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Comment by rdli | Hacker News Reader

Pretty thoughtful take IMO. It is complicated and there isn’t a clear answer.

I liked Alex’s suggestion though: when it’s a highly complex issue, the best solutions happen when you can bring together the right experts in their field together, and collaborate, and I think it’s a very fair critique of Apple. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation where showing up at the conference, sharing a preview of what they were thinking, and then hearing the feedback would not have been beneficial.

(Speaking as a reasonably happy Apple user, I wish openness for some of these things was a little bit more of their DNA. When you’re as big as Apple, people need to just recognize that the standards are different. It may not be fair. But it’s just the way the world works.)

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I personally think there are pretty clear answers in terms of the technology. Apple is violating privacy. To what degree is debatable, but, I generally disagree with Alex here. He’s not making the stronger argument compared to privacy advocates here. Yes there is nuance. Yes we must operate with a high degree of empathy for victims of abuse. No one doubts or downplays that IMO. But comments right here in this thread hit the core of it. Would something like this ever be acceptable on a laptop? I get a choice because it’s my computer. I don’t want this. It’s violating my privacy and Apple has eliminated my ability to decide. They basically positioned this as the obvious and safe choice and anyone against them is a “screeching minority”, even though they knew this would be controversial. Alex is operating in good faith, but I think he’s in to deep on trying to bring nuance to an issue where his argument is simply the less principled one. It’s becoming a situation where if you care about privacy you simply can’t use a smart phone (I know there are options, but none of them are close to an iPhone).

Without addressing any other points you’re making, NCMEC wrote the email to Apple that contained the “screeching minority” phrase. It was not something Apple wrote.

Yes, but Apple coordinated with them and more or less endorsed it right? I know it’s not Apples position, but they are defacto embracing it in my opinion. They have structure this to crush dissent through layers of technical speak and policy speak. It is an important distinction but the whole package and celebration of this system smells bad and Apple is at the heart of it.

> Would something like this ever be acceptable on a laptop?

Apple announced this for macOS as well. It’s not just for iOS.

It is, in fact, not complicated, and there is a clear answer.

That's the reason we have the damn Constitution.

If you want to look through people's private stuff, you have to get a warrant. There is nothing more to see here.

> If you want to look through people's private stuff, you have to get a warrant.

The "you" in the Fourth Amendment context does not apply to Apple.

I'm fully aware of how the law technically works. I'm also aware that, generally, the police more often than not have easy access to this stuff, so the result is the same.

The principle/spirit should apply everywhere, especially when it is meaningfully difficult to opt out. Since there is literally only one competitor in this space, this should generally apply.

In other words: it is, in fact, complicated?

You must not have children.

I do. And I have taken pains to generally keep their pictures in my control, and out of databases that I have no access to, and this measure would make this more difficult.

I acknowledge that the horrible circumstances used for the justification of this bad policy exist, and sometimes are marginally helpful, but the balancing test for me isn't particularly close.

Especially knowing, that at present - the facial recognition technology is not good at recognizing people who look like me and my kids, and presently harms us perhaps even more than it helps (yeah, we're black.)

I worry less about my kids (because I take precautions, similar to you), but I worry about kids whose parents are not as sophisticated.

And this is why I don’t think it’s as black & white. An absolutist, deontological view of the right to privacy is something I absolutely empathize with (although the fourth amendment does not enshrine this anywhere for companies; the bill of rights applies to government action.). I’m just saying there is a utilitarian argument as well for doing something like this.

And the dialogue between technologists who understand what technology can/can’t do vs those who advocate for exploited children —- is what is needed.

Odd, and perhaps telling, that you went abstract and utilitarian, seemingly as if that wasn't what I was doing.

Perhaps I should spell it out more clearly. My black child-in-the-pool's face matches some unfortunate other child's and now I'm being investigated. It should be more obvious why this concerns me as much, if not more than, the other thing.

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