Craig Federighi Acknowledges Confusion Around Apple Child Safety Features and Explains New Details About Safeguards

[subi257]

It’s the local scanning that bothers me. I see it as a weapon of mass surveillance. Even mighty Microsoft had to let China examine their Windows source code.

I fear the day when that local scanner looks beyond its scope and I can never trust Apple to do the right thing with this specific technology.

Okay, that being said, then who can you trust ? I think that the future of humanity might be a real world version of "The Matrix" as technology moves on.....don't get me wrong as I love cool modern tech. But it does come at a cost to privacy and individuality. I think that we are far behind what I envisioned tech would be like by now....when I was a kid, I thought we would have been like "The Jetsons" at this point. China and EU (and any other government that can do it) are going to control more how manufacturers design and build their products.....choosing what connectors and tech for them to use instead of individual companies innovating.

 

[VTECaddict]

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.

How are they intercepting end to end encrypted content? iCloud has never been end to end encrypted and Apple has always had the keys to decrypt it.

And even if it was, the scanning is done on device before it would be encrypted and sent out.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Rene Ritchie did a really good explanation on his YouTube channel. I can see why people are confused and upset about it. Maybe the explanation will help.

 

[hans1972]

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.

What's stopping China from saying, turn on iCloud backup secretly? The iCloud servers are already in China with Chinese providers and China can just force the encryption key from Apple.

Then the Chinese government would get almost all of your personal data on your phone. Also Apple wouldn't have to change on line of code in iCloud backup.

 

[MacBH928]

No it is you who is confused,
when you read my files and share them with a 3rd party makes you just another Facebook.

Now that they actually mentioned this in public, I wonder what is going behind the scenes in MacOS and iOS that they are not mentioning to the public. Better go FOSS.

"Whats on your phone, stays on your phone" eh Cook?

 

[centauratlas]

This is why some of you have this huge problem with Apple. You believe privacy = secrecy.

I don't think Apple subscribes to this definition of privacy and I certainly don't. Secrecy is just one part of privacy. In many cases complete secrecy of private data would be catastrophic.

Apple is all for Privacy and Secrecy when it comes to their own product announcements and leaks.

Just not for anyone else.

Civilization is the progress towards privacy. A savage has her whole existence public, ruled by the group she is in. Privacy and civilization sets people free from each other.

 

[JanLevinson]

It is confusing... but they are gaslighting us into thinking it is universal confusion when there is a large subset of people with clear understanding coupled with dissent

Exactly, this “you don’t understand” line is tired. Maybe those hundreds of Apple employees are just confused as well.

 

[centauratlas]

What's stopping China from saying, turn on iCloud backup secretly? The iCloud servers are already in China with Chinese providers and China can just force the encryption key from Apple.

Then the Chinese government would get almost all of your personal data on your phone. Also Apple wouldn't have to change on line of code in iCloud backup.

For sure, nothing. I was using it as an example of what the rest of the world will want to do with well known images of people fighting for freedom and having lost it in China.

I think that China probably already has the Apple encryption keys for the servers in China. Likewise, it wouldn't surprise me if they were available for the US and other country's servers too, just not publicized.

 

[hagjohn]

Because you can have end-to-end encryption for everything else if you trust Apple.

I trust that eventually they will just keep adding things they will be scanning.

 

[thadoggfather]

Exactly, this “you don’t understand” line is tired. Maybe those hundreds of Apple employees are just confused as well.

So they're not just assuming we're all sickos, but also dummies.

Brilliant!

 

[Pilot Jones]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

[ececlv]

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.

They ARE Scanning your photos on device. From the Apple FAQ:

Apple’s method of detecting known CSAM is designed with user privacy in mind. Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC and other child safety organizations. Apple further transforms this database into an unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices.

Use whatever tech babble you want, "On-Device Matching" IS Scanning. Apple looks through your photos, finds naughty things, and tells the cops. All without warrant.

 

[mainemini]

Apple had to know this would cause PR problems given their previous privacy based marketing.

I wonder if this limited first step into ondevice scanning and government reporting is to soften the negative PR of coming announced or unannounced governments' mandates that they know are coming.

 

[Robert.Walter]

I like Tim, and I like Craig, and really more or less the rest of the Apple management lot, but they are so wrong here.

They don’t seem to realize that the tip they introduce here comes with an attached spear just as well as a camel comes with a nose.

I can’t even bother to watch the JS WSJ iV with CF because it’s just justifying BS with more BS.

 

[dspdoc]

So they're not just assuming we're all sickos, but also dummies.

Brilliant!

I couldn't agree more. The level of arrogance Apple is displaying right now is off the charts!

 

[quarkysg]

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.

If you think about how E2EE is implemented, it requires the two endpoint to generate keys to be exchanged before secure communication can happen. If you have such distrust, why do you trust that all E2EE implementation is secure? What is stopping Apple, WhatsApp, Signal, etc, from sending a copy of the keys generated to their servers? Apple could have by now amassed all their users' iMessage communications, and ditto Facebook with WhatsApp.

All action taken are done with some objective. So what is Apple's objective or motivation for doing this? So that they can sell more iPhones by doing mass surveillance? Could it be that they are doing this just so that they can adhere to the letter of the law, and also to prepare for better privacy measure for their services in the future, like E2EE for iCloud Photos, of which is one of the few datasets that Apple stores in their servers that they can currently decrypt, because they are required to ensure that no illegal contents are stored?

