Apple Privacy Chief Explains 'Built-in' Privacy Protections in Child Safety Features Amid User Concerns

[damienbutt]

I’ve been an iPhone user since the 3G and I’m now on XS. Was going to get the 13 this year but that’s not happening now. The whole reason I stuck with Apple was because of their strong stance on Privacy. How can they say that no one cares more about you’re privacy than Apple while at the same time conduct mass surveillance on of images on its user's phones. This is going to hurt them. I’m moving to CalyxOS on an Android phone. That’s the way to go now.

 

[Techwatcher]

Maybe one could explain to me what kind of photos are you feared to show to Apple? I know, I know, it will heavily rain those red thumbs down scores. But maybe you can share your concerns with REAL examples.

In my world: I never had and never and know no one off of my friends, relatives and parents who ever had taken at any time naked pictures of them selfes, nor do I wish to have contact with those.

Also: What if Apple's take on this would decimate child porn world wide like at about 50%? Wouldn't it be worth it?

You need to cut this out. People like you is why companies are brave to do things like this to begin with. With that logic go give your entire neighborhood the keys to your house when you leave to go somewhere. You have nothing to hide and you blindly trust everything right?

Everyone in this forum supports defeating CSAM once and for all. You clearly see people's issues are with scanning your entire iCloud when their business model was based on privacy and now they are falling back on that. Even Edward Snowden is basically saying this is not the way to go about this.

 

[mymacrumorsname]

Are you telling me you are OK with Apple snooping inside your iPhone and looking at your wife pictures?

It's not like I feel super comfortable with, but if it could help to find child abusers I am all for it. There is not a single photo which we would be ashamed off. Awkward photos, sure, but ashamed or even criminal, totally not.

 

[mymacrumorsname]

Apparently you don't understand the concept of principles, in this case the principle of privacy. Just because you don't have anything to hide doesn't mean you should be ok with others seeing/knowing your thoughts/files/photos/locations.

You also seems to be oblivious government or corporate entities abusing user data.

Pls let me know of a real example. What is abusing data? I am not saying you are wrong. Just provide an example from the real world.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Shorter “If your not breaking the law you have nothing to fear”.

I am sure am glad governments never change laws, have poorly defined laws, arbitrary enforcement, and executive orders/mandates etc that might change my status as a law abiding citizen at any moment.

Obviously this power could never be abused. Thank goodness. Go get those bad people with the pictures while the rest of us rest easy knowing they are not after us.

so...you didn't even read the article at all. got it.

 

[Mebsat]

Read it again? If there was a single CSAM match, nothing would happen, no one would be notified.

And secondly, the system requires the threshold of images to be exceeded so trying to seek out even a single image from a person's device or set of people's devices won't work because the system simply does not provide any knowledge to Apple for single photos stored in our service.

Correct. So if Apple finds only one CSAM photo, it gets uploaded to iCloud Photos. They will tolerate one piece of child porn per account, that is their actual stated position. Because engineering reasons.

It's a dumb position which they will be forced to abandon. When they choose to set the limit to zero (which is of course what it should be), we will be back here debating how destructive to privacy that update is.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Apparently you don't understand the concept of principles, in this case the principle of privacy. Just because you don't have anything to hide doesn't mean you should be ok with others seeing/knowing your thoughts/files/photos/locations.

You also seems to be oblivious government or corporate entities abusing user data.

If you thought that keeping your photos in iCloud was ever private, you thought wrong.

People who truly care about privacy would have never used iCloud (or rather, any major third party cloud service) in the first place.

Roll your own infrastructure if you care about privacy. But for the rest of us, iCloud is more than sufficient. I have a higher chance of winning the lottery than an Apple employee reviewing my erroneously flagged account.

 

[legatoboy]

Regardless as to how Apple tries to Spin It, the chances of an iOS 15 Boycott are now real !

I expect the iPhone 13 family to come pre-loaded with iOS 14.8.

I doubted. It’s hard enough work to keep a new OS and new hardware big free not to mention dealing with one new and one old.

