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I certainly agree that "won't somebody please think of the children" has been exploited countless times in various shameful and downright evil ways. (And tange

I certainly agree that "won't somebody please think of the children" has been exploited countless times in various shameful and downright evil ways. (And tangentially, I'm not even sure that spotting traders of known CSAM is even a great way to combat the extremely real problem of pedophilia. Feels like another "war on drugs", where we target end users, as opposed to addressing the actual roots of the problem) In a way, Apple is the victim of that here - they need to comply with laws based on "think of the children" rhetoric. There are various current and proposed laws in various places around the world that compel Apple to share cloud content with various law enforcement agencies. Various current and future laws may compel Apple and other cloud hosts to actively scan for and report various things on behalf of government. This is... not great. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think we agree on that much? We also agree that it is at best impractical for Apple to flaunt the law of nations, yes? They are powerful, but they can't just defy federal law in a brazen and public way. This is the context in which Apple's on-device image fingerprint scanning was conceived. They would like to enable E2E encryption for users for privacy's sake (because privacy is also a unique selling point vs. Google) while simultaneously complying with law. If you want to argue that it sucks: sure. That's totally valid. The alternatives are certainly viable and even commendable: running your own "cloud", eschewing cloud storage, shunning smartphones entirely, etc. However, it seems like most people like and want cloud storage. Working within the constraints of "people want cloud storage" and "we can't openly defy multiple world governments", Apple's CSAM scanning proposal felt like clearly the best possible (least evil, if you prefer) cloud solution that doesn't involve exiting the market entirely or establishing their own offshore data centers and declaring them sovereign nations.

deadbeeves 4y ago
>(And tangentially, I'm not even sure that spotting traders of known CSAM is even a great way to combat the extremely real problem of pedophilia. Feels like another "war on drugs", where we target end users, as opposed to addressing the actual roots of the problem) Agreed. >We also agree that it is at best impractical for Apple to flaunt the law of nations, yes? It's unclear to me what law would be violated by both storing encrypted data on their systems that they don't have the keys for and not scanning client devices.

deadbeeves 4y ago

>(And tangentially, I'm not even sure that spotting traders of known CSAM is even a great way to combat the extremely real problem of pedophilia. Feels like another "war on drugs", where we target end users, as opposed to addressing the actual roots of the problem) Agreed. >We also agree that it is at best impractical for Apple to flaunt the law of nations, yes? It's unclear to me what law would be violated by both storing encrypted data on their systems that they don't have the keys for and not scanning client devices.