Let me introduce you to someone you should know better. His name is Edward Snowden. Or Louis Brandeis, who is spinning in his grave right about now.
The US Fourth Amendment exists for a damned good reason.
Anyway, that wasn't my stated position. I simply pointed out that this is done for a subset of users (where there's already existing reasons to do so, sub-13 and all) and that on syncing to iCloud this _already happens anyway_.
I would gladly take this if it removes a barrier to making iCloud E2E encrypted; they are likely bound to do this type of detection, but doing it client-side before syncing feels like a sane way to do it.
But there is an issue there. Now there is a process on your phone capable of processing unencrypted data on your phone and communicating with the outside world. That is spyware which will almost certainly be abused in some way.
What? That’s what all apps by definition do. My retinas can’t do decryption yet!
That puts it clearly in a different category from apps.
So I would ask US Lawmakers why cannot the phone companies make the same commitments? As the reason seems to be we have bad people doing crime using digital communication devices.
Last time I checked the digital pipeline ie phone lines is still under FFC rules is it not?
If they answer that its to hard tech wise then why cannot Apple make the same argument ot law makers?