They're not "scanning through photos" they are matching hashes from known hashes that are on a database.
First of all we are not talking about a democratically elected "foreign government" here, that is founded on the western principles. We are dealing with a dangerous authoritarian regime that is killing its own people, hunting down and assassinating dissidents domestically an internationally, has its citizens under surveillance 24/7, etc. If anything, under these circumstances, since Apple is preaching to be all about "human rights" and individual freedom then they shouldn't even negotiate with such a disgusting regime. Maybe sell some iToys in their market? Sure, but don't give so much power and wealth to that regime by choosing to produce all of your products there when Apple knows exactly that the people in charge are pure dictators that do not respect human rights.
No. You are uninformed, casually rude and on top of this arrogant. It's well documented.
That's exactly my thought when I heard them say they will put a pause on it, it was fear out of iOS15 adoption numbers.
What I find stupid is people are still talking about how the spyware works instead of whether it should exist on your device at all….. zero people who are against this care about how the code works, they just don’t want the code on their devices. Full stop, the entire issue goes away if Apple just sets up an intermediate server to scan hashes on way to iCloud servers or some other process as long as it takes our devices out of the loop. Don’t be distracted by the trolls and fan boys…. This is a very simple singlular issue
That’s a different program Apple was working on entirely, it uses an a.I. Algorithm to look for nudity…it’s the part Apple tried to blame consumer confusion over the csam thing…. It a separate issue, some don’t agree with it either but really does need its own thread…. It has zero to do with the issue being discussed here
No one likes to explain a joke, you either get it, as many people have, or you don’t.
Indeed. Or if the DPD delivery driver pushes past you at your door, any time of day or night, and does a shake down on your house, top to bottom. You know, just in case you might have broken a law.
Are you so oblivious that you think that matters in terms of privacy? A hash is nothing more than a perceptual summary that captures essence of the statistical structure (perceptual features) of the of the image. I and many others don't want Apple scanning either raw images or summaries of images on our iPhones.
I don't like Apple's proposal either, by I think the child safety features are triggered when an image in transmitted from one phone to another (e-mail, text). That's a different kettle of fish than scanning iCloud images locally on the iPhone, because it is probably done server-side and the child protection features will be selected by the adult owner of the child's iPhone. I personally don't object to that, but I do object to the CSAM surveillance.
Well, they're actually going to distribute to every device a database of hashes against which any picture being uploaded to iCloud is checked. Thus, the whole process takes place on your phone before encryption. The database will be Apple's, but it will be a third party deciding which hashes to include, and Apple will have no insight in the data these hashes represent.
Completely agree about government involvement/pressure!
Absolutely not. Apple has promised that anything stored in iCloud is encrypted by the user's own private certificate - meaning only cryptographs and no real user data is stored in iCloud.
The reason is Apple wanted to still be able to employ E2EE for iCloud, which they have kept postponing. They ultimately want to be able to say "We can't look at your stuff even on our servers." They cant do that if they scan on their servers, it would either reveal their encryption can be broken (by them no less) or that they have a key, so it's not truly E2EE. Their solution was to do it on the device, before it was encrypted and sent to iCloud servers. That way they could say they don't know what is on iCloud, but they know it's not CSAM. They want E2EE on iCloud bad, it fits into their whole privacy ethos in the way the CSAM detection does not. They were so focused on threading the needle they didn't consider the consequences.
This is another big reason for me to abandon Apple ecosystem, this is systemic problem. The quality of their software design and ultimately future products is suffering well known problem in the industry - marketing overreach combined with corrupt management and low quality personnel. When you forget about the core value of the company and run wild with politics and wishful thinking, mistakes like this are guaranteed to happen all the time. The fact that they continue to resist public pressure and just "delaying it" is another proof that this company has reached the limit of expansion and cannot deserve the trust anymore.
This right here has always bothered me about this argument against CSAM. My iPhone knows about landscape, dogs, pools, etc…. Yet people never once batted an eye about it. Like literally there could already be a back door plan handing over your information to covert governments. I personally don’t think thats happening but part of the tools are already there.
