“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsApp. The answer is no.”
twitter.com
twitter.com
By contrast, their privacy messaging runs much more shallow, and those who uncritically swallowed it always struck me as rather naive. Apple's ostensible pro-privacy stance has nothing to do with their ethos as a company, but was just convenient positioning relative to Google given their respective lines of business. It's fair game to highlight this advantage, but it's a lot like Facebook saying they "prioritize" avoiding abusive manufacturing practices more than Apple...while technically true, it's a function of their market position, and is not very useful for understanding the org's future behavior.
https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy-credit/
Maybe kind of akin to the concept of "moral luck":
Even if I consider Google enemy #1 right now, I also don't really see them as privacy unfriendly. They have a shitton of data, but what have they exactly done with it that warrants the moniker? Microsoft seems to me to be much more privacy unfriendly (e.g., LinkedIn)
At least with the right Android device I can flash my own keys to the trust root.
Of course, now they've gone and un-earned the reputation. Too bad.
- iMessage is E2EE (with a big asterisk here of course)
- Maps data stays on device unless you explicitly enable anonymous aggregated crowd sharing data. “Significant locations” never leaves your device
- Apple Photos machine learning recognition all happens on device, not on Apple servers. This is one of my favorite features of my iPhone
- As of the next iOS update, Siri voice command processing happens on device
- The new Apple Private Relay (or whatever it’s called)
No they’re not perfect and they could (and should) do a lot more, but there are objective things that they do better from a privacy standpoint than most other tech companies.
Technically Google also "promises" practically the same (E2EE in Chats, only sharing map data if you enable it, local photo recognition, local voice assistant on the new Pixel whatever, etc.). But since you have to trust them on this, all of it is not really much better than just having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is meaningless.
E2EE for Messages literally rolled out last month, relies on spotty RCS support and doesn't work with group messages.
Apple Location tracking designed so that even when shared between your devices via Apple's servers it's not visible to Apple.
I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I'd love a source for that since nothing about how it works implies that. Maybe you mean it does some very specific type of classification as a pre-processing step?
> But since you have to trust them on this, all of it is not really much better than just having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is meaningless.
You're free to be wrong? You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing.
Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple is pulling the equivalent of a fake moon landing and somehow running a 147 billion dollar data selling operation no one knows about...
The point is that they make extremely similar promises that you can't verify.
> You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing.
What is the difference between someone saying that your data is not visible to them (oh but you can't verify it!) versus someone saying that they will not touch or store your data after processing it on their privacy policy?
When they control the entire platform, the fact that they claim to be doing something technical to prevent them from accessing the data is absolutely pointless. Even if it were true, they could be able to change it in an instant after a silent update (by themselves, by the government, or even by a third party attack!), and no one would be the wiser.
> Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple
Not sure I understand.
In any case, most companies have already lied multiple times, and _all_ companies share at least one big reason to lie: Come tomorrow, some three letter agency could send them the letter and outright force them to capture your data, and since the only thing that prevents them from capturing your data is empty promises, they could do it in an instant. And would do it. And in fact do it regularly (TFA could in fact be an example of Apple trying to get rid of that).
Btw,
> I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification,
I have never put a SIM nor network credentials on my only Google Android device that has practically never abandoned my residence and yet it is tagging photos of objects. That's my source. I have not put a SIM either on my iOS devices and they do not tag pictures :)
That's exactly what I just explained, and I don't enjoy these kinds of circular back and forth.
If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead.
But I will point out starting your comment with "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement.
-
I work on embedded Android for a living, so it's not like I'm afraid if what I don't know or something, iOS is a demonstrably privacy-oriented platform.
A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads", you're not going to change that for me with baseless insistence.
I do not see who is "subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed", and if this is trying to say that the other companies are never claiming those tenants in the first place, then that is objectively false. Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have claimed being "privacy first" more times than I count, and, my point is, they are all making similarly dubious promises regarding policy (like, closed-source encryption, no data sent unless you ask for it, etc.).
> If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead.
