I agree on this – if Apple proceeds I am done with iOS 15 and thereby new Apple devices. Will switch to GrapheneOS (when my 12 Pro with iOS 14 needs to be replaced) after buying my first iPhone in 2007 and a new one every year since then ...
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Global Coalition of Policy Groups Urges Apple to Abandon 'Plan to Build Surveillance Capabilities into iPhones'
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Name one "awful" thing any government has ever compelled Apple to do to their customers via their products and/services.
Don't worry. I'll wait.
I remember when people used to make a big deal about Microsoft as the evil giant tech company taking control of o0ur lives. Several movies were made about this too. But nothing happened. It was all fluff promoted by conspiracy theorists to keep people entertained talking about it and worrying for nothing.
Now the evil tech people are Google, Amazon and Apple. Microsoft doesn't even appear in the list anymore.
So no matter what these companies do, people will always find a bad motive behind it.
Let's talk again in 5 years, and laugh about how silly our comments were, and that nothing bad really happened.
I'm fine with it. I know other people have problems with server side scanning, but I'm not one of them. Client side, no way, no how, *way* too easy for Apple to change something. (like turning on iCloud photos on an update, or just going against what they say and putting something other than the CSAM DB, and scan whether I have sync on or not)
By putting that scanner and DB on my phone, I lost all trust in with they say.
Keeping chinese data on chinese servers?
But you trusted Apple before with a closed-source, proprietary operating system that controls your microphone, camera, precise location, and access to your communications, health, and financial records?
The truth is you either trust the hardware manufacturer or you don’t. I hear that you’ve lost trust now, but I’m not quite sure what makes this child abuse identification process any more instructive than the tools Apple already has, and presumably, for which you’ve previously trusted that they wouldn’t misuse.
It’s funny watching all the suddenly newly privacy focuses people Google(😂) the best privacy focused os’ across mobile and desktops and then name dropping them like they know what they’re talking about.
ooooh I’m gonna install graphineOS! Are you? Because it’s not like you think it is. Linux! Yes!! I hope you’re planning ahead with the apps you use. By the way - the only way to ensure these distros are doing what they say is if you study the code, and better, build yourselves. Probably one maximum here has the knowledge to do that, and I doubt they’ll bother. Have you heard about the linage os prankster devs that insert April fools ‘Easter eggs’ into your phone as a joke? Sound cool hey. But must be more private cos …. Not Apple
Privacy is a complicated thing, few of you realise how much. The beauty of Apple is it offers a strong layer of privacy for the masses. That’s most of you here, even if you think otherwise.
The fact of the matter is that not one post here, and very few postes in the other threads have actually come up with anything factually correct about apples implementation. Scarier still, most are pushing the benefits and virtues of server side over client side! It show a shocking lack on knowledge plastered around as if obvious fact.
Go do your homework! You’d be surprised what you learnt.
ooooh I’m gonna install graphineOS! Are you? Because it’s not like you think it is. Linux! Yes!! I hope you’re planning ahead with the apps you use. By the way - the only way to ensure these distros are doing what they say is if you study the code, and better, build yourselves. Probably one maximum here has the knowledge to do that, and I doubt they’ll bother. Have you heard about the linage os prankster devs that insert April fools ‘Easter eggs’ into your phone as a joke? Sound cool hey. But must be more private cos …. Not Apple
Privacy is a complicated thing, few of you realise how much. The beauty of Apple is it offers a strong layer of privacy for the masses. That’s most of you here, even if you think otherwise.
The fact of the matter is that not one post here, and very few postes in the other threads have actually come up with anything factually correct about apples implementation. Scarier still, most are pushing the benefits and virtues of server side over client side! It show a shocking lack on knowledge plastered around as if obvious fact.
Go do your homework! You’d be surprised what you learnt.
Yep, I did. Live and learn.
Eh, no. Trust can be earned, or trust can be thrown away in an instant. It's not some concrete number that never changes. Why, because they are including it on my device, nobody else does that (yet), and for good reason.
read it yourself! (as in chinese govt servers!)
Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China (Published 2021)
Apple built the world’s most valuable business on top of China. Now it has to answer to the Chinese government.
Looks like I have to spell it out for you : Apple doesn't scan all photos server-side.
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I'm confused why there's a belief that these measures break "end-to-end encryption". How so when all content remains encrypted along the entire path, from end to end?
No no. I understand what you’re referring to. But you just splat out stuff with no substance. It’s clear you don’t understand anything.read it yourself! (as in chinese govt servers!)
Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China (Published 2021)
Apple built the world’s most valuable business on top of China. Now it has to answer to the Chinese government.www.nytimes.com
That makes no sense. This feature _only_ works when the server-side uploading is enabled. Without iCloud Photos turned on, this entire feature is disabled on the phone. The phone-side and the server-side work in tandem. They are not separate pieces. The server-side tech only responds to the phone-side tech.
Besides, you already expect processing of your photos, for various reasons. Lightning, effects, enhancement. This is just one more fully-automated, private link in that processing chain. Nobody sees your photos.
It’s not like Apple gave in and put iCloud servers in China, in a government run data center, for Chinese citizens.. and even if they did, they would at a minimum keep the encryption keys safe… right? They don’t have a history of giving into requests like this. 🤷♂️
Apple has explained how the system works very clearly, and made very vocal promises to not let the system get compromised or be abused by governments. All of the uproar is about what _could_ happen (aka. speculation), not what Apple has created.
1) The scanning / comparison of photos on your phone is 100% private. Nobody sees your photos.
2) Scanning only happens IF you have enabled iCloud Photos.
3) Only photes that "match" have a voucher attached. Nobody has seen your photos yet.
4) If you upload more than 30 violating photos, only then can the server-side system decrypt the photos, and only then is a *derivative* (low-resolution) version of the photo revealed, not the original. Th original remains fully encrypted.
We live in a world of "innocent until proven guilty", so Apple is innocent of any wrongdoing until there's proof that their system has been used outside of its primary purpose.
I choose to believe that Apple is not doing anything sinister here. It's a more advanced and more private means of detecting "bad" images. That is good for us, not bad.
Apple balances this sort of thing out with technically-enforced policy. For instance, the plan is not to have a “China CSAM list” - it is a global list, with multiple nations needing to agree on what to add.
Apple balances out the worst of the requests by saying, if we give the US the ability to decrypt any iPhone in the world, we will be forced to give that to China and Russia too. If we change the scanning mechanism to go outside iPhoto uploads, the world will know quickly because we publish unsigned builds that get reverse engineered for changes.
In which case, why is this an issue wrt. China? China supposedly already has the capacity to scan all uploaded iPhoto images To individually identify citizens who engage in undesired activity.
To me, it looks like they’re using child safety as an excuse to introduce this backdoor. Csam, more like c-scam
Innocent until proven guilty? Then dont do warrantless searches on my phone.
where does it say that in your “evidence”?
From the article “Higher numbers of reports can be indicative of a variety of things including larger numbers
of users on a platform”
yes it also mentions efforts might be low, but this is what this new scanning is doing - making it more effective.
It does not say they aren’t scanning all photos. It could be just in general less abuse images are being uploaded to icloud than other services, it could be people might be on the free 5gb tier and their iPhone backup uses all the iCloud storage so there is no chance for it to be scanned as it can’t be uploaded.
The PDF is just raw numbers, there is no analysis in there for you to have a strong opinion on what the article is conveying.
It’s just numbers that include sex trafficking and other abuses which has no relation to images. For example, Facebook is a social network with groups to chat in, hence the high reports. Apple doesn’t have those kind of services to get the higher counts.
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My reply
my reply was to a post claiming Apple has an excellent track record and doesn’t cave to government pressure and implying such was pure speculation. If this would make anything worse for citizens of China over the scope of what they are already going through is uncertain, but there are governments out there that may be satisfied with access to this feature if modded to their liking.