices. So? You can use any of those with a Linux or Windows box.