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I wish HN was better at evaluating anything around this, HN's response to anything on this topic makes it hard to know what the actual truth is. Maybe this act

I wish HN was better at evaluating anything around this, HN's response to anything on this topic makes it hard to know what the actual truth is. Maybe this act is as bad as people are saying it is, but the Apple policy wasn't and the response here was the same. I'll defer judgement until I can actually read it.

echelon 5y ago
> the Apple policy wasn't The Apple policy on your device ratting you out is abominable and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you a brand. What you deem illegal might not be the same thing Apple is told to treat as illegal. In this country or elsewhere. You phone should not be the secret police.
- gonehome 5y ago
  This kind of response illustrates my point. The apple policy was likely about coming up with a way to enable encrypted photos on iCloud while still having some privacy preserving form of CSAM detection. Since it was only enabled when iCloud photos was enabled it was better for privacy on net than the status quo (unencrypted iCloud photos that are accessible to apple and scanned anyway). Now we may end up with a worse outcome as a result. The Bluetooth exposure notification design early in the pandemic was similarly privacy preserving and the average HN response was similarly stupid. There are just some topics this forum is not a reliable source of accurate information about and this is unfortunately one of them. This isn’t because I don’t think access to real encryption is incredibly important (I do) - I just think it’s important to get the details right. Otherwise we’ll just get dismissed on these issues for ignoring the specifics and crying wolf on everything.
  - kanbara 5y ago
    people are extremely up-in-arms about something that apple already does, and that every other cloud provider do, but when they made it public everyone went crazy. now we don't have CSAM scanning, totally unencrypted and accessible iCloud Photo Library, and for what? because people want privacy. you don't own anyone else's cloud and you never will, and especially not with government intervention. while i support privacy, i also think it's like freedom of speech, in theory it sounds great but in reality you end up with nazis walking around if you don't have the ability to deter them. data on my computer == private without a warrant and due cause. data on someone's server == as private as could be, but i don't own it so i can't demand that it be secure from all aspects, especially uploading CSAM.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >people are extremely up-in-arms about something that apple already does, and that every other cloud provider do >data on my computer == private without a warrant and due cause. Apple technology was/will track on your phone directly via AI scanning text messages for nudity. The engine lived on your phone, not in their farm. Therefore your second statement I quoted would now be false. That's why everyone (or the ones in the know) was pissed.
      - gonehome 5y ago
        Only when syncing photos to iCloud is enabled and the photo is being uploaded. That’s the critical bit. If it was operating without cloud access I’d agree with you, but it wasn’t so I don’t. It only makes sense to do this in the context of encrypting the cloud - otherwise it’s a pointless move that hurts PR.
        hda2 5y ago
        > Only when syncing photos to iCloud is enabled and the photo is being uploaded. For now. If a "feature" like this exists, it WILL be abused like many before it.
        gonehome 5y ago
        I don't really buy this, I don't think this feature makes abuse any more likely and it's important to be loud against features that are actually abuse vs. ones that are just adjacent to something that is abuse. The difference matters, particularly when the pragmatic approach could allow encryption of images on iCloud without any actual downside given the constraints. If people act like all actions are equivalent then we'll just end up ignored by legislators. These differences matter.
        hda2 5y ago