 

[VTECaddict]

The main goal is to make sure Apple doesn’t get CSAM on its servers, so i don’t know why Apple doesn’t just do what Google, Facebook, etc do and just scan the photos in the cloud. That way if you don’t use iCloud, your stuff never gets scanned on device or off device.

Because if they scan in the cloud then they will have to know all the details and generate hashes of your entire image library.

They only want to know about CSAM and don’t want to know the details of other photos. So they designed a way to scan on device and only upload hashes of potential CSAM matches to Apple so that Apple knows less about what else is in people’s photos.

 

[hans1972]

I would have no idea.. but it would be a good starting point... I assume there must be some auditing to companies and at this corporate level catching a company lying I have no idea what it means in fees they have to pay. But anyway don't you want them to at least release the code?

There is no general auditing of software in consumer software. And even in when done in some cases by businesses it's usually for things which needs to bee highly secure.

Releasing the source code won't do anything with the biggest problem some of these people have with Apple: trust.
There are several other areas of iOS which could be misused to an even larger degree and no one is demanding open sourcing those areas.

If you choose to use closed software, you really have to trust the software developer. In this case, Apple.

 

[femike]

It's not about CSAM, its not even about iCloud images. CSAM is the excuse to install surveillance software on every iPhone, iPad, macOS, Apple Watch. This will certainly be used to search for other content on your Apple devices in the future. This is why the software is on your device in the first place , not CSAM. CSAM is the gateway. The door is opened, the mechanism is in place. And Federighi says "multiple levels of auditability", which simply means 'believe us'.

How long has Apple been working on implementing this spy software? Maybe 1.5 to 2 years since it was first discussed. Tim Cook would of had to sign off on it. Therefore, he had already signed off on this while he was going on and on about privacy, with his multi million dollar advertising campaign.

Tim Cook has deceived all Apple users and has lost all integrity. He is a pro snake oil salesman. He has used 'privacy' as a sales tool and people believed him but it turned out to be a huge fat lie. He had made Apple untrustworthy on their most significant marketing differentiation from Google. The board should immediately terminate Tim Cook in disgrace and rollback this appalling decision.

 

[subi257]

This is a PR nightmare for Apple - full or arrogance. I guess the more we read about how great and exceptional this unique system is , among other pompous words they use , the more we (the users) will be annoyed by this arrogance. At this point they need to be more down to earth.

I would like to know how this new system aligns with their ads all those years. For example what happens on your iphone stays on your iphone. If Apple has the courage I would ask Mr Federighi to compare the message of that ad to what they announced today and to release a new PR statement mentioning that there is no contradiction between those two messages. The message of old Apple to the message the new Apple is sending today.

I would also like a straight answer from Apple if other critical topics such as children that they are searching for ways to suicide are important to apple. I assume this is a critical and equally important problem to child pornography. Are they willing to start scanning such messages to protect children?

And I would really like from Mr Federighi a straight answer to why Apple stepped back to China and Russia. They are claiming now that they won't step back to any external pressure, but let's start by explaining historical facts. Why did they stepped back in the past?

Final thought. If Apple wants to be honest and regain some trust, ..if possible... they are defending a system that caused such a great reaction. Some people support it , most of us do NOT support it. Why aren't they releasing the code so experts will be able to evaluateit. I understand Apple has a closed system but I guess there must be a way to release at least this part of the code somehow... if they are not willing to release the code it would be also interesting to have a PR release by Apple explaining the reason..

200​

Apple has always been about arrogance and superiority (just like Avid in the video editing world) but offering excellent and innovative products. Steve Jobs was a brilliant marketing genius, but from everything that I have read (including "The Woz"), he was as arrogant as they come.

 

[StarkInc]

Who has appointed Apple as an investigator for paedophilia crimes?

Isn't that a job that the police. They are supposed to investigate on suspicion of a crime?

Why should Apple scan MY mobile or computer? What I have in my phone or computer is MY business.

If I have committed a crime, it is up to the police to investigate it, not Apple, which will mass spy on all units for the police.

This is a first step for total monitoring.

 

[madsci954]

Given all the negative feedback and all these “clarification” discussions, I have a feeling they won’t backpedal on this.

 

[RobQuads]

They really don't get it. Its not the mechanics of how its done its the fact its done at all. Once a system is in place to scan images for content you no-longer have any excuse not to implement additional scanning for governments when requested i.e. Budapest declare its illegal to be LBGT, they tell Apple to scan for any such imagery. Apple have no excuse not to. Its the law in the country - they can do it so they would have to. No different to removing apps that the governments force them to do. They have to remove them because they can. This gives all governments the ability to request image scanning.

 

[citysnaps]

Indeed. The hubris is astounding. They STILL have not at all explained why they can't just scan on their iCloud servers instead of insisting it has to be done on the device, and they just keep piling on the obfuscation.

They can. And the government, if push came to shove, could also view photos on iCloud servers by government mandate.

Which system would you prefer? Apple scanning a table of hashes against hashed photos on your phone, or, the government looking at your photo jpegs on cloud servers (Apple and others).

 

[thadoggfather]

The fact that they didn’t announce this as a feature at WWDC but saved it for a more quiet announcement makes it all the more alarming.

Bingo. Those memojis Tim opened up to would've walked out: