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Apple has literally proposed using the phone you bought and paid for to spy on you and report you to the authorities if you do bad things. While they backed dow

• cortesoft 4y ago
  Umm, Google also reports you to authorities for bad things https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
  • gpm 4y ago
    Google reports you to the authorities, the phone you purchased from Google, but now own, does not.
    • jeromegv 4y ago
      So basically. As of now, Apple does nothing as they backed down from that plan. And google reports you to authorities and never stopped and also never went public about letting you know they were doing it (at least apple published a freaking press release to announce it and ask for feedback!) And somehow that makes Apple worse.
      • gpm 4y ago
        To be clear, Apples current actual activities is the same as Googles current actual activites. They scan files uploaded to their cloud services and report you to the authorities if they discover illegal material. Both companies are of course unable to detect CSAM in encrypted files, and Apple encrypts more files by default meaning that the impact of their current policy is somewhat less than Googles. Neither company has ever felt the need to make splashy press releases about this. Apple additionally has said that they will (though have backed off on the timing to "some time in the future") said that they will use your hardware to scan your photos and have it report you to the authorities.
        • judge2020 4y ago
          > To be clear, Apples current actual activities is the same as Googles current actual activites. They scan files uploaded to their cloud services and report you to the authorities if they discover illegal material Actually, they don't, at least according to Hacker Factor. There's definitely not only 160 images of CSAM uploaded to iCloud Photos every year. > Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years! https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NCMEC-2021-Reporting.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
          • gpm 4y ago
            Interesting, Apples privacy policy says that they can scan data you upload for illegal content and report it, news articles from when this blew up in the news said that Apple did for services like iMail (that upload in an unencrypted form). I can't speak towards what they actually currently do. My understanding of iCloud photos is that they're encrypted, as in Apple can't scan them on the server, but I'd imagine across they're cloud services they ought to be seeing more unencrypted content than that. I also don't care nearly as much about their servers scanning content that they are in possession of, as my device scanning content that I am in possession of... so I probably should have stayed out of this part of the argument a bit better. Oh well. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ (See Apple's Use of Personal Data) https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/23/apple-scans-icloud-mail-for-csam/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/23/apple-scans-icloud-mail-for-c...
            • ec109685 4y ago
              With a court order, Apple will hand over the contents of an iCloud drive without any encryption to law enforcement. So they could do Google style preemptive scanning of everything uploaded. Adding an encrypted hash to every photo instead seems way better than having access to every photo on iCloud without any encryption.
      • lern_too_spel 4y ago
        Apple devices are worse because they makes you use Apple services. Android devices let you use your own services. Google has to build its apps using the same APIs as everybody else.
    • Retric 4y ago
      It does if you select Google Backup, which is exactly the same situation with Apple. It’s something of a tradeoff as encrypting backups on device runs into issues if you lose the device. However, if companies have unencrypted data the US government and possibly others will require them to check for specific things.
• ddbb33 4y ago
  Can you provide some sources?
  • gpm 4y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-photo-scanning-plan-faces-global-backlash-from-90-rights-groups/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-photo-scan... Generally search "CSAM apple" and you'll find endless articles about this.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • lettergram 4y ago
    link for “iOS report photos to police” https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+report+photos+to+police&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+report+photos+to+police&t=fpas... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-explains-how-iphones-will-scan-photos-for-child-sexual-abuse-images/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-explains-h...
    • threeseed 4y ago
      You do understand that they only proposed to scan photos that were going to be synced to iCloud Photos. Which is an entirely optional and opt-in service.
      • MBCook 4y ago
        Also they were only scanning for known abuse images, not trying to find new ones to report with AI like Google did.
      • russelg 4y ago
        If they're only going to scan photos that will sync to iCloud Photos, why wouldn't they just keep doing it server-side? As far as it's publicly known, no one asked Apple to do this.
• acchow 4y ago
  > To suggest that iOS is ahead in privacy is ludicrous. On Android, you have a dad reported to the police and his Google account locked (including his Google Fi cellular plan) for taking photos of his toddler to send to the doctor https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... Apple has not done this.
  • fyzix 4y ago
    The photos were synced to Google Drive where we know it would be scanned...which is fine. Apple's proposal would report you as soon as you took the picture.
    • sentientslug 4y ago
      You are incorrect. A quick google search will show you that the Apple CSAM detection was only going to be implemented to photos uploaded to iCloud.
    • infotogivenm 4y ago
      Do you have a source for that? I somewhat recall their proposal was only to ever scan photos uploaded to iCloud.
      • hamandcheese 4y ago
        I believe that was the plan, initially, however the scanning was still happening on device. That has many people rightfully concerned that the scanning could extend to local-only images next.