This is misleading. Thing is, it is not "tearing out its core" precisely because Google services are actually _not_ at the core of Android, yet. You still cannot do that with iOS (because they do not allow tampering to begin with, least you figure out a way to avoid leaving a fingerprint in their servers).
> "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement.
First, none of the topics mentioned are the "most important aspects of how [to?] secure a modern platform".
Second, I distinguish privacy from security. i.e. it doesn't matter if it was the most secure platform in the world if I have to trust all the data to a distrustful entity to begin with.
In fact, I actually prefer privacy over security. E.g. for messaging, I value using servers _I_ control/trust much higher than E2EE encryption, which is definite secondary worry. Metadata is a dangerous thing to leak.
> A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads",
This is basically trying to answer "to whom I put my blind trust?", so it's subjective. But in my experience it is usually the most "privacy marketing" companies that are usually the worst regarding privacy. See most VPN resellers. Most privacy marketing is just bullshit.
Like
> they are all making similarly dubious promises regarding policy (like, closed-source encryption, no data sent unless you ask for it, etc.).
I just listed multiple of the most common pieces of software where Google and Apple make claims to wildly differing levels of privacy! Does your decision that none of that matters because both companies mention privacy in marketing somehow override reality?
> First, none of the topics mentioned are the "most important aspects of how [to?] secure a modern platform".
You're not sure if "to" is the missing word?
And if you think the number of updated devices is not one of, if not the most important aspect of securing a modern platform, then your opinion on security doesn't matter. And contrary to your implications, privacy and security are not something you prefer over each other, privacy does not exist without security.
> Second, I distinguish privacy from security. i.e. it doesn't matter if it was the most secure platform in the world if I have to trust all the data to a distrustful entity to begin with.
It doesn't matter if you have the most private platform in the world if it's not secure? You can control all the servers you want, if they're not secure your privacy is even worse off than it'd be with a 3rd party at least trying to anonymize it for an ad platform...
> This is basically trying to answer "to whom I put my blind trust?", so it's subjective. But in my experience it is usually the most "privacy marketing" companies that are usually the worst regarding privacy. See most VPN resellers. Most privacy marketing is just bullshit.
Lol so your hunch based on VPNs is supposed to just supersede basic reasoning that if a company can profit off not selling your data wholesale, and is openly designing systems that do benefit your privacy... they're somehow less trustworthy than one that is openly selling your data and requires that they do to exist.
Wildly different? Apple claims E2EE, Google claims E2EE, _Facebook_ of all companies claims E2EE! Did it really change it your opinion of Whatsapp the fact that they claim E2EE? Everyone just laughed and forgot. Whatsapp is going to E2EE your chats right until they moment they don't, and without warning, and you have no way to check! Why take Apple's word differently? They also lied multiple times already! (e.g. Jabber federation)
> And if you think the number of updated devices is not one of, if not the most important aspect of securing a modern platform, then your opinion on security doesn't matter.
I am not sure why my "opinion on security" would be relevant but I for sure think that _ability to verify the security claims_ ranks much higher than anything that has been mentioned so far, including "software updates" of unknown content.
> You can control all the servers you want, if they're not secure your privacy is even worse off than it'd be with a 3rd party
The example is just to show the difference between security and privacy. Your analogy is creating a false association since I can just keep my data offline.
> Lol
And you have the incorrect "hunch" that Apple is not a services company. And that they design systems that "benefit your privacy". They only design systems that tie you to _their_ systems. Wake me up when they design something that doesn't, which would start to look like real privacy.
Like, I spoke about some very specific features, and now you've literally reduced it to "E2EE"... like the entire honking app that it's built around doesn't matter.
If you won't accept that Android's carrier-dependent, 1:1 only RCS app isn't equivalent to iMessage, then there's nothing to talk about.
> The example is just to show the difference between security and privacy. Your analogy is creating a false association since I can just keep my data offline.
How do you keep a messaging app offline.
> And you have the incorrect "hunch" that Apple is not a services company. And that they design systems that "benefit your privacy". They only design systems that tie you to _their_ systems. Wake me up when they design something that doesn't, which would start to look like real privacy.
