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Apple Removes All References to Controversial CSAM Scanning Feature From Its Child Safety Webpage [Updated]
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That reminds me, I was watching The Shrink Next Door on Apple TV+ the other day. There was a scene with a guy wondering why a friend hadn’t called him during his hospital visit, and he asked a nurse if they had poor signal in the hospital. He was using an iPhone 4. I shouted out “you’re holding it wrong!”, but nobody else in the room got the joke
Well, they’ve removed the text, but the code is still present.
This has been so unpopular, I’m sure they’d make an announcement if they were canning it.
While this is a step in the right direction, it’s not nearly enough. I’ll join the chorus of comments requesting that Apple loudly disavow this effort. Apple can also show good faith by firing the people responsible for this disaster. People who have disastrously failed at their jobs.
Until then, I’m still phasing out my Apple usage.
Until then, I’m still phasing out my Apple usage.
lol good luck with that. Apple will never admit to having done anything wrong…ever.
China has probably bought the tech from Apple and it was part of Tims deal with China… ?
I'm not sure they'll necessarily announce it if they're canning it.
For example, that device called AirPower (?) was promised several years ago and apparently technical difficulties led Apple not to have delivered. I don't think it made any announcement about not moving forward.
Sometimes it might be best for the company to just scrap a plan without making a public announcement over it as that may bring unwanted attention to them.
I mean, for me, either way is fine whether they announce it or not. I'm just thinking why they may not want to make a public announcement.
Seriously. This is one of those times Apple really needs to swallow its pride and just come out and announce that it is canning this "feature". Just put a statement on Apple Newsroom and be done with it. Would be much more effective at getting people's attention and trust back.
They dont have to scan things in the cloud. This was discussed to death when this came up. Its a choice and a bad one.
Oh, but you have everything to hide.
If you’re conservative you have that to hide if you live in an authoritarian communist country. If you’re liberal you have that to hide if you live in an authoritarian fascist country. If you don’t care about politics you have that to hide in any authoritarian country.
Idem if you’re religious, non religious, black, white, yellow, brown, rich, poor…
You don’t live in such countries?
YET. You can’t say that for certain until the day you die.
It is not that you don’t have something to hide. You do. It is that you’re too naive to realize it.
What an utterly bizarre line in the sand to draw on privacy. Apple has my medical records, my credit card information, my social security number, my emails, and can tell you everywhere I’ve been since 2007. They *could* use any of that information against me. But they haven’t, and I trust that they won’t. Yet somehow scanning my photos on-device for known hash values is where my privacy and freedom are at stake? Riiiight.
Anyone who’s that concerned about privacy should not only throw away all their apple devices but disconnect all your Google and MS services, delete all social media, stop accessing the internet, and for the love of god, don’t use a cellphone.
On the other hand, I have to imagine the number of child abusers they are going to catch with a publicly advertised program that can be defeated just by not keeping CSAM in iCloud photos has to be… low.
So, yeah, on a scale of one to ten, my level of concern about this one way or the other is a one.
It might be easier to just remove your kiddie porn from the cloud.
Good, let law enforcement get a COURT ORDER like they are supposed to according to the Constitution of the United States
EVERY cloud service, DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, ALL of them have to scan. Apple is no different. ALL of them have access to ALL your unencrypted images (and thus able to provide them to authorities upon request if they’re in the cloud). Apple is no different.
Where Apple was different was in flagging the hash of known CP images on-device. No CP? No flagged hashes. And, as a result, that would allow them to encrypt ALL images that they store in the cloud. Apple was mistaken in thinking that people in general placed a high value on having their images encrypted in the cloud.
OR, the government, seeing this as being a serious curtailment in their ability to subpoena Apple for non-CP cases made sure the “right folks” got the wrong idea about how this works. Gotta admit, though, it was very effective because, without this method in place, all iCloud images are unencrypted, just the way the government prefers
Photos are encrypted when stored in iCloud. They’re just not end to end encrypted.EVERY cloud service, DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, ALL of them have to scan. Apple is no different. ALL of them have access to ALL your unencrypted images (and thus able to provide them to authorities upon request if they’re in the cloud). Apple is no different.
Where Apple was different was in flagging the hash of known CP images on-device. No CP? No flagged hashes. And, as a result, that would allow them to encrypt ALL images that they store in the cloud. Apple was mistaken in thinking that people in general placed a high value on having their images encrypted in the cloud.
OR, the government, seeing this as being a serious curtailment in their ability to subpoena Apple for non-CP cases made sure the “right folks” got the wrong idea about how this works. Gotta admit, though, it was very effective because, without this method in place, all iCloud images are unencrypted, just the way the government prefers
It'll just be a silent update and not used for PR which backfired but I suspect it's already in place since my iPad Pro M1 has two long pauses for copy/paste (suspect one is for checksum generation and other for paste) to network drive vs usual one long pause for paste.
They will. And, because ALL your images in the cloud are unencrypted, that court order can have access to ALL your images. Instead of, like, none of your images.
Actually I am happy with that. Apple's servers, Apple's property, Apple's rules. I just don't want surveillance hardware/software in my pocket wherever I go, which is not the same, particularly since there are AI optimised chips being put in mobile devices. Apple's proposal would have set a precedent of mobile device surveillance that would have normalised the most intrusive behaviours of governments and businesses.
Although they are stored on Apple’s servers in encrypted form, this is done using a generic encryption key that Apple has access to. With the method Apple was attempting to implement, they would be encrypted with a key that Apple DOESN’T have access to.
To borrow boilerplate disclosures from Apple’s quarterly conference calls, “past performance is not indicative of future results.”
I understand how it all works. You keep saying they’re stored unencrypted and they’re not.
Apple’s proposal would have set a precedent of mobile devices where it’s normalized that ALL images would be encrypted in the cloud with a key the provider doesn’t have. Thus, not available when authorities request them from the provider.