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it didn’t at first, because on the surface of it, I don’t have that kind of content, and don’t use icloud anyway. However, Apples willingness to go down this road at all, and the elementary fallacy “if you're not committing crimes then you have no reason to worry about us trampling your 4th amendment right to privacy” issued in yesterdays statement tells me they are not actually serious or even familiar with the subject of privacy at all. This marks a turning point in my relationship with technology. Rather than it being a passive creative tool, I now have to think about whether my device (and however many unknown faceless people are on the other end of it) will approve of what I’m doing on it at any time and whether it’s reporting me if it doesn’t. Am I breaking some copyright law by listening to my music library or remixing some clip from a dvd into a mashup? & if so, can I trust my own computer will not prosecute me for that next? Not anymore. This Apple computer used to be a digital paintbox, now it is a digital boobytrap of tripwires and federal agents in my home. With this change, Apple’s willingness to use our devices to actively monitor us for illegal activity and then turn our devices against us means there’s no way I’m upgrading or purchasing anything beyond this point.
So well said
 
I just remembered last month there was an article where the DNC said they were going to work with carriers to check peoples SMS messages for vaccine misinformation. Now this month Apple makes this announcement. Looks like we’re all going to have to go to Signal.
 
I will watch it carefully, and we as a family won´t upgrade beyond iOS14 and Big Sur at the moment. iCloud is the most unreliable of our utilized cloud services (OneDrive, Dropbox, Backblaze, Spotify, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon). We try to limit our usage to backups at the moment.

I know, that CSAM scans are performed already for years, but on the clouds servers of your choice.

So we have a huge potential loophole/censor device and - I am getting paranoid here ;-) - I strongly believe Apple is also doing this to save on server costs and let us do the whole work while being spied on.

They are getting too big, too greedy, too complacent. But I am hopeful - they won´t stay invincible forever.

We once enjoyed the Apple garden intensively, but now it´s just a tool amongst others. We can switch, if necessary. We are prepared.
 
With respect - people focusing on the specific case of scanning for CSAM are missing what the story is.

What's really happening here is Apple are putting a tool onto users phones whose purpose is to compare users private data against black box third party databases.

What it's used for is simply subject to Apple policy and what local jurisdictions might force them to use it for.

Installing a tool like this on user devices is a huge mistake.
Yep. As I said in another thread, I am not the conspiracy type. But lets just say it would NOT surprise me if it later got out that this is doing something else other than CSAM, but Apple is under national security to not disclose it. That is the worry hear. Apple is talking loudly about this and basically saying "BUT THE KIDS!!!". It just seems fishy to me. If they are already doing this on iCloud, and they are only doing this for items that will be uploaded to iCloud, what is the purpose of doing this on device? What does this gain?
 
iOS 14 is the end of the road for me.
While it's extremely unlikely than any kiddie porn enthusiast except an utter moron would collect those kind of photos and save them in the stock Photos App —no less upload the illegal images to iCloud Photos — no less do so when all the world now knows what's going on with iPhone surveillance, the fact that the RottenApple company is now going down this road spells the end of the road for me.

If a third party app decided on their own to do what they're planning to do, (background surveillance of the camera roll) they'd be barred from publishing the app on the App Store by the gatekeepers and nobody would download the app anyway.
The RottenApple company has turned into a surveillance company. Why would anyone want to be associated with that?
Problem is, once Apple sets the precedent it will move to the other companies as well and once they all do it it sets a precedent for them to take it further. Where are you going to go when the Apple road ends?
 
My employer gets to monitor what I have on my company owned device. They own them, and pay me to do that. They can do that what they want with their device.

Why would Apple get the same benefit on MY PERSONAL devices? They are just the manufacturer. They forfeit any ownership of my device when I paid for it (with a good chunk of change). What's next? All cars will be outfit with microphones that the car manufacturer will hear all the time so that they can determine if I'm a kidnapper?
 
no. dropbox, google, Microsoft..all have been doing that in the cloud for years, some of them even checking your movie files for movie downloads.

I am also pretty sure they will also start soon to check offline folders by you, everyone will start doing it.

but I am also from a country where CSAM will not be activated (for now). so...eh.
Yes, but the reason I and some other people went for Apple was their privacy claims.
 
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From what I have read Google, MS, FB and the other big tech companies are already doing this in one form or another.
Once again, so what? We always knew about that.
This all comes back to the logic: "Knife stabbings in Chinese kindergartens and schools are okay, because there are school shootings in the US"
"It's okay what China is doing in Africa, considering what the white people did" kind of logic.

The reason I and some other users went back to Apple was privacy. So technically Apple lied to me. That's the only reason why I went with Apple.
 
It does affect my decisions, or rather cements existing suspicions. CSAM is only the beginning. Having a completely on-device setup like this means that anything on your phone could be flagged with the flip of switch and you probably won't even need to be on WiFi for it to beam hashes to some database. They can make any minor tweaks or changes without our knowledge to this and open many cans of worms. I am aware that privacy on Internet-connected devices and phones has always been a joke, going back to the early 90s, but on-device data must be protected. I know they say it's only for iCloud Photos but guess what, they can just flip a switch and now it's all photos. If it isn't already.

It's really a different thing to scan in the cloud at least to me, we don't have to use that service and technically we are using their storage on a lease so they have ground to stand on. But our devices *should* be our devices, free of intervention from above. Leave my computer alone, leave my data alone. The moment on device data is being pruned is the moment I discontinue Internet from them and downgrade the software to a lower level. I will have none of it. I don't have anything illegal on my computers, but that may not be the case in 5-10 years. I have plenty of things that may be considered questionable to some now and will probably become more so with time. Think of the old show The Prisoner, this is something that could be vanished from history for its statements against groupthink and I will still have the whole thing on my hard drive... "Questions are a burden and answers a prison for oneself" never seemed so true as it does these days and I fear we tread on dangerous ground, so I will be proactive in this regard.