Do you even knows what you're talking about? Or Apple is 100% a services company that's the whole point. They're a public company, following the money is easy, they make a lot of money off selling people services and hardware.
Meanwhile Google makes most of it's money selling people's data.
It's not rocket science figuring out which is easier to trust, but you just seem hellbent on rationalizing your opinions with more opinions stated as fact and vague paranoia.
That's your right, but don't be surprised if people call you out on it!
Okey, choose any other! What else did you mention? Location services? The same. * Local photo classification? The same. And so on and so forth.
* Both claim "Anonymous and encrypted", for whatever is worth, but we all know how "anonymous" and "encrypted" it must be since they are both using to build their beacon/SSID location database "to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations.", wherever you want it or not (source: Apple's privacy policy).
> How do you keep a messaging app offline.
Or accessible to the relevant parties only.
> Meanwhile Google makes most of it's money selling people's data.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. also all are oficially _services_ companies....
> It's not rocket science figuring out which is easier to trust
It's not easy because you have practically nothing material to base your trust on, so you have to resort to fluffy marketing.
Claiming that Google is not that much worse than Apple is hardly "paranoia" material. Hitting a nerve there, I guess...
You're asking why someone would trust someone making a claim over someone not even making the claim.
I could ask a toddler "who is more likely not to eat your lollipop, the man who says he will eat it or the man who claims he won't" and they'd understand, yet you've managed to convince yourself that's a tough question.
Have a good one, good luck with your privately owned servers and home-brew OS. I'm sure your privacy is very well protected by giving the world a fingerprint on your identity.
... Since we are dropping the standards now, I will accuse you of being brainwashed. At one point you said:
> I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I'd love a source for that since nothing about how it works implies that. Maybe you mean it does some very specific type of classification as a pre-processing step?
When Apple puts fluffy marketing claiming that now they are doing photo classification on-device, you immediately assume not only that it is true, but that they are _the first_ to do it, and that everyone else is doing photo classification on some fancy remote service. "Why, if Apple markets it, then everyone else would also have marketed it, otherwise it means they are not doing it!"
The thought that perhaps it was actually the opposite - that the majority of vendors were already doing photo classification on-device, and that it was _only Apple_ who was doing the stupid move of sending your photos to the cloud for tagging - never entered your mind.
This is the power of marketing.
And guess which one is rather likely to be true. I just took a couple of pictures of bananas in my 2018ish Android device with no network connectivity of any kind and after one minute they were tagged as "bananas" and "fruit".
This is precisely what I was complaining on my original post. Apple's privacy strategy is mostly marketing fluff at best, and yet it is having an unreasonable effect on people like you.
> I could ask a toddler "who is more likely not to eat your lollipop, the man who says he will eat it or the man who claims he won't" and they'd understand
A more correct analogy would be: who of the men from the shady vans is most likely to kidnap your children. The ones who claim to be "experts in not kidnapping children" or the ones who claim to be "experts in not kidnapping children, those guys at the other van are the real kidnappers".
> Have a good one, good luck with your privately owned servers and home-brew OS. I'm sure your privacy is very well protected by giving the world a fingerprint on your identity.
Again another ridiculous analogy that does not work. You do not need a "home-brew OS", and I have in fact mentioned several alternatives during the above conversation (e.g. de-googling).
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
You'll never get the developers (who are largely fungible) to fully grok the long term consequences of what they are creating because they are blinded by the (entirely natural) fact that the company is keeping them fed.
“ Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit. The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages.”
https://www.apple.com/child-safety/
Still sounds like E2E, no different from messages applying some processing/compression to sent images imo
Collecting and having that data to begin with is awful & dangerous. The behavior of collecting it is creepy and gross. The existence of the collected data is threatening.
Apple, Facebook, etc. may have (or not have) worse privacy policy, but it is much easier to avoid leaving fingerprints on their servers. Amazon & Microsoft are on the other hand particularly dangerous, though.
I’ve seen scammers find obscure payment portals and run through a bunch of card numbers to see if they approve/deny. Recaptcha prevents that. It’s obviously not the only way, but it’s low dev effort and it works.
