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Comment by RavlaAlvar | Hacker News Reader

I really don’t understand why apple is doing this. What point are they trying to score and from whom ? Do they think implementing a spyware in iPhone would boost sales? Or does it bring revenue from charging government agency to use this feature? I just don’t get it.

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It really feels like a political move to gain favor for being so tightly integrated — so that the US DOJ backs off of any anti-trust remedies.

That’s scary

Could be throwing a bone to politicians who say E2E encryption protects criminals. Not saying I agree, but I could see this being a compromise on Apple's part.

They can’t be this stupid, right? They should know this has huge security implications. I can’t see how it can be justified for some political brownie point.

This is wholly speculation, but their view could be that they have two bad options to choose from, and they chose the option that didn't involve congressional hearings and public pressure to make changes that could be even more anti-privacy.

Again, pure speculation and really the most generous means of explaining this controversial decision.

> They should know this has huge security implications.

I've missed where this has security implications. Did you mean privacy implications?

There is now, as far as I can tell, a system that can flag any photo that matches a perceptual hash for manual review by Apple or by other parties as required by law. Have any screenshots of code or confidential operational documents? Or photos placing you at private events attended by political dissidents (as defined by authoritarian regimes)? You’re one no-code config change away from Apple being able to exfiltrate this content from your device and deliver it to a third party. Engineers at Apple might not even know this is happening to be canaries. It’s a dangerous backdoor waiting to happen.

Have you paid attention lately? Politicians only want to react to the lowest common denominator. Your average Joe/Joette doesn't know jack about encryption or hashing. So to them this is just tech mumbo jumbo and "thinking of the children" and they simply won't care that it's 1 step removed government spying. After it happens China has full backend door to upload Pooh hashes to ban political dissidents using memes. Next comes the FBI and CIA with their own hashes to find "the terrorists" and on and on. This is just a toe in the door for governments to abuse the iphone and iphone users and Apple doesn't seem to care.

Much more than brownie points. Apple et al all check CSAM on the server today. If Apple is wanting to announce further e2ee at the next iPhone event, moving a privacy protecting CSAM check to the client is how to stave off encryption destroying legislation.

And if that's the case how long until other things get added to the scan list given the precedent has been set.

Could this be related to Epic's case? Opening up iOS can be argued will allow to circumvent things just like this one.

Not in a way that makes much sense. Allowing other stores wouldn't break the sandboxing.

Apple seems to use the fact that they vet all apps themselves as an argument in their case, so to me it does make sense.

Why are you looking so hard for an "evil" reason or ulterior motives for it?

Companies doing good things brings good PR. That could just be it.

“Good” “PR”? You’re even more tone deaf than the memo.

My take is they believe they are fighting a good fight. I don't justify this move, but I can see why they are pushed so hard to do it.

So they can claim only Pedos use android

This is actually vaguely what I came up with, which is: "no Apple user is a practicing pedo".

Which is a very scary statement any company to make (the means to get to that point?!). But I am sure some countries see this is as a great technology to push for slogans of their own: "no citizen of Nonhomostan is a practicing homosexual!", "no citizen of Oppositionkillerian has any mind-corrupting western banners on their phone!"

This technology will allow large powers to make sweeping statements about data kept on private devices.

Android could take the opposite approach. I.e. someone can write an app that generates CP, so those who want it can have it without any actual children involved.

In the current US legal zeitgeist CP is illegal because it's morally wrong. Yeah, also to protect the children, but an image can be deemed by a judge to be CP even if no real children are involved. Under the current doctrine it's something like "I'll know it when I see it", so such app would most likely be generating illegal images.

My conspiracy theory is they're doing this to appeal to the right and all The Qanon believers.

Sadly, it's probably really to appeal to China or the US government.

I wouldn't be shocked to hear of some secret court order ordering them to add some kind of backdoor, and this legally meets the bare minimum.

My own pet theory is that the new far left have gone full circle and have become as puritanical as those they despised. (Just look at social media talking about what outfits women wear in the olympics, thinking that they show too much skin. It's arguments from the early 1900s come back around.)

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