Sad state of affairs, isn't it?
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Apple Remains Committed to Launching New Child Safety Features Later This Year
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Sad state of affairs, isn't it?
This makes no sense. If Apple is lying to you, why would they even announce they're doing CSAM? Why not just stay quiet and lie about how they're not doing CSAM detection?
If your response is "well someone might find out and it'll be a huge PR mess", well then someone might find out "spyOS" is secretly taking your iMessage encryption keys too.
Huge hole in your logic there.
This is no longer amusing but rather facepalm worthy. I'm done talking to you. Have a good one.
Because once the infrastructure is in place, on device, it's far far more likely a jurisdiction will force Apple to use it.
This is common sense
Once they see you've built "hammers" into everyones phone, they are going to come knocking and force you to hit "nails" (of their choosing and for their purposes).
The reason to be worried about potential issues in the future is that it's incredibly hard to roll things like this back and out of the OS. You have to stop stuff like this from ever getting started.
This is actually a really good breakdown of the various arguments in this situation (from this afternoon):
www.theverge.com
Apple’s controversial new child protection features, explained
Important changes are coming to Messages and iCloud.
www.theverge.com
The issue is trust.
Do you or do you not trust Apple?
I (still) trust Apple, and I hope that in time, more people will see the light and come to appreciate the elegance of what Apple is trying to do here.
Right now, what I am seeing from critics is that they somehow expect Apple to stay on a privacy high horse and flat out refuse to do anything that would require extensive work on Apple’s part to rethink existing status quos, which to me is not attractive or viable at all.
What I see here is Apple innovating by coming up with privacy-minded solutions to existing products and services which people long assumed they had to give up their privacy to.
People thought that a company would have to collect as much data as possible for AI or maps; Apple proved them wrong by showing that it is very much possible to continue to develop in these areas without collecting as much data as these companies would have you believe.
Apple also launched ATT to show that advertising was still very much viable without the degree of invasive tracking that facebook is now infamous for.
It’s no different with CSAM. Right now, the current assumption is that everything you upload to the cloud is by default no longer private. What if Apple had a way to change that? What if they could offer users fully encrypted iCloud storage, and they are able to identify whether users have child pornography on their devices, without having to use AI to scan for them like what companies like Facebook are doing with uploaded images?
And honestly speaking, there are likely far easier and more practical ways for a government to spy on its people than rely on CSAM detection / alteration.
I think a lot of the criticism is coming from organisations and companies who don’t want to see Apple succeed, as well as from people who are still unable to wrap their heads around this paradigm shift that Apple is delivering. Your phone isn’t scanned, your photos in the cloud aren’t scanned, and throughout this entire process, your photos are subject to scrutiny only once, and even then, in the least invasive manner possible.
Compared to google drive actively scanning every image i upload, I find this a much more palatable tradeoff.
Apple is upending the current existing status quo even as we speak. And I want to be a part of that new world order.
Or Apple just deciding to use the technology for something else.
The problem is not that such a process exists. No one would be this outraged if Apple ran the hashes on their servers. The problem is that the hashes themselves are included in spyOS. The scan is still running on-device if iCloud is enabled, although it is decrypted in iCloud. But in a future update, Apple could easily make the scans run when iCloud is off. Apple is essentially saying, "We made a backdoor in the OS, but don't worry because we would never use it."It won't run unless you turn on iCloud
"Apple is also reinforcing that if a user does not use iCloud Photos, then no part of the CSAM detection process runs. This means that if a user wants to opt out of the CSAM detection process, they can disable iCloud Photos."
Apple confirms CSAM detection only applies to photos, defends its method against other solutions - 9to5Mac
Apple continues to offer clarity around the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) detection feature it announced last week. In addition...9to5mac.com
This is actually a really good breakdown of the various arguments in this situation (from this afternoon):
Apple’s controversial new child protection features, explained
Important changes are coming to Messages and iCloud.
Good link
The part in bold was curious to me...
Apple has legitimate reasons to step up its child protection efforts. In late 2019, The New York Times published reports of an “epidemic” in online child sexual abuse. It blasted American tech companies for failing to address the spread of CSAM, and in a later article, NCMEC singled out Apple for its low reporting rates compared to peers like Facebook, something the Times attributed partly to the company not scanning iCloud files.