Because payment systems that allow for cheap transactions are often leveraged to test stolen credit card data before making a transaction in person.
Uh... they've aggressively gathered that data? If I take a bunch of photos of you sitting on the toilet, the concern isn't whether I've publicly done anything with those photos, it's that I took them in the first place.
I guess that's all about incentives. Since Google is an advertising company, it has most to gain by knowing your deepest personal info, i.e., so that it can "sell" this info to their customers.
That's how.
With respect to this Apple thing, it’s pretty clear that Apple thinks this is more respectful of privacy than what the other providers do. IMO, this is what allows E2E messaging to actually remain E2E.
The EFF and some HN commenters are blending together the parental control aspect from the detection of illegal images aspect. They are two very different things.
And when you talk about the reality of privacy, you can, trivially, turn off the the third party features that trigger the use of cloud services.
This is rarely possible in the apple world for long
Against other tech companies. This whole debacle is a clear example where customers have no control. They can't even not update their device because its already there.
I can actually name a privacy feature that they took a long time to replace: Siri voice recording accountability. Siri voice recordings were saved in the cloud. They were linked to your identity. If you GDPR'd apple they deleted these recordings. They stripped the identifiers. Then you can't GDPR them, and its arguably no more private. LATER they stopped saving them to the cloud (yay more private again!).
To be clear: the voice recordings can identify you even without identifiers. Its your voice. You might say "how do i get too <work address> or <home adddress>. You might say "Hey siri, tell <secret lover> that i love them" and boom now that is out there. Lots of reason people want control there.
Second, starting in IOS 15 with an A12 or newer, the processing is moving on device. Here is an excerpt from https://developer.apple.com/ios/:
"iOS 15 introduces even more privacy controls to help protect user information. With on-device speech recognition, audio of Siri requests is now processed entirely on iPhone by default, and performance improves significantly. Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from learning whether an email has been opened, and hides IP addresses so senders can’t learn a user’s location or use it to build a profile on them. App Privacy Report offers an overview of how apps use the access that has been granted to location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts in the last seven days, and which other domains are contacted."
Here is another discussion:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522993/apple-siri-on-dev...
Instead of being motivated to use and/or sell user data, it's in Apple's best interest to keep that data secure and play to its competitive advantage as the company who is not trying to pry into its users' lives.
That said, I really don't understand why Apple would do this, and it is very disconcerting. Obviously child pornography is absolutely horrible, but this move seems to throw out everyone's privacy in exchange for catching what I have to imagine is a tiny minority of users who are involved with that.
That, for me too. From my perspective they basically don't have competition. The only viable alternative to Apple is "do everything yourself with open software, and just accept everything being buggier, jankier, and less helpful, while eating way more of your time". Obviously I'm not in love with that option, but what else? MS? Google? Ha.
If Apple stops being Apple it'll be the elimination of a whole category of products and services, essentially. Just won't exist anymore.
This is all less a product of Apple being wonderful than of user-facing computing everywhere else being an embarrassing shit-show.
https://medium.com/seedx-digital-marketing-guru/why-apple-sp...
It is all part of their PR and marketing. And they are very good at it. This happened in Tim Cook's era, not Steve Jobs. May be too good it backfired. If you pay close attention to all the Apple news, ( not some, but ALL ). Pick the top 10 Apple news site and read through it for a few years and it will surely get to most people. And Apple news are the most sort after, highest paid Ads revenue in tech sector. So it is sort of a feedback loop. Worth remembering there are relatively little journalist left, only reporters. No one bother to fact check anything any more. That is why we have so much crap that anyone has some domain knowledge on the subject will immediately smells BS.
And their PR tactics are.... dull or should I say predictable? Controlled Leaks ( I mean come on from the same press again? ) on the same subject or using same allies in testimony ( SnapChat again? )? Unfortunately most people dont do any analysis like this. ( Although I guess that is borderline forensic ).
Marketing and groupthink makes them join and buyers remorse makes them stay
Therefore Apple could focus on privacy in a credible manor, because it didn't threaten their business model and it was an argument they could use, but their competition couldn't.
