You mean like Spotlight indexing? That’s not “Apple”. That’s software created “by Apple”. Not tethered to Apple Inc. until proven otherwise. Proceed to remove the battery from your iPhone to never have to worry about software created “by Apple” again.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Remains Committed to Launching New Child Safety Features Later This Year
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You mean like Spotlight indexing? That’s not “Apple”. That’s software created “by Apple”. Not tethered to Apple Inc. until proven otherwise. Proceed to remove the battery from your iPhone to never have to worry about software created “by Apple” again.
You can designate folders for spotlight to ignore. You cannot with this new system.
You can’t on iPhones.
And the purpose of excluding spotlight folders on Mac is NOT the fear of Spotlight phoning home to Apple, I would hope! 🤔
I see we have some newcomers to the thread that could save themselves a bit of typing energy by simply "reading" the previous pages of the thread. 
Many of us don't want a tool installed on our device whose purpose is to scan our local content against third party black box databases.
Many of us don't want a tool installed on our device whose purpose is to scan our local content against third party black box databases.
You are getting distracted.
It doesn’t matter if the search is done using hash-matching algorithms, bloodhounds, or black magic. The technical implementation is completely irrelevant. A search is a search.
All that matters is a search is happening, and it’s happening on my personal device, and a warrant for the search was not obtained. End of story.
They did not have the ability to scan photos on the device and report back to Apple HQ. Not to mention I am sure this scanning will be expanded on and the option to turn it off will not exist.
We’ll see.
Technology sometimes creates completely new circumstances that may make it necessary to revisit previous definitions that no longer capture a new technical reality.
I could see it as half-a-search on-device and half-a-search on the cloud.
They can’t report back to Apple HQ.
Apple HQ can only collect the security vouchers once you upload the images yourself.
Of course. The implementation they did does not make any sense if it were just to avoid CP on their iCloud servers. If they wanted just that, they could have just implemented server side scanning like everyone else.
The whole „feature“ makes sense only considering data stored on device. Hence it is very likely that the „only when using iCloud Photo“ part will disappear once the dust has settled.
What is beyond me is: WHY?
As said: if they only wanted to keep the filth from their servers - which is totally understandable - why not just server side scanning?
Why go through all the fuzz? I mean, they cannot be that disconnected from mothership earth that they did not expect this „feature“ to at least stir up a lot of dust.
I also do not get why they believe that this feature might be to the users benefit? It must be clear to all of them within the upper eschelon of Apple execs that developing this spyware is an evil thing, benefitting in its currently announced form literally not a single soul.
It is also absolutely clear that the feature can and will be misused. They must be aware that they cannot possibly deny FISA requests or anything like it (they bent over for the Chinese and Russians pretty willingly already). Knowing this, they still proceded in doing it. They also must be fully aware that promising otherwise is going to be debunked as outright lie right away - yet they made this claim.
So why? It does no make sense in this form whatsoever
Last edited:
says Apple That is the entire problem Apple has installed surveillance software on our device and we just have to trust Apple about what they are doing with that software.
Do you think "detecting nudity" vs. "detecting a <insert nude body part>" is different? It's not. Deep CNNs are scary good at detecting discrete objects and differentiating between minute details (hot dog vs. penis). I'd encourage you to look through some of the convolutional layers of any decent trained open-source Deep CNN object detector network. What I said was not disingenuous at all. The argument that the alerting feature is some new novel thing is what's disingenuous: there have been many implementations of parental control messaging notifiers (first search result found this: https://useboomerang.com/2019/11/05/monitor-calls-text-messages-android/). We don't see news about Google being required to provide these things, even though it would be minimal work to enable it. I stand by what I said: if Russia et al wanted these features, it wouldn't have been difficult to get them already, as the technology already exists.
Bit of a flaw here: had they chosen the alternative (to not comply with local jurisdiction), then there would be no Chinese customers' privacy to protect. It's not a mere choosing of privacy of their customers vs. a dollar, it's the choice of customer or no customer.
