Global Coalition of Policy Groups Urges Apple to Abandon 'Plan to Build Surveillance Capabilities into iPhones'

[dgrey]

Set aside all the technical aspects of this situation, the privacy arguments, the legal justifications, etc for just a moment.

This is becoming a slow roll public relations disaster for a company that touts privacy in it's advertising. We can sit here on what is a fan boy tech geek web site and argue all the technobabble we want about on device, off device, this scan, that scan, hash, human review, cloud, no cloud.

All people who care about privacy hear is that Apple is going to scan their photos. All the iCloud on/off is techno mumbo jumbo to them. It's all static. People don't have time to do a deep dive into stuff like that. They're too busy watching Beat Shazam or Hell's Kitchen and eating pizza.


When the tag lines in your advertising are:

"Privacy. That's iPhone"

"Privacy is King"

"We're in the business of staying out of yours"

and

"What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone"


And people PERCIEVE that's not the case, that's a PR and a brand image FAILURE.

The technological or the moral reasons do not matter at this point. This is becoming a colossal egg on face moment for Apple, and they seem to be in denial about it.

Time to punt. Knowing when to make a stand and when to fold is important. Apple should quietly back away from this for now. Maybe regroup and work with other providers to come to an industry wide standard on the issue so they're not set apart like they are now.

They're making a mess of it, which is not what I would expect from the world's most valuable company.

Tim Cook needs to be punted. Possibly Federighi too.

 

[giggles]

Judging by the amount of people that fetishize the idea of the pre-labeling process not running on “muh device”, I’m starting to think Apple should do what they did for the Safari address bar in the latest beta: offer choice.

1) pre-label “CSAM or not” on device but then make the pics totally undecryptable once on server
2) no pre-labeling on device but then on server we can decrypt your pics routinely and mass search for CSAM

 

[DesignTime]

I love the arguments that if you are against Apple on this you must either be uneducated, a conspiracy theorist, haven’t read Apple’s document or just stupid. Stop belittling people. If you think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then great, upgrade to iOS 15 and enjoy. I for one have lost all trust in Apple and won’t upgrade. I’m even in the process of removing more and more tech from my life. Call me crazy if you want (see above for the belittling comment), but it’s not the 2008-10 tech boom anymore. Tech has become more interested in money and power than in making life better. My eyes are wide open to life outside of big tech and starring at my phone all day.

 

[siddavis]

Where’s the warrant for explosive sniffers devices at airports?
Where’s the warrant when doctors report a gun wound or a beaten wife?
Where’s the warrant when my bank report me because somebody wired me 200k€ from abroad or because I deposited 10k€ cash?
Where’s the warrant when Google/Facebook/MS/others mass-scan for CSAM my private pictures (not actively shared with others) on their clouds?

Sometimes companies have to report illegal activities happening on their premises, be it virtual premises or physical ones.

My phone is their premises?
Is my house the premises of the builder?

 

[Mac4Mat]

If you don't want your photos scanned then don't upload them to icloud
but why don't you want them scanned? what are you hiding?
I'm all for safeguarding children

Even if you don't intend uploading to iCloud the software will still be on your hardware!

If you are for safeguarding children you would never agree with what Apple are doing. I've been at the blunt end of some of the efforts to put scumbags away for it, and all this does is provide an excuse for Apple because sure as eggs is eggs it only telegraphs to paedophiles, who in the main are ultra organised groups of individuals who take very precaution they can to avoid being court, leaving just the excuse left to have a backdoor on your hardware.

 

[giggles]

My phone is their premises?
Is my house the premises of the builder?

iCloud is.
They only check the security vouchers if you upload the photos on iCloud.
The local process is not tethered to Apple. It’s just do its thing and doesn’t tell anyone.

 

[DesignTime]

Software running on it is not your property, you’re licensed to use it in a limited way.

I’m done with that argument. It’s time for that to change.

 

[azmscle]

This is one of the situations where I really don't understand people...

Honestly, I feel that if this was announced before Covid it would of had a far different reaction.
The level of emotional reaction instead of logical ones has increased ten fold over this period of time. People have become so quick to speculate things that have no actual basis in reality anymore. Add in the fact that many people have lost faith and trust in their own governments decision making and you have a recipe for disaster.

 

[giggles]

I’m done with that argument. It’s time for that to change.

This is capitalism, you’re free to found your software company and do otherwise.

 

[Mac4Mat]

You can’t disable it on iOS/iPadOS.

And how do you know it’s not doing nefarious stuff, cross referencing, etc.? It’s not open source. How can you trust Apple running a local process like Spotlight indexing on YOUR device?? It’s definitely a backdoor. Windows search as well.

Hackers already tricking Apple’s CSAM scanning

Yes and this is AS A RESULT OF APPLE. Paedophiles must be rubbing their hands together in glee at being given a free pass to ply their awful sick trade/hobby/abuse or whatever you want to call it, as all its done is telegraph something else to avoid in order to be detected, and where in any event the only time these people are in the light, is social media, the rest of the time they tend to go dark web, Tor, VPN, as they often have comprehensive networks of like minded sickos!

You might get the occasion teenager sexting, or the occasional image that's potentially worthy of checking out, but not by invading over 1,000,000,000 users hardware. That's just an excuse for a back door.

 

[Mac4Mat]

Thing is, as sick as CP is, its just another thing that is illegal. There are lots of things in this world that are illegal. Animal abuse is illegal, dealing drugs is illegal, trespassing is illegal...Why aren't we scanning for that type of stuff too if we're just looking at doing the morally right thing here? I can understand the suspicion.

I suspect the reason it was considered the most emotive excuse to install software on your hardware.