In light of that, I then imagine that other providers are already storing photos and data unencrypted and did not object to adding scanning on the server side, and also did not share anything about the scanning with the public.
It is well known that competitors scan on server side, I don't think that's any kind of a secret with Google Drive et al. Outrage is exactly about that -- client side scanning is seen as way more intrusive, for a good reason.
I also think they are simply pissed off that their platforms are being used to shield these activities.
Is being preemptive to avoid imposed regs that might be much worse for their users the right approach? I don't know. Based on the tech papers linked at the end of their announcement, they are trying hard to thread a needle here.
Second, what is different today is that pervasive tech has made it possible for people to communicate over distance in a shielded way. Before modern tech, people had to physically stand next to each other to have a truly private conversation. That is new. I think that makes legislators feel that since tech has enabled this capability, tech should be enabling a way to "fix" the issue. The argument isn't completely without merit. Along with all the positive benefits of tech, there are of course some downsides. The question is what role should tech have in mitigating the downsides. This is an attempt by Apple to provide a mitigation. Time will tell if this attempt was a good idea. It could provide some benefit, but will the cost be too high?
I’m interested in reports that human trafficking is on the rise. I wasn't aware this was becoming more of an issue. Is there correlation between the introduction of mobile phones and an increase in human trafficking that would suggest new technology is an enabling factor?
I'm not aware of a study looking at that particular correlation, but there is plenty of data available on the problem itself. I wouldn't be surprised if such a study exists though. I am no expert, but I have read reports from what I at least consider reputable sources. Its an easy search.
You need to look at actual incidents: Has encryption been used to disrupt investigations of terrorism and/or sex trafficking.
The counter argument is that LE did okay before modern tech, and that the technology they already us extends their reach rather than just keeping up with an arms race.
The “next to each other” bit establishes a pattern of behavior that creates an investigative priority that might lead to probable cause. Do they have other sufficient options to do “old fashioned detective work” under the new system?
If so, then as the goal of society is not to make law enforcement as efficient as possible, how much pushback is reasonable and healthy, and when do we just cross into anarchy?
We don't actually know this. That's the issue. It is VERY opaque.
As others have pointed out, the longer term problem is that the capability may tempt governments to put pressure on Apple to work with other image sets. However, Apple has of course had this capability for quite some time and (as far as we know) have not been doing this so if any company is large enough to resist they are. It is a risk, but not much more of a risk than it has been to date. I do think it is a positive sign that they are being open about what they are doing.
In the context of software, beliefs are meaningless, religious issues. You do not need trust when you can have proof (i.e. source code that you can compile and modify yourself).
Baseline, it means no cloud.
Apple cares about your privacy as long as it helps their marketing position against Amazon, Google and Facebook. If they decide for a different marketing, you will lose all your privacy. If their bottom line dips they will sell your data in a heartbeat.
The EFF cares about your privacy.
Because seeing they’re a closed source, closed ecosystem, closed to feedback and criticism behemoth I was wondering how can one even hope that.
The only hope is for other countries to (legally) force global companies to abide by local laws, just like EU did with GDPR. So user experience will vary by country of residence.
“ Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit. The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages.”
https://www.apple.com/child-safety/
It’s all on-device which satisfies E2E I believe
If it would 100% eliminate child pornography and not produce a residual erosion of personal privacy no one would be arguing against it. It won't solve the problem. It will erode privacy. It's perfectly reasonable to be not ok with it.
To be clear I'm not saying that Apple are right to do this or that there aren't privacy concerns. What I am saying is that those thresholds seem unreasonable.
Almost everywhere in the world this is considered a reasonable trade-off.
One, software sucks and is full of security holes, so whether or not Apple intends to leak any other data is irrelevant, because other data will leak regardless.
Two, you're assuming this is the only thing they are going to intentionally do with your data. That will change. In an infinite future, things change. Every decision is eventually overturned, and it's luck of the draw which direction that change is in.
Three, the U.S. defence apparatus has proven time and again that they will violate the law and use whatever means necessary to spy on who they want, and this is another kitchen window for them to climb through.