Luckily, being in the position I am, I don't need a smartphone for anything more than convenience. I got rid of my 12 Mini because for some reason the screen did bother me, but instead of buying an LCD smartphone I just went straight down to a dumb phone. I thought of getting an SE2 but gave this a try. I could not be happier with this choice, I realized that having the Internet in my pocket was doing me more harm than good, I don't like to be connected when I'm out. I do miss Maps but I have a solution - map books. I understand many cannot afford to make this sacrifice and abandon their smartphone altogether, so I consider myself lucky in this regard.

Never had a smartwatch. I still have my iPad Pro but I will not update it any further than iOS 14, and when it gets like my iPad 2 and is unusable, it goes offline. I was already on the fence because the update wasn't that worthwhile to me but this sealed the deal. I may even buy another used iPad for around the house to keep on 14 while it's still easy to get them. I will not upgrade any Macs any further than Big Sur, my M1 Mini stays where it is and I already knew it was the last Mac I would buy. Debian might be a nightmare sometimes but that's where I'm tinkering these days. Have Windows for some odd programs and when I want to fire up CivIII. In a way I really missed Windows/Linux, macOS has been getting old for about 10 years. More iOS bloat and poor UI - no thanks.

This ended up way longer than I expected but I hope this makes sense. I simply do not trust the future trajectory of the world to be kind to us in regards to privacy and freedom.
 
I'm not worried. Most people post every thought they have publicly then talk about privacy. Your info is mined constantly. By banks, phones, google, government, CCTV etc.
 
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Yup, I'm actually leaving the ecosystem entirely. Never thought that would happen. But oh well, the software is super buggy these days anyway. And the interface is not intuitive like it used to be. The main reason I stayed was because of how devices work together. I will miss the hardware though; I wish PC manufacturers would catch up to Apple's build quality in laptops.
 
Yup, I'm actually leaving the ecosystem entirely. Never thought that would happen. But oh well, the software is super buggy these days anyway. And the interface is not intuitive like it used to be. The main reason I stayed was because of how devices work together. I will miss the hardware though; I wish PC manufacturers would catch up to Apple's build quality in laptops.

What will you be getting as replacements?
 
All the people claiming they're leaving the echo system make me laugh. Where are you going to go? Google? Hah. Good luck. It's even worse over there. The only difference now is that Apple are disclosing this whereas other companies don't.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Banks, etc... they've all been doing this for years and most people don't even know it or have their heads so far in the sand that they don't want to believe it.

If those who are that bent out of shape about this really want their privacy back it goes way beyond your cell phone. We've gotten to a point in society where there really is no turning back. All you have left is the ability to bitch and moan about it because there is no stopping it.
 
There is a lot of unnecessary freaking out going on that's for sure (as much as I'm a detractor of the new Surveillance OS too).
It's not like anyone HAS to upgrade (downgrade in this case) to iOS 15 or Monterey. Stay on iOS 14/Big Sur for the next 4 years and see how the smoke settles.
Heck, I'm typing this post out right now on an iPhone running iOS 9.
 
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There is a lot of unnecessary freaking out going on that's for sure (as much as I'm a detractor of the new Surveillance OS too).
It's not like anyone HAS to upgrade (downgrade in this case) to iOS 15 or Monterey. Stay on iOS 14/Big Sur for the next 4 years and see how the smoke settles.
Heck, I'm typing this post out right now on an iPhone running iOS 9.

For all we know, this is coming to iOS 14 and Big Sur also

Apple won't even say what was in the just released BigSur 11.5.2
 
All the people claiming they're leaving the echo system make me laugh. Where are you going to go? Google? Hah. Good luck. It's even worse over there. The only difference now is that Apple are disclosing this whereas other companies don't.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Banks, etc... they've all been doing this for years and most people don't even know it or have their heads so far in the sand that they don't want to believe it.

If those who are that bent out of shape about this really want their privacy back it goes way beyond your cell phone. We've gotten to a point in society where there really is no turning back. All you have left is the ability to bitch and moan about it because there is no stopping it.

Perhaps this is what "they" want: as Simon & Garfunkel once sang: Silence like a cancer grows....
 
All the people claiming they're leaving the echo system make me laugh.
The one thing that makes me laugh is all the people who still don't understand the difference between how Twitter, Facebook & Co. do it vs what Apple proposed so far. Massive difference.

That being said, no one seems to know exactly who Apples approach is working. I've read their technical document on it multiple times and it's very vague. I doubt we'll get answers from Apple and have to wait until it's live and can be reverse engineered.
 
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This is one feature that will likely take a good time to roll out in other countries. Won´t be an issue for me and this time its a feature I gladly have to ”wait“ for..

I am finally ready to upgrade to the 13 Pro max from my old 7+..
 
I am surprised so many abstain from purchases because of surveillancegate.

I only hope this generalizes to the general public at least to some degree.

As for me: at this point all planned acquisitions of Apple products have been put on hold (iPhone 13, MBP 16, maybe watch).

Even if they‘d reverse their decision (unlikely though) they lost every bit of credibility. As much as I like their ecosystem they crossed a line they should not have. What makes matters worse is that they used privacy as a main selling point - only to screw their customers over now.

Plan of action: probably a Dell X17 running KDE Plasma for development plus some mid-tier Android phone sometime later
 
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