So has Apple *not* been scanning iCloud photos on their own servers for CSAM?
If not - the proper step here is to scan the photos on their own servers - not install a way to do it on our devices.
Users fully expect things that are uploaded to be scanned. No objection there.
Other cloud companies monetize the data which would pay for the processing costs. At the very least the metadata is highly valuable as Google and Amazon can track your location and spending habits. I don't think Apple has a way to monetize every single photo taken.
Considering they just introduced what essentially amounts to a backdoor into Photos after spending years sitting on the privacy high-horse, no. What would make me trust them is not releasing this easily abused feature, not telling me to have faith in the fact that they will "only" use this to check (without any supporting evidence) that I'm not a pedophile.
Infrastructure has been in place since 2011 with on device facial detection in iPhoto.
"their purposes" of losing customers? Doesn't sound like a win for Apple. They want to sell more products, not less. Don't know how is that common sense.
For the CSAM stuff, why don’t they do this BEFORE an image is saved to the device? Check the hash when someone goes to save a photo to the device and warn them that it’s a match instead of this horrible “safety voucher” idea where the user has no idea what’s happening. If they try to screen shot it, do the same hash check and throw up a warning. Much more simple and transparent.
Goal should be to PREVENT distribution. The iCloud Photo Library and hidden safety voucher idea doesn’t do that. And nothing is solved if that feature is disabled.
Not well thought out.
Goal should be to PREVENT distribution. The iCloud Photo Library and hidden safety voucher idea doesn’t do that. And nothing is solved if that feature is disabled.
Not well thought out.
Because Apple is marketing this as a feature. I would think that if they wanted to catch the six or seven idiots putting their child porn up on iCloud that they would stay silent about it.
Enjoy your time at "Camp Apple Does No Evil". You can be "done" talking to me all you want. The responses from other users to your posts speak for themselves. The crowd is not with you on this one, son. It's a hell of a hill to die on, but at least you'll be dead.
such as...? flagging illegal movie downloads? have fun reinstating accounts of 50k people from hollywood having a movie screener on their iPads.
Better, I'd agree there.
That said, I'm still not interested in having my device be part of a society wide dragnet in this fashion.
I don't even know where this sort of thing would "stop".
Think of all the things you might come across and be interested in looking into, reading about, watching...
Do we really want devices that have a capability that amounts to being State controlled "thought police"?
It’s so sad we are living inside sci-fi movies now, without all of those 😎 perks that could actually wow us. Basically a worse version of it.
When the word CHILD is mentioned I hardly think it pertains to someone just under 18. I live in the states and under 18 is actually 17 in terms of age of consent in select states so that's not a CHILD. And if you think it's acceptable for minors to send nude pics then Apple is definitely targeting you. As for my personal life that's none of your concern or business.
Nope. I can see the headlines "Apple now scans every single photo you upload to iCloud"
On the subject of what Apple might do: John Gruber from Daring Fireball suggests this is Apple's way of enabling end to end encryption for photos and backups too by giving law enforcement only data that they can extract from a high threshold of detections. In return customers get end to end encryption. This is far better IMO than the government being able to come in and decrypt all of my iCloud data that's currently happening today.
No point in guessing what Apple might do. It could be good or bad. You could be wrong or John Gruber could be wrong.
As of right now, that is just gas pulled from Johns' butt
Keep in mind that Gruber is so far up Apple's rear end he needs a flashlight.
He's made an entire nearly 2 decade career about of pontificating about Apple.
To say he's biased here is incredibly generous.
From that Verge article I posted above: "CSAM is illegal and abhorrent. But as the open letter to Apple notes, many countries have pushed to compromise encryption in the name of fighting terrorism, misinformation, and other objectionable content. Now that Apple has set this precedent, it will almost certainly face calls to expand it. And if Apple later rolls out end-to-end encryption for iCloud — something it’s reportedly considered doing, albeit never implemented — it’s laid out a possible roadmap for getting around E2EE’s protections."
It's that very last line that I take issue with when someone makes the argument that the way they're doing this gives us more E2EE. That's technically true. But it's penny wise and pound foolish. They're potentially giving us E2EE while providing a way (albeit difficult with many steps) to get through that E2EE if need be.
Apparently we need to CC: Gruber
This would be the 180 degree opposite of what he's speculating about this.