That's the sick genius of parallel construction: without leaks, we'd never be able to know. (And yes, there are plenty of instances of abuse, brought to the public despite the risk whistleblowing entails.)
Ask yourself this: even if the "right" people are in control of this system now, could the "wrong" people ever gain control of it? If the answer is yes, maybe the system should not exist.
You _NEVER_ know what Apple is doing under the covers. This principle is well understood and has been espoused by RMS for over a decade.
But saying "well Apple could use this system for evil if they want..." is silly. Apple could ALWAYS use their system for evil if they wanted. This addition does nothing to improve that position.
Source? That is not true as far as I'm aware.
> Can you point to a single instance where it was used for ulterior purposes?
What do you expect them to do with they receive a national security letter? Shut down? Go to prison for decades? Of course not. They will comply, as they have always done when the technical means to do so have been available. Why do you think we would even be told about it in situations when it can be kept secret?
https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-co...
>What do you expect them to do with they receive a national security letter?
They can't do _anything_ with an NSL on your data because they don't have the encryption keys. Without this feature, they control the key. With this feature, you control the key and they only gain access when >N tokens cryptographically indicate hits on the CSIM database. Those have to come from _your_ device. And those tokens only give access to the data in question.
There is no reason Apple can't give you E2E encryption without any backdoors or spying features. They should act on abuse when it's reported to them by someone who can give them the key, but otherwise not concern themselves with the content that's stored.
Obviously, actions matter more than words, but the actions they have been taking as of late are promising. I certainly won't be putting all my eggs in one basket after being burned this many times, but for now I am happy to recommend WhatsApp.
See also the recent news about them rolling out encrypted backups, which essentially would solve the biggest weak point with WhatsApp right now: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/16/22580800/icloud-google-dr...
Think “Facebook” not “WhatsApp”
And even if you're in a country (only really Germany AFAIK) where the worst use of metadata for advertising is legally tricky... WhatsApp is the very definition of the fox guarding the henhouse. Do you really trust one of the largest data harvesters andy advertising marketplaces in the world to guard your data? Their business model literally depends on violating that trust. Do you honestly think that's a safe long term bet?
Sorry, but that has to be either Threema or Signal. WhatsApp is easy to use, but that's the only point it has. Ultimately, it's Facebook.
(Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26889139)
There are large scale implications to these "privacy" features.
— Palmer Luckey, 2014 (https://time.com/38366/here-are-7-promises-oculus-has-made-a...)
Facebook has made promises, then broken those promises, time and again. They've lied to founders they've acquired, to users, and to governments and regulators.
If anyone trusts Facebook at this point knowing that, I'm not sure what could convince them otherwise.
“Facebook continues to profit from allowing child predators to distribute pornography through WhatsApp, refuses to adopt industry-standard technology to block this”
That's funny, in a boggling at a blunder of the powerful kind of way.
It's also sad, if we're reduced to watching a handful of organizations battle over who's the most privacy-respecting, relatively speaking, when their standards are so low.
Given what we've learned about the NSA over the years, the news that's leaked is consistently _worse_ than expected, not better. Pessimism is warranted.
This policy provides cover for the NSA's PRISM partner Apple to search and exfiltrate data on devices en masse. Apple and the NSA no longer have to do this in a targeted way to remain undetected. It's now done to everyone. Obviously this is a huge problem for privacy.
If Apple doesn't reverse course despite all this backlash, it's reasonable to assume the alternative for Apple must be worse. There must be an explanation for their behavior.
Apple's decision makes sense if the NSA were already doing this on devices with Apple's cooperation, and Apple feared the scope of the operation would be discovered. Then making it public "to catch child predators" seems like far less damage to their brand than appearing to buddy up with the feds.
I can't think of another reason which justifies Apple stomping on their own privacy narrative.
That's the problem with all E2E. The cryptography is sound, but we can't trust any of the software to not change from under us.
By implementing data harvesters, Apple's 1st amendment protections goes away, since the code is already written. What must be changed, by court order or what have you, is the configuration for what gets reported back. Again, IMO, it becomes much more like a "give us your files" subpoena, like Apple, Google, etc. get on a regular basis and must comply with. But IANAL.