I don't disagree on your under arching point, though --- if some jurisdiction has laws that require these things, then it's up to Apple to either choose to do business there or not; but they don't have the freedom to just "protect privacy" while ignoring local laws. Any backdoor-enabling laws that affect Apple would affect every smartphone maker.
As you say, China already does this with WeChat, so they know clearly that the tech exists to block keywords/phrases. The argument that Apple has used previously around these issues is that it is a feature within the kernel of the operating system, not a feature that can be attached to certain subgroups of iOS users. If China et al were able to force Apple to make a custom version of iOS for only their citizens, then they already would have.
And the really gross part is that if they do go E2EE for things heading up to the cloud, many will focus on that as a big "security win" -- when it's anything but...
Because they will have now installed the infrastructure to scan for whatever "three letter agencies" and other entities (State, corporate or other), etc, would like --- RIGHT ON YOUR OWN DEVICE!
How people are missing this is beyond me.
They've built the methodology and tools needed to surveil you - RIGHT ON YOUR PHONE....and with the black box methodology of it, even Apple wouldn't necessarily know what the people asking for the scanning are actually looking for.
You realize everything Apple has said (ever) is a "says Apple" thing, right? You know they installed iOS on our devices and have had full capability of doing these things at any point in time, right?
The problem is they installed surveillance software on the devices and the users have no way to verify what it is doing since iOS is closed source. So all we have is Apple's word on what the software is doing. Do you not see a problem with that and how it can be easily abused?
I've always liked Samsung's devices and their Galaxy's are solid devices with some good security options built in (https://www.samsungknox.com/en/solutions/personal-apps/secure-folder).
The Pixel line is nice as well, but tends to be a little less of a finished product - but a great software experience in the Android realm.
So if Apple were required to use it, then what? Near-exact matches of child abuse photos would be flagged and then sent to some government agency for review? I'm not against that.
But my original assertion, that this can't be used for finding e.g. the set of people who attended a trump rally, still stands. It would only find near-exact machines of hashes of photos stored within iOS's internal database.
Exactly. Yet the question remains: WHY? I am rather sure they are well aware of this and all implications. Yet they proceded. Puzzling indeed
Last edited:
So there is no way the CSAM database will get updated? What’s in there now will remain in there, no more or no less content, for years? If it gets updated, then yes it is externally controlled.
I'm a bit of skeptic myself -- I think they are making deals with the US Gov to avoid anti-trust enforcement (or other legal issues)
What folks like Gruber are hinting at (E2EE + these backdoor methods on device) are literally **perfect** for surveilling people. Folks that don't dig into the details think they are "uber secure", when the truth is the total opposite.
(quick point of clarity on piece just above -- if you are ok with having "who knows who" scanning all your content before E2EE, then I guess you are very secure -- some of us just fiercely object to the concept of being subject to warrantless surveillance)
I know - seems far fetched -- but so did all the crap that Snowden revealed.
Life is stranger than fiction in my experience.
Last edited:
This is just Apples first step into a complete surveillance of Apple users. What will happen? Or what is happening right now? All the kids use Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal - or SnapChat. Hey, SnapChat that‘s one of the places if you want to see or post some nudity. Or lets talk about reddit and some subredits. Nothing illegal but nudity for sure.
Messages may be involved, but I guess that Messages is not the place to be. So the way to go for Apple is to force all messaging services to implement Apples photo scanning service and scan for nudity. For gods sake there are those AppStore guidelines, or should I call it „one ring to rule them all“.
So iOS16 will finally break end to end encryption completely by forcing all Apps into Apples chain of surveillance.
Messages may be involved, but I guess that Messages is not the place to be. So the way to go for Apple is to force all messaging services to implement Apples photo scanning service and scan for nudity. For gods sake there are those AppStore guidelines, or should I call it „one ring to rule them all“.
So iOS16 will finally break end to end encryption completely by forcing all Apps into Apples chain of surveillance.
Last edited:
The verbiage suggests that this will only apply to future uploads once iOS 15 is installed -- i.e., your 200+GB won't be re-scanned on your device, unless you download and re-upload your entire library.
The "why" is so they can continue to maintain the claim that they cannot access our data.