        I don't think this difference is relevant here. We've seen many technological features that were supposed to be only used in a very narrow use-cases be abused by governments. Contact tracing technologies (for covid-19) being the most recent victim where they are now being used by governments to track political protesters, criminals, and seemingly anyone else that catches their fancy. I've seen this cycle play out enough time to know better. Governments never relinquish power. If client-side scanning that can report users to authorities ever becomes wide spread, governments _will_ abuse it. Democracies _will_ suffer and humanity _will_ be worse off for it.
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    > The apple policy was likely about coming up with a way to enable encrypted photos on iCloud while still having some privacy preserving form of CSAM detection. Since it was only enabled when iCloud photos was enabled it was better for privacy on net than the status quo (unencrypted iCloud photos that are accessible to apple and scanned anyway). This is an unsupported hypothetical about a future change Apple may have made. The only announcement they made was the client-side scanning which is at best equivalent to the status quo.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      Sure, but it’s not a huge leap to think it through. In hindsight they obviously should have waited until the cloud encryption was ready to ship at the same time. They probably thought the announcement would be good for PR from the general public even without that and were surprised. If you’re right that cloud encryption was never the plan then I agree what they did doesn’t make sense and they should have just scanned images on the servers instead of bothering with all the fuss.
  - drenvuk 5y ago
    You were wrong then and you're wrong now. It's not really possible to be cordial about this topic. There should never be any process acting against the user's interests on a device that they own. Ever. Full stop. The only reasonable option is to do full encryption on the device without any system that allows inspection or identification of the material being encrypted. It didn't matter that vouchers enabled the decryption of the material after a threshold was hit. There would have been logic running on everyone's device acting as a snitch. At some point that functionality would be expanded and abused. Your optimistic point of view does not align with the reality of how this kind of technical capability becomes misused over time. The ones that create these things are not the ones that control them 20 years later.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      It only ran when iCloud was enabled for photos - this makes it essentially a cloud feature. If this wasn't the case I'd agree with you. I think it's a better outcome if it leads to iCloud encryption. A reasonable person could think it's better to just have iCloud remain unencrypted and keep that separation strict in a more pure kind of sense (scan of unencrypted photos on server vs. hash threshold test on upload), but I think that person would have to acknowledge that the policy as described (only being enabled with iCloud photos enabled) is not worse (and if it enabled iCloud encryption is better on net for privacy) than the default in terms of what is specifically happening. It's more of an ideological argument about separation of server/device than what the specific implementation was.
      - drenvuk 5y ago
        > this makes it essentially a cloud feature. Wrong. Physically, the routines run on the device. It is not a cloud feature by definition. There are no wormholes here. The work happens on the device. When this work happens the device's battery gets drained so it's happening on the device. It's not a cloud feature. Both technically and physically you are wrong here. I hate that you have this wrong and continue to say it. Stop saying it because you are actually lying. It's not a better outcome because other companies with the follower-like mentality that most product managers and execs have would attempt to copy and one up Apple only to create a worse and more easily abusable implementation, just like the notch. Just like any socially acceptable easily marketable act that can be hashtagged and spread. That idea would have been an infection of the worst kind.