In general, it hasn't been very clear what the courts will or won't allow law enforcement or spy agencies to commandeer tech companies into doing. As we saw with several other countries' legislation in this area, it's also something that typically comes with strict gag orders and so we don't really even know much about what governments have tried.
I guess my main points would be:
* when these issues actually end up in court, it's not yet clear whether the first amendment issue about software will or won't be the most important legal issue, and
* especially in Australia and the UK, but very possibly also in other jurisdictions, there may already be tech companies that have lost secret fights over related issues and been forced to do things that users (or even most workers in those companies) haven't been told about, and
* if you don't like governments being able to backdoor stuff, maybe try to promote technology architectures where it's harder to hide features and functionality!
That last point reminds me how there's a kind of complicated side argument about how Apple's proprietary technology and paternalistic control most often make it harder for governments to spy on users, because there are comparatively fewer people to suborn or coerce in order to backdoor things, and it's harder to run code on the device that Apple doesn't approve of, and the company is very sensitive to public perception (maybe not this week!?), and has a big legal team to fight back against things. But when Apple does cooperate to increase governments' power in various ways -- e.g. banning specific apps from its app store, like it did with VPN and other anticensorship apps in China, among other cases, or doing this new scanning stuff -- it's also harder for users to override those decisions.
(I'm definitely not speaking for EFF here -- I stopped working there a year ago this week.)
This statement gives away the true motive behind those tweets. They just wanted to get back at Apple. They could have at least left that tweet out.
"It's a bit awkward to see a Facebook representative dunking on Apple about privacy. But in the end it doesn't really matter if WhatsApp implements this if the underlying OS does."
Fixed it for you. Every answer is temporary. Apple also said they wouldn't install backdoors and here we are.
[1] https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-whats...
That's what I find so disappointing about Apple. They were the one large tech player that had begun to build their brand on taking privacy seriously.
"Brand" is right, because it always was, and always will be marketing and nothing more (unless maybe laws are changed and/or regulators get off their lazy asses).
I think you may find that folks don't take as dim a view on preventing exploitation of children as HN crowd. Apple has arguably the #3 to #1 brand globally currently.
Let's give this some time to shake out and see how the android brands and others do (if they become the home of child exploitation and porn) brand wise.
Don't do that. It's bull and you know it.
While I'm personally uncomfortable with the privacy ramifications of what Apple is doing, Apple's decision is sensible in the grand scheme.
That means you need to scan everyones photos and read everyones messages, because someone might be saying something bad somewhere?
They'll move elsewhere, and millions of people will lose their privacy forever, and some will get killed, because they'll save a wrong kind of meme, and the local dictator will mark that hash as "bad".
1. Anything-goes. Accept that customers will use it for evil and for good, and justify allowing the former by the latter.
2. Lie to customers. Eg: include a backdoor for law-enforcement.
3. On-device detection of illegal or dangerous content (as Apple is apparently doing)
Regardless of whether approach #1 has merit, I don't see any large company staying with it long term because it's a PR nightmare. No big company wants to have an endless stream of stomach-turning stories in the news. It's easy to predict headlines like "Breaking! World's Largest Human Trafficking Ring Conducts Slave Auctions on Apple Messages. Tim Cook Silent!"
This is just another case of governments wanting to snoop on their people, and companies letting them,.... and for good PR they just pack it around child abuse and terrorism.
Do folks really think AWS keys in china are not under control of govt?
Do folks really think MMS and other messaging in things like tiktok between chinese users is not accessible by govt?
Zoom?
Normal phone calls?
Folks understand that apple data centers will be run by state-owned Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry (GCBD). That Apple has had to agree to keep the encryption keys locally to those data centers under control of GCBD employees? Why would apple have to change how it does encryption for chinese users and make sure keys are locally available.
What content does your comment add? Nothing.
I am pointing out that there already are efforts around total encrypted privacy. Tor network is doing it. So are others. As they are taken over by bad actors - the rest of the world starts cutting them off and blocking them.
When folks talk about this hurting apples brand - you could not be more wrong. Seriously, address the points I'm making.