 

[ozone1]

Here is a great Wall Street Journal Podcast that explains the facts of what Apple is really doing here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xYAXwz6oDPE6ApMt1HzV5?si=47683c5df5174270

 

[dandy1117]

At some point, you have to trust the OS vendor or service provider, Currently, if you're using the Photos app (not just iCloud Photo Library users), Apple is already "scanning", on device, your photo libraries for faces, places, identifiable objects, and activities. I don't recall the uproar from others when this processed was announced.

Presumably, Apple could be harvesting this information and sending back to Apple.

Again, at some point it requires trust and verification from developers to check that iOS is implemented as described by Apple.

 

[dgrey]

On the other hand, it was a good call to do this in August on a weekend.

It didn’t make one Iota of a difference.

 

[dgrey]

At some point, you have to trust the OS vendor or service provider, Currently, if you're using the Photos app (not just iCloud Photo Library users), Apple is already "scanning", on device, your photo libraries for faces, places, identifiable objects, and activities. I don't recall the uproar from others when this processed was announced.

Presumably, Apple could be harvesting this information and sending back to Apple.

Again, at some point it requires trust and verification from developers to check that iOS is implemented as described by Apple.

You can turn off location scanning for photos.

 

[DesignTime]

This is capitalism, you’re free to found your software company and do otherwise.

This is the problem with software and big tech. They think they should be able to keep ownership of something they sold you. Entitlement at its best. If only they would take blame for all the damage they’ve done to this world from lost of lives to destroying the environment instead of worrying about keeping ownership of code.

 

[ChromeAce]

Ah, here goes the "abusive parents" argument again. They conveniently leave out the fact that it's for children under 13 only, and Apple or the parents never learn the actual contents of the message (the parents might if they take the child's phone). A 12 year old child is way too young to be complaining about parents "snooping" on their internet activity IMO, they deserve some extra protection. And it's not like they can't choose not to view the photo (there's even an explicit warning) and then the parents will never know.

Where are the studies and evidence showing nudity of any kind is potentially more harmful to a developing mind than violence? One could argue that teaching a child that there’s something wrong with nudity is far more damaging, and that morality has roots in American puritanism when witches were burned in the 1600s. Are we really saying that a 10-year-old should learn that photos of Nazi death camps don’t need supervision but researching more about mommy’s breast cancer should be blocked?

Meanwhile, the proposed system does nothing to block video or FaceTime and the iCloud filter can’t block anything that isn’t previously hashed… including the most disturbing content of all: new images being produced daily.

All while the Safari and Twitter apps allow full access to unfiltered adult porn. None of this makes any sense.

 

[Mac4Mat]

Giggles, give it up, your replies to try to justify the unjustifiable are looking more and more desperate. Give Tim my regards, as he knows who I am.

 

[siddavis]

Honestly, I feel that if this was announced before Covid it would of had a far different reaction.
The level of emotional reaction instead of logical ones has increased ten fold over this period of time. People have become so quick to speculate things that have no actual basis in reality anymore. Add in the fact that many people have lost faith and trust in their own governments decision making and you have a recipe for disaster.

Nope, Covid has just exposed many realities that were mostly hidden. People are awake now and have every reason to be skeptical, cynical and suspicious. The institutions that operate smoother when people trust them and have faith in them have done little over this time to retain that trust and faith.

 

[dgrey]

Judging by the amount of people that fetishize the idea of the pre-labeling process not running on “muh device”, I’m starting to think Apple should do what they did for the Safari address bar in the latest beta: offer choice.

1) pre-label “CSAM or not” on device but then make the pics totally undecryptable once on server
2) no pre-labeling on device but then on server we can decrypt your pics routinely and mass search for CSAM

They should do NEITHER. ALL your personal data should be encrypted end to end, and Apple doesn’t have the key. Period.

 

[bobcomer]

If we’re gonna be this paranoid and forward looking, we should instantly all switch to open source hardware, open source software and self-hosted personal cloud. And decentralized consensus-based settlement of transactions (on blockchains).

Open source hardware really wouldn't buy you anything, but I did order an open source OS phone last week. And no, blockchains are just as bad as scanning on my device for privacy, but that's a whole 'nuther argument that has nothing to do with Apple and not even something I'm interested in. (or use)

And I have 30TB in 2 NAS's for backups at home, private cloud indeed.

 

[bobcomer]

Incidentally that also doesn’t change the hypocrisy of pretending that nowadays local devices aren’t one thing with the cloud anyway so both Google and Apple users in 99% cases will get scanned anyway…no matter on what side of the uploading process...Apple’s using us the courtesy of not routinely fumbling with our unencrypted pics on the server side, by pre-labeling them securely on the client side..

That doesn't even make sense. I have said I'm okay with server side scanning already, multiple times.

 

[Wildkraut]

At some point, you have to trust the OS vendor or service provider, Currently, if you're using the Photos app (not just iCloud Photo Library users), Apple is already "scanning", on device, your photo libraries for faces, places, identifiable objects, and activities. I don't recall the uproar from others when this processed was announced.

Presumably, Apple could be harvesting this information and sending back to Apple.

Again, at some point it requires trust and verification from developers to check that iOS is implemented as described by Apple.

Well, trust is something that must be earned, comes with time, and is build up on history. Tim managed to destroy this in a matter of seconds, and with every new statement, explanation while backing up these surveillance methods, it gets worse.

Cupertino is the new burning Rome 🔥🏛.

 

[bobcomer]

Software running on it is not your property, you’re licensed to use it in a limited way.

Sorry guy, that software can't run here if not for my hardware. Apple is not licensed to use it as they see fit.

 

[Wildkraut]

That doesn't even make sense. I have said I'm okay with server side scanning already, multiple times.

Also something that always disturbed me, not being able to exclude photos from iCloud Photos. It’s all on or nothing, on purpose.