 

[mymacrumorsname]

This is a dumb argument. If you have nothing to hide then why not let authorities come do weekly inspections of your house or frisk you on the street or search your car? Why not get audited every day? Innocence and privacy are not mutually exclusive. While I feel that people are blowing this thing out of proportion (slightly, it does open the door to bad stuff in the future ), yours is far and away the worse argument.

Because this is totally not the same. If it would however happen in a fraction of a second, they could check me every minute all day long.

 

[ececlv]

Like virtually every other cloud service out there today. People are surprised that data stored on someone else's computer isn't private.

But thats just it. I dont have a big problem using gmail or google photos. I know google scans it. But there are 2 major differences:

#1 apple is doing it on my phone. If this was only on their server i could “trust” the scope. But now, apple is writing loopholes within the OS. It breaks all trust i have in the security of the underlying OS if they are willing to do that

#2. It is hypocritical. Google is an ad company. I expect them to do ad company things. Apple touts that privacy is a human right. I bought in. Then they do the same thing google is doing.

 

[Osxguy]

Anyone else feel we now live in a country that you are guilty till proven innocent, with the technology to make it true. Ive always felt I am too poor to be innocent as I couldn't fight the system.

 

[laff]

Again - all for trying to do the right thing...But two things still stick out for me.

1). if they are scanning your photos for known hashtags, then they are looking for known pictures, not new ones or those abusing and making the media? Not saying any of it is good, but I want those making it and abusing to be the focus. No media, no pictures, etc.

2.) Let's say someone is in trouble, regardless if they know or don't know they have it, isn't this unconstitutional as the practice violates the right to be free from unreasonable searches. It's like entering a property without a search warrant.
Under the constitution, in law or logic, that the need to prove intent or they have this media before they can search -- this is an unknown and not sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the law. As well, without a warrant, they are using your owned and paid items to incriminate you which is a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Once again, not trying to rationalize anyone having it on their phone and iCloud, but seems to open the door for more things to go wrong.

 

[dannyyankou]

I’m sure apple is doing it in a way that’s more private and secure than competitors, but I hate that they’re doing it at all.

 

[legatoboy]

Shorter “If your not breaking the law you have nothing to fear”.

I am sure am glad governments never change laws, have poorly defined laws, arbitrary enforcement, and executive orders/mandates etc that might change my status as a law abiding citizen at any moment.

Obviously this power could never be abused. Thank goodness. Go get those bad people with the pictures while the rest of us rest easy knowing they are not after us.

How often someone tells you that my password is 1234678. It’s simple and they can tell you because they have nothing to hide.

you can tell whether techie or non techie execs are running the company.

 

[ian87w]

Neuenschwander continued that for users who are "not into this illegal behavior, Apple gain no additional knowledge about any user's cloud library," and "it leaves privacy completely undisturbed."

So he's implying that he supports oppressive governments because hey, those governments have laws as well, and they have their own definitions of what's legal and what's illegal, and basically the citizens should not do anything "illegal."

 

[Mydel]

As a father of a 9yrs old girl, I welcome my new snooping overlord.

As a father of 5 i think its retarded idea.

 

[Techwatcher]

This is a dumb argument. If you have nothing to hide then why not let authorities come do weekly inspections of your house or frisk you on the street or search your car? Why not get audited every day? Innocence and privacy are not mutually exclusive. While I feel that people are blowing this thing out of proportion (slightly, it does open the door to bad stuff in the future ), yours is far and away the worse argument.

Yeah I agree that is easily the dumbest argument I ever seen on MacRumors.

“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” - Edward Snowden

Basically explains people like that guy in a nutshell. So happy and tap dancing for companies eager to give all his rights away.

 

[boss.king]

Because this is totally not the same. If it would however happen in a fraction of a second, they could check me every minute all day long.

So it just comes down to whether it takes your time? Would you let people put cameras in your house and monitor you that way? Surely yes, since you have nothing to hide, right?

