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I was under the impression that Apple only planned to scan photos that would be uploaded to the cloud. Is that incorrect?

JohnBooty 4y ago
They were planning to compare hashes/fingerprints of your photos against known, existing child porn images.
- MBCook 4y ago
  This is the thing that confuses me about this discussion. Apple planned to look for known abuse images. People freaked out and they had to back down. Google already scans for possible abuse images including new ones using AI. Thus it found and reported a father for a pic he had just taken. And Apple is somehow the worse of the two.
  - gpm 4y ago
    Everyone agrees that stopping CSAM in a way that respects everyone rights is a good thing. We aren't making a results oriented objection to the goal, but a methods oriented objection. The courts at least all agree that a company can be compelled to scan content in their possession, the creator of the content has no significant privacy rights. This is known as the third party doctrine. All Google is doing is doing this kind of scanning. Apple meanwhile, wants to take your device (something that they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against seizures) and use it to scan the content on your device (something they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against searches) to decide whether or not there is illegal content on it. The company violating you worse is pretty obviously the one doing things to you that the government couldn't compel them to do, because (if compelled) it would violate your rights.
    - MBCook 4y ago
      But they were not not going to do it if you chose to use iCloud Photos. It’s basically a condition in the ToS, just like Google has one saying they can scan stuff in Google Photos. It seems like hair-splitting to me. In both cases your photos are getting checked if you want to use the cloud storage service. Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)? “Oh but Apple could change that with any update”. Couldn’t Google do the same with any update to Android, or even a Google Play Services update?
      - deadbeeves 4y ago
        >Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)? Suppose you go to a public restroom and someone has installed a camera in there to perv on the people using it. That would be an invasion of your privacy, right? Now suppose someone installed a camera in your bathroom at your house. Would you say that's an equivalent invasion of your privacy?
        MBCook 4y ago
        So you’re against all scanning?
        deadbeeves 4y ago
        No, the analogy isn't perfect. It was just intended to show how both types of scanning are different. If someone agrees that installing a secret camera in a private bathroom is worse than in a public one, they should also agree that scanning files in someone's personal device is worse than scanning files in one's own server. I think once you give someone else your unencrypted data, anything that happens to it afterwards is fair game. I assume at some point a human will snoop around my files.
        JohnBooty 4y ago
        Your analogy is way off base. First: this was all, quite literally, about Apple wanting to NOT have access to your unencrypted photos. In Apple's proposed plan, we would only be talking about hashes of pictures, and the comparison would be done by your device. A fitting analogy would be if the "public restroom camera" snapped a Polaroid of you and asked you to compare it to a binder of known child porn, except somehow did this in a way that did not expose you to child porn and would not inconvenience you in any way and was guaranteed not to transmit the Polaroid somewhere else, and you had opted in to the whole process and there was another bathroom right next to it that required no such participation. It's important to understand that Apple's on-device scanning plan was in the service of allowing E2E encryption. The idea was to create a path by which they could comply with various current and upcoming CSAM legislation while still maintaining an E2E encryption flow.
    - ec109685 4y ago
      Apple isn’t compelled to proactively scan photos on iCloud. The scanning on device was adding a hash to each photo only readable - if it matched a known csam image - multiple photos within the iCloud account match known csam images - the image was uploaded to iCloud Compare that to Google where only the last point needs to be true in order to have Google run any algorithm they please on your photos looking for violative images.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    They're free to scan whatever they want on their computers. Not on mine. Especially not without my knowledge. I don't want anti-cheating and anti-malware software surveilling me either. Even the goddamn NSA has had data leaks because someone installed Kaspersky and it phoned home with a copy of some suspect data.
    - ec109685 4y ago
      They were adding a hash of a photo as metadata that is unreadable by everyone except Apple after you upload an image and only if it matches the hash of a known csam image.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The whole OS is proprietary. You either trust apple to do what they say or you will have to run Android on a build you completely reviewed the source to. If you want to act practically, scanning on your device is slightly better for privacy.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    Yeah lots of cognitive dissonance. Some people keep comparing what Apple could be instead of what they actually are. Google as a privacy champion is not something that is supported by reality.