        • infotogivenm 4y ago
          What a strange concern. Sending hashes of images as you take them to a remote server is very easy to do in any OS update, if they really wanted to betray their customer base's privacy expectations like that. IMO the more logical guess as to the actual reason Apple wants to do this - to approach e2e encrypted iCloud photos in a LE-friendly way.
• threeseed 4y ago
  This comment is pretty incoherent but I assume you're talking about CSAM. In which case, (a) you are not required to use iCloud Photos and (b) it is not out of the ordinary for US-based photo hosting services to scan for CSAM. There is no evidence otherwise that Apple is "spying on you" whatever that specifically means.
• wfme 4y ago
  As I'm sure you are aware, the proposed change was for files synced to iCloud. This puts it in the same boat as the recent Google Photos incident which you appear to be ok with. But, as you noted, Apple backed down on the proposal, so assuming that you still hold that cloud scanning is ok, Apple's approach, at least in this regard is at worst equal.
  • judge2020 4y ago
    Apple doesn't seem to do any cloud CSAM scanning of iCloud Photos, at least according to Hacker Factor: > Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years! note: later on they say: > Granted, Apple only rolled out this new functionality in mid-December 2021. However, based on their volume of traffic, I would expect them to (at minimum) submit a few hundred reports to NCMEC each week. I cannot fathom any legal or technical reason why Apple is not submitting more reports to NCMEC. It's as if these laws apply to everyone except Apple. https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NCMEC-2021-Reporting.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
  • gpm 4y ago
    I'm fundamentally not ok with my device acting against my interests. This doesn't happen with Google, my android phone does not act against my interests. Meanwhile Google's servers do act against my interests (as do Apples servers - though not as effectively since more content is encrypted), but I don't own them, so what can I really expect? Apple only backed down temporarily, their communication has been "we still plan to do this, but later". Given the nature of OS updates, that means you can't buy an IPhone today and be confident that it won't decide to start spying on you tomorrow.
  • MBCook 4y ago
    Apple’s solution was not like Google’s. Google used AI to try to find CSAM, thus it flagged the father’s picture taken to send to a doctor. Apple’s solution was to check against a database of known abuse images. It would not be capable of flagging a new photo someone took. Of the two solutions Google’s may find more offenders, but it would clearly find FAR more false positives. The only way for a false positive in the Apple system is for two unrelated images to have identical perceptual hashes (with multiple algorithms?). Plus there was no reporting until a threshold of multiple (10+) matches were found, so one false positive wouldn’t do it.
• safety1st 4y ago
  This comment has predictably spawned a back-and-forth about which shitty privacy violating phone is 10% less shitty, but if you care about privacy the discussion you should be having is how to eliminate smartphone usage as much as possible.
  • matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Eliminating computer usage isn't a valid solution. Computers are too useful to simply stop using them. Maybe computers were a mistake that will eventually destroy society but for now they're here to stay especially mobile computers with built in archaic telephony. So the question is how to improve privacy and control while using computers.
    • eimrine 4y ago
      >> how to eliminate smartphone usage as much as possible. >Eliminating computer usage isn't a valid solution. Computer's promise is to be bicycle for mind. Computer usage does not deserve to be eliminated. Smartphone is something different. For me it feels that the promise of smartphone is to gather all your personal data which is possible.
    • safety1st 4y ago
      The solution is easy. You purchase a general purpose computer and use it. A smartphone is not a general computer, it's more of an appliance, and correspondingly Android and iOS have a variety of limitations. A smartphone is also not something you really need to use a lot to get by in life -- sure, it adds a lot of convenience, but almost everything it does can be replaced by a dumbphone and a general purpose computer. Personally I still use one but if I find myself using it for anything other than calls, texts or food delivery apps I usually set it down and walk over to my Linux PC where I can do it equally well.
• derefr 4y ago
  > spy on you and report you to the authorities if you do bad things Pedantic correction: while the phone would spy on you to pre-calculate + embed "you are a bad guy doing a bad thing" metadata into photos, the phone wouldn't then report you to the authorities. You had to choose to sync your photos into iCloud Photos (i.e. expose them in cleartext to Apple), for Apple to then discover the embedded "you are a bad guy" metadata out of them, and use it to report you to the authorities.
  • ec109685 4y ago
    Apple also couldn’t tell if you were a bad guy until 10 such photos were uploaded.
• kaba0 4y ago
  While I don’t agree with their plan, the only reason it was proposed is a tradeoff between allowing e2e encrypted cloud backups and upholding the law regarding no child porn on their servers. If you have a better idea then I’m sure they are happy to hear it!