 

[Scoob Redux]

"At the same time we're going to leave privacy undisturbed for everyone not engaged in the illegal activity."

This is much worse than I could have imagined. Apple now holds itself up as the arbiter of appropriate user behavior. Apple will determine if users are doing anything "illegal" in their sole and unchecked discretion. This isn't a slippery slope...Apple has jumped headfirst into the chasm.

 

[fredl]

”And so the hypothetical requires jumping over a lot of hoops, including having Apple change its internal process to refer material that is not illegal, like known CSAM and that we don't believe that there's a basis on which people will be able to make that request in the U.S.”

_like known CSAM_ this is a very slippery slope. This is an opening for an ever extending scope. All illegal material won’t be illegal in all jurisdiction. I wholeheartedly agree with stopping the spread of this ****, it should be done server side. Try to store a file online, e-mail it, etc etc, just reject it. Don’t open the Pandora’s box by scanning users devices.

 

[Mydel]

Like virtually every other cloud service out there today. People are surprised that data stored on someone else's computer isn't private.

The key word is “cloud”. Again. I have no issue with Apple looking on server side. I have huge issue with device scan.

 

[rp100]

Apple should fully disclose how they are “hashing” these images, what constitutes a “match”, and what is the score or threshold at which point they hand your information over to some “nonprofit organization” who will then build a criminal complaint against you.

If Apple isn’t lying here (i.e., they never see the actual images on your phone), then they are creating a “fingerprint” of sorts and comparing the print of your image to a print of known child pornography. Is the system really going to be so unsophisticated that it only detects 1:1 matches for previously identified material? If so, then they need to be crystal clear about that. Or… is this system going to be ML-based and detect certain body positions, parts, postures, exposed skin, facial expressions, etc?

I am highly skeptical this is going to be a binary flag for each image (good/bad). Your entire library is going to be scored and, based on that score, it will be handed over to law enforcement who will use that score as gospel to secure a search warrant.

—

Let me make this point (as unpolitically as possible): at least in the USA, cultural norms and morals have been changing very rapidly in the last 10-20 years, and technology has played a large role in that. What was once cherished is now looked down upon; what was once reprehensible is now embraced as sacred and unquestionable. Right and wrong are evolving so quickly that a socially-accepted, non-serious tweet from 10-15 years ago will cost you future opportunities. There is no room for social or historical context, only bitter argument: you wrote that with yesterday’s standards and I’m judging it with today’s standards. So what happens when our technological overlords change their standards? How can I know that my thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors today will be acceptable to a future unknown standard?

I’ll leave you with this, and I tell it to my children every time they use the computer:
The internet never forgets, and it seldom forgives.

 

[Scoob Redux]

Basically explains people like that guy in a nutshell. So happy and tap dancing for companies eager to give all his rights away.

And the sad thing is, these people will defend and support fascism to the end. They're the ones in "1984" that turn in their neighbors for "crimes" against the state. They love authoritarianism because they believe in controlling people to behave exactly as they think they should.

 

[4jasontv]

The key word is “cloud”. Again. I have no issue with Apple looking on server side. I have huge issue with device scan.

I paid for my cloud storage. It may be their hardware but it's my space.

 

[laff]

This is what I don't get. How is it scanning this content? Is it just general nudity? A link to a porn site? People keep mentioning there isn't anything to fear because it is just a hash, not a naked picture of your child running through the sprinkler. Because while they are two very different things, it is the tattling feature that is more concerning. People that do store illegal content in the cloud should get what comes to them because it is just plain stupid to trust anyone. But the iMessage scanning, to me, and definitely should be to others, more alarming....that is what can be weaponised much easier, I gather.

They are scanning for meta-data of know pictures. Not adult pornography etc. Again, how about working on stopping those making the media. So they arrest people that had it, sure bad, but won't stop it.

Those that view it may get caught, but we can question why they have it all day. Does lead them to make it under the DOJ. Recidivism is under 4%. Can we instead use the time and money to focus on stopping the abusers. Cause if there is no media made, then there is no media to be had.