JohnBooty 4y ago

They were planning to compare hashes/fingerprints of your photos against known, existing child porn images.

MBCook 4y ago
This is the thing that confuses me about this discussion. Apple planned to look for known abuse images. People freaked out and they had to back down. Google already scans for possible abuse images including new ones using AI. Thus it found and reported a father for a pic he had just taken. And Apple is somehow the worse of the two.
- gpm 4y ago
  Everyone agrees that stopping CSAM in a way that respects everyone rights is a good thing. We aren't making a results oriented objection to the goal, but a methods oriented objection. The courts at least all agree that a company can be compelled to scan content in their possession, the creator of the content has no significant privacy rights. This is known as the third party doctrine. All Google is doing is doing this kind of scanning. Apple meanwhile, wants to take your device (something that they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against seizures) and use it to scan the content on your device (something they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against searches) to decide whether or not there is illegal content on it. The company violating you worse is pretty obviously the one doing things to you that the government couldn't compel them to do, because (if compelled) it would violate your rights.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    But they were not not going to do it if you chose to use iCloud Photos. It’s basically a condition in the ToS, just like Google has one saying they can scan stuff in Google Photos. It seems like hair-splitting to me. In both cases your photos are getting checked if you want to use the cloud storage service. Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)? “Oh but Apple could change that with any update”. Couldn’t Google do the same with any update to Android, or even a Google Play Services update?
    - deadbeeves 4y ago
      >Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)? Suppose you go to a public restroom and someone has installed a camera in there to perv on the people using it. That would be an invasion of your privacy, right? Now suppose someone installed a camera in your bathroom at your house. Would you say that's an equivalent invasion of your privacy?
      - MBCook 4y ago
        So you’re against all scanning?
        deadbeeves 4y ago
        No, the analogy isn't perfect. It was just intended to show how both types of scanning are different. If someone agrees that installing a secret camera in a private bathroom is worse than in a public one, they should also agree that scanning files in someone's personal device is worse than scanning files in one's own server. I think once you give someone else your unencrypted data, anything that happens to it afterwards is fair game. I assume at some point a human will snoop around my files.
      - JohnBooty 4y ago
        Your analogy is way off base. First: this was all, quite literally, about Apple wanting to NOT have access to your unencrypted photos. In Apple's proposed plan, we would only be talking about hashes of pictures, and the comparison would be done by your device. A fitting analogy would be if the "public restroom camera" snapped a Polaroid of you and asked you to compare it to a binder of known child porn, except somehow did this in a way that did not expose you to child porn and would not inconvenience you in any way and was guaranteed not to transmit the Polaroid somewhere else, and you had opted in to the whole process and there was another bathroom right next to it that required no such participation. It's important to understand that Apple's on-device scanning plan was in the service of allowing E2E encryption. The idea was to create a path by which they could comply with various current and upcoming CSAM legislation while still maintaining an E2E encryption flow.
  - ec109685 4y ago
    Apple isn’t compelled to proactively scan photos on iCloud. The scanning on device was adding a hash to each photo only readable - if it matched a known csam image - multiple photos within the iCloud account match known csam images - the image was uploaded to iCloud Compare that to Google where only the last point needs to be true in order to have Google run any algorithm they please on your photos looking for violative images.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  They're free to scan whatever they want on their computers. Not on mine. Especially not without my knowledge. I don't want anti-cheating and anti-malware software surveilling me either. Even the goddamn NSA has had data leaks because someone installed Kaspersky and it phoned home with a copy of some suspect data.
  - ec109685 4y ago
    They were adding a hash of a photo as metadata that is unreadable by everyone except Apple after you upload an image and only if it matches the hash of a known csam image.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The whole OS is proprietary. You either trust apple to do what they say or you will have to run Android on a build you completely reviewed the source to. If you want to act practically, scanning on your device is slightly better for privacy.
- kergonath 4y ago
  Yeah lots of cognitive dissonance. Some people keep comparing what Apple could be instead of what they actually are. Google as a privacy champion is not something that is supported by reality.