echelon 5y ago

> the Apple policy wasn't The Apple policy on your device ratting you out is abominable and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you a brand. What you deem illegal might not be the same thing Apple is told to treat as illegal. In this country or elsewhere. You phone should not be the secret police.

gonehome 5y ago
This kind of response illustrates my point. The apple policy was likely about coming up with a way to enable encrypted photos on iCloud while still having some privacy preserving form of CSAM detection. Since it was only enabled when iCloud photos was enabled it was better for privacy on net than the status quo (unencrypted iCloud photos that are accessible to apple and scanned anyway). Now we may end up with a worse outcome as a result. The Bluetooth exposure notification design early in the pandemic was similarly privacy preserving and the average HN response was similarly stupid. There are just some topics this forum is not a reliable source of accurate information about and this is unfortunately one of them. This isn’t because I don’t think access to real encryption is incredibly important (I do) - I just think it’s important to get the details right. Otherwise we’ll just get dismissed on these issues for ignoring the specifics and crying wolf on everything.
- kanbara 5y ago
  people are extremely up-in-arms about something that apple already does, and that every other cloud provider do, but when they made it public everyone went crazy. now we don't have CSAM scanning, totally unencrypted and accessible iCloud Photo Library, and for what? because people want privacy. you don't own anyone else's cloud and you never will, and especially not with government intervention. while i support privacy, i also think it's like freedom of speech, in theory it sounds great but in reality you end up with nazis walking around if you don't have the ability to deter them. data on my computer == private without a warrant and due cause. data on someone's server == as private as could be, but i don't own it so i can't demand that it be secure from all aspects, especially uploading CSAM.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >people are extremely up-in-arms about something that apple already does, and that every other cloud provider do >data on my computer == private without a warrant and due cause. Apple technology was/will track on your phone directly via AI scanning text messages for nudity. The engine lived on your phone, not in their farm. Therefore your second statement I quoted would now be false. That's why everyone (or the ones in the know) was pissed.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      Only when syncing photos to iCloud is enabled and the photo is being uploaded. That’s the critical bit. If it was operating without cloud access I’d agree with you, but it wasn’t so I don’t. It only makes sense to do this in the context of encrypting the cloud - otherwise it’s a pointless move that hurts PR.
      - hda2 5y ago
        > Only when syncing photos to iCloud is enabled and the photo is being uploaded. For now. If a "feature" like this exists, it WILL be abused like many before it.
        gonehome 5y ago
        I don't really buy this, I don't think this feature makes abuse any more likely and it's important to be loud against features that are actually abuse vs. ones that are just adjacent to something that is abuse. The difference matters, particularly when the pragmatic approach could allow encryption of images on iCloud without any actual downside given the constraints. If people act like all actions are equivalent then we'll just end up ignored by legislators. These differences matter.
        hda2 5y ago
        I don't think this difference is relevant here. We've seen many technological features that were supposed to be only used in a very narrow use-cases be abused by governments. Contact tracing technologies (for covid-19) being the most recent victim where they are now being used by governments to track political protesters, criminals, and seemingly anyone else that catches their fancy. I've seen this cycle play out enough time to know better. Governments never relinquish power. If client-side scanning that can report users to authorities ever becomes wide spread, governments _will_ abuse it. Democracies _will_ suffer and humanity _will_ be worse off for it.
- ben-schaaf 5y ago
  > The apple policy was likely about coming up with a way to enable encrypted photos on iCloud while still having some privacy preserving form of CSAM detection. Since it was only enabled when iCloud photos was enabled it was better for privacy on net than the status quo (unencrypted iCloud photos that are accessible to apple and scanned anyway). This is an unsupported hypothetical about a future change Apple may have made. The only announcement they made was the client-side scanning which is at best equivalent to the status quo.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    Sure, but it’s not a huge leap to think it through. In hindsight they obviously should have waited until the cloud encryption was ready to ship at the same time. They probably thought the announcement would be good for PR from the general public even without that and were surprised. If you’re right that cloud encryption was never the plan then I agree what they did doesn’t make sense and they should have just scanned images on the servers instead of bothering with all the fuss.
- drenvuk 5y ago
  You were wrong then and you're wrong now. It's not really possible to be cordial about this topic. There should never be any process acting against the user's interests on a device that they own. Ever. Full stop. The only reasonable option is to do full encryption on the device without any system that allows inspection or identification of the material being encrypted. It didn't matter that vouchers enabled the decryption of the material after a threshold was hit. There would have been logic running on everyone's device acting as a snitch. At some point that functionality would be expanded and abused. Your optimistic point of view does not align with the reality of how this kind of technical capability becomes misused over time. The ones that create these things are not the ones that control them 20 years later.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    It only ran when iCloud was enabled for photos - this makes it essentially a cloud feature. If this wasn't the case I'd agree with you. I think it's a better outcome if it leads to iCloud encryption. A reasonable person could think it's better to just have iCloud remain unencrypted and keep that separation strict in a more pure kind of sense (scan of unencrypted photos on server vs. hash threshold test on upload), but I think that person would have to acknowledge that the policy as described (only being enabled with iCloud photos enabled) is not worse (and if it enabled iCloud encryption is better on net for privacy) than the default in terms of what is specifically happening. It's more of an ideological argument about separation of server/device than what the specific implementation was.
    - drenvuk 5y ago
      > this makes it essentially a cloud feature. Wrong. Physically, the routines run on the device. It is not a cloud feature by definition. There are no wormholes here. The work happens on the device. When this work happens the device's battery gets drained so it's happening on the device. It's not a cloud feature. Both technically and physically you are wrong here. I hate that you have this wrong and continue to say it. Stop saying it because you are actually lying. It's not a better outcome because other companies with the follower-like mentality that most product managers and execs have would attempt to copy and one up Apple only to create a worse and more easily abusable implementation, just like the notch. Just like any socially acceptable easily marketable act that can be hashtagged and spread. That idea would have been an infection of the worst kind.