Honestly I would have been fine with Apple scanning my all photos after they are uploaded to iCloud but this is deeply disturbing
> Amendment 4. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I have moved away from Apple ecosystem, already purchased another phone yesterday. The Constitution is holy to me, it’s all we have protecting us from technological dystopia.
I wouldn’t care nearly as much about Apple scanning my phone it’s about who is pulling those strings they are working with and in America they are (or should be!) bound by the Constitution. I can only imagine the obliteration of rights that will happen in other places. Imagine a Hong Kong protestor with this program on their phone.
We’ve got to do everything we can to keep George Orwell’s quote from coming true-
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
Apple has already been doing exactly this for years. Now they are going to check the photos right before uploading to iCloud which is actually more privacy friendly than they do now. It also lets Apple turn on e2e for iCloud photos if they want.
I understand the 'what if' and slippery slope arguments, but wow, there is so much misunderstanding in this thread. Apple makes the OS and doesn't need a fancy system to scan all the files on the device if that's what they want to do.
I highly suggest reading this: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ and the associated PDFs. Apple PR hosed this up by putting 3 distinct features on one page that people seem to be conflating.
Is that an assumption made based on that "everyone is doing it" or is there some evidence?
> Apple makes the OS and doesn't need a fancy system to scan all the files on the device if that's what they want to do.
If the goal is to scan all the files on everyones device this system is exactly what they need. It's not like they could upload hashes of every file on every users phone continuously.
https://digit.fyi/apple-admits-scanning-photos-uploaded-to-i...
That's like having the judge, jury, and executioner in my house.
You can't audit anything Apple does on their servers.
First terrorist content, then "misinformation", then political speech. Apple will be unable to resist government demands to use this preexisting backdoor with a different set of perceptual hashes.
This is Apple explicitly announcing they are actively backdooring all iOS and Mac devices, and using your CPU cycles to determine whether you should be reported to the government.
macOS already supports silent database updates, for example for Gatekeeper and MRT signatures.
Why wouldn’t Apple use this feature on iOS, too?
It's not true end-to-end encryption since in some cases the content can be decrypted without the user key but it's significantly closer than what they have today.
That being said I don't know if that is their plan or not, but it is a plausible reason to make this change.
On the topic of backdoors, automatic update systems could be used as backdoors.
People are making an extreme claim that Apple went out of their way to implement a fancy system to ruin their own value proposition, and the evidence they have to offer is mere speculation.
Many foreign countries have also clearly stated that they do not want this (E2EE) to happen and would legislate against it (the UK comes to mind first).
I do believe that you are correct with the idea that this technology was initially developed as a compromise to E2EE. But while E2EE on iCloud was indefinitely shelved, somehow this was not.
And someone at Apple thought this could be repurposed as a privacy win anyway ?
The other way I can think of it is if the ultimate goal is to add those checks to iMessage. One could argue the tech would make a lot more sense there (it's mostly E2EE with caveats), and it would certainly catch many more positive hashes.
I think someone at Apple massively misjudged the global implications of this and opened the company to a (literal) world of upcoming legislative hurt.
Technology doesn't live in a vacuum. Given the calls from the government for backdoors to encryption, I think it's safe to assume this is Apple getting out in front of what could likely be heavy handed legislation to add actual backdoors like master keys.
But, we'll have to wait and see if Apple starts adding more services to E2EE again. It also may all be moot if legislation gets passed that forces companies to be able to break the encryption for warrants.
I broadly agree but I cannot foresee a scenario where limiting at this particular issue (CSAM) would be seen as a sufficient compromise by legislators to allow E2EE to be expanded.
And other countries will have very different interpretations, much less palatable to Apple's values, on what should be checked for and they will have no qualm legislating to require it.
Quoting the NY Times (via Daring Fireball) :
> Mr. Neuenschwander dismissed those concerns, saying that safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of the system and that Apple would reject any such demands from a government.
> “We will inform them that we did not build the thing they’re thinking of,” he said.
They can tell themselves that but it doesn't matter : they precisely did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_collision
option three : don't allow Apple to judge user data at all.
It's at OS level, anything you have on your phone can be scanned. Even if an app tries to circumvent it by keeping files encrypted at rest it can scan them in-memory. And since it's all done client-side you'd never know it was happening until it found a match and sent it to Apple.