Apple is currently providing relatively strong E2E encryption (a leader actually in that). They are now going to match that with screening on probably the #1 issue that is out there around encrypted networks, the issue that often forces folks to backdoor things.
They also are going to be offering what seem like thoughtful features for users. Parents in particular with kids accounts have concerns (reasonable) about tech - and they will help to address that.
For all the "brand damage" HN goes on about here, in the larger world this may be popular and or very accepted.
And yes, if android becomes known as the home of the pedo's - that's not going to be an apple brand problem, but an android one. Surprisingly often we've seen others COPY apple, usually after loudly pointing out that they won't.
Did you make an actual argument? What's pathetic is accusing anyone who disagrees with you of supporting child exploitation. None of the people I care about who were victims of some kind of abuse would have been helped by having spyware on phones. I don't make a habit of swearing on HN, nor of engaging with people who argue and accuse in bad faith, so I'll leave it at that.
I consider whatever they say lip service until proven otherwise. How anyone can call their app privacy oriented without at least showing the code is insane. Use Signal, etc., etc.
I don't think this is true, at least not most of the time. We had a summer of "defund the police" protests and BLM signs seem to be everywhere, yet police budgets in most cities have only increased[1].
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-f...
Yeah, WhatsApp might decide to spy on you in the future, so you might as well use iMessage which already spies on you?
They also did not mention iMessage. There are several other popular messaging applications out there to choose from.
If you get flagged by the iCloud scanning, you could be reported to the authorities. But you can opt out of iCloud scanning by not using iCloud.
If you get flagged by the iMessage system, you are not reported to the authorities. The parents of that person may receive a notification. But if you are sending photos to a kid on a device set up by their parents, you should pretty well expect that photos you send may be seen by their parents.
I understand the privacy concerns raised by Apple's about-face here. But we should be clear about what is and isn't happening.
WhatsApp comes off looking like a defender of privacy by saying "we won't do what Apple has done" but in reality the most objectionable thing Apple is doing relates to cloud-based photo storage, not messaging. The messaging piece is a new type of parental controls and does not involve the authorities in any event.
You can opt out of any privacy concerns by not using the concerning product. That's a complete non sequitur in a conversation about the concern.
China accounts for 20% of revenue for Apple, how likely are they to bow down to China's demands? How about other regulators?
The fact that this is now put into place sets a very harrowing precedent.
How do you know? Apple makes a lot of claims about their security but these claims probably don't preclude Apple spying on you somehow. Especially if a warrant compels them.
The situation is anything but clear.
Zuckerberg is the master of pivoting any size of company. This will be a turningpoint, yet again, of Facebook.
I'm sure he's an intelligent executive but can we stop congratulating people solely for being at the top of the org chart? What has Zuckerberg, personally and without aid or advice, done to prove himself a "master of pivoting".
Richard Stallman was right again.
Apple corporate headquarters keeps a tight lock on the apps available for its mobile operating system (iOS), which is used on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Software developers even have to pay a tax to Apple to publish their work in the App Store. With the vice-like grip they have on Macs now thanks to Apple Silicon, new Mac computers now forbid you from installing free software applications or operating systems, due to improper use of code signing.
> Apple also prevents you from changing the operating system on the devices, so there's no way to escape the restrictions. If you try to change the software on your device, Apple's lawyers claim you are a criminal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They've done this as recently as December 2019, when they used the DMCA to remove a post to Twitter that revealed an iPhone encryption key.
He will continue to be right until everyone wakes up and uses alternatives. Unfortunately the social inertia has caused people to stay because their friends are using it.
Given that the most overused words in services operated by FAAMG companies are 'privacy', 'security' and 'trust' one should question:
What sort of act or event will it take to get their complete attention in plain layman terms that it is so severe for the majority of users, that they now realise it irreparably violates all three of those words?
It would have to be far worse than the whole PRISM programme and this put together and motivate them to move to other alternatives. When that time comes, let's see who escapes before then.
I think first developers need to wake up. Then users will follow.
However, for developers who make money in the Apple ecosystem this is harder. There's this quote: it's hard to understand something if your salary depends on you not understanding it.