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Or, for that matter, did you have a picture of some pornography of any other sort? This is literally only matching on the exact fingerprints of specific known child pornographic images.

Hey Craig, pornography and pornoaction (indecent acts) materials are illegal in my country. Prior to this, the government has no access to our own computers/phones. But now, you, Apple, has enabled a system for abuse potential. And that's the law Craig, that's not just a "request." So what now Apple? Are you sure you want to set up this system while still taking high and mighty about human rights?
 
Since their new system looks only for known child porn it really seems that this has little to do with child safety and more to do with protecting the reputation of their own servers.
If they actually did have a system that could detect new child porn then that could be considered child safety.
An even bigger privacy concern for sure. But they could at least claim a valid child safety excuse.
This newly announced system protects no one but Apple.
 
On a different point, it seems like Apple and CF and TC have dug in their heels and it is coming whether people like it or not. Perhaps they are being forced to provide this functionality.

Either way, once you start examining someone's device for something that might be illegal somewhere, you are opening the door to having governments require it to happen in their jurisdiction.

E.g. if you look at the NY Times from 2015:
"U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies"

Will images of that be reported?

This is a can of worms and it appears that TC and CF are too short sighted to understand the long term implications. Once the capability is there, Apple CAN NOT IGNORE a law using it in a particular jurisdiction. Or perhaps they do and are complicit or being forced.
 
The discussion on this subject is so divorced from reality it has left said reality far behind. So few read with an open mind and a willingness to understand. I truly despair for any meaningful discussion on an important subject.

If you think there is a better model currently to address the issue than that would be worth discussing. If you seriously believe Apple is blatantly lying in their explanation then what possible resolution is there to this situation?
 
The discussion on this subject is so divorced from reality it has left said reality far behind. So few read with an open mind and a willingness to understand. I truly despair for any meaningful discussion on an important subject.

If you think there is a better model currently in existence to address the issue than that would be worth discussing. If you seriously believe Apple is blatantly lying in their explanation then what possible resolution is there to this situation?
To keep calling them out on their lies.
 
Apple has now proven that they can, and will, intercept end to end encrypted content. Full stop. First, it's this, then it'll be something else, probably in China, then climate or vaccine misinformation, political speech, and its game over.

once you break the encryption seal with a back door, anything can go through it. And ultimately it will.
 
I wonder how they can turn this one around.

Also the fact that practically all other services have been using this for a decade, like Google / Dropbox / Social Media, etc.

it begs the question why the corner of Apple needs it? Apple users all use at least one of these services, and for people who really are sickos they've been given advance notice how to work around this.
damage has been done.

I won't be all in ever again. if they walk back, I may buy new phones, still use email. but days of my TB iCloud storage are gone. I will never sign up any service that is not working for me. I am diversifying to proton mail and signal. duckduckgo for web browser. I may still feed apple money if they come to their senses and start behaving like my protector again, not my warden.but the trust is basically gone.
 
Holy macaroni, did you watch or read any of the explanations?

They're not physically scanning your photos and seeing them. When you upload a photo to iCloud (which you can 100% opt-out from and just use another Cloud service that will still scan them but who knows how), say a photo of a tree, it then gets assigned to a Neural Hash (think of it as a unique code for images of trees), and then this code (not the image, the code) is compared to known codes (Neural Hashes) of child p#, and only if the codes get matched, then a real person will check if the image is actually that.

This is very different than having all your photos scanned and compared to child p#, which you probably think the case is.

If you don't possess such materials, what are you so afraid of? The algorithm won't get any matches and Apple won't know about your photos. Still, just don't use iCloud Photos then.
What makes you an advocate for scanning? What's the point of it in the first place, what's the benefit to you personally?
 
Apple has now proven that they can, and will, intercept end to end encrypted content. Full stop. First, it's this, then it'll be something else, probably in China, then climate or vaccine misinformation, political speech, and its game over.

once you break the encryption seal with a back door, anything can go through it. And ultimately it will.

end-to-end has always been a bit of a misnomer in how secure it is and what it accomplishes

it means in transit it is encrypted, and theoretically at the endpoints.. but if the endpoints themselves are compromised either by design or external bad actors, does transit even matter as the end points are not part of that
 
Do not try to explain it, Mr. Federighi. If it it needs that much clarification and justification, it certainly is something bad. Scanning me in certain circumstances simply means, you think I am a liar and Apple Control has to verify it - but I am just a humble (maybe former) customer of your company.
 
If they are just scanning the hash couldn't the abuser not just modify the image slightly (like adding a pixel somewhere) and they would be clear?

No, the whole point of hashes is that you can change certain features of the photo—saturation, contrast, color, crop, etc.—but the hash will remain the same.
 
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You stop using iCloud photos 😬

For now.

Since it is on-device scanning, how long until a government somewhere says:

"Hey Apple, all the child porn people have turned off iCloud Photos. You already have on-device scanning, so we want the results of that too." [In legalese]

The clamor will be: "Why is Apple protecting child porn folks because they won't scan devices if iCloud Photos is off? The scanning is already there, it must be on."

What about when China says, "We want Tiananmen tank pictures"? They didn't stop selling in China when China demanded iCloud access.
 
I mean, I’m opposed to Apple doing it but enabling an opt-out option makes the whole process useless, as the bad people would gladly opt out of this kind of scanning. Apple should scrap it completely at this point

They are essentially giving an opt-out now: stop using iCloud Photos.

But then as you say, it is useless. But then the argument from governments or Apple will be, as it is useless, why shouldn't Apple scan devices even without iCloud Photos turned on?

Once it is there, it is only a matter of time until non-iCloud Photos devices will be scanned and the feature creep of other types of photos will be required by governments too.
 
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