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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

I'm in two minds about this Apple news.

In one part, the pro-privacy part of me is of course aghast at the whole idea.

However...

If you "read the room", there have been increasing noises from the global political world in recent years, and perhaps especially in the US.

So if you think about it that way, it might be a case of Apple jumping before they were pushed.

I mean, let's face it, if you wait for the politicos to come up with a solution and force it through with legislation, they really would put in actual backdoors and encryption bans given half the chance.

I suspect others, such as WhatsApp, might begrudgingly follow in due course.

There's always GPG and a whole litany of other tools and apps for those who know what they are doing in terms of privacy.

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> There's always GPG and a whole litany of other tools and apps for those who know what they are doing in terms of privacy.

And it's always there also for whoever they claim to want to catch, so this measure is useless.

This is not protecting anyone, Apple might very well be anticipating the regulation, but that does not automatically deserve our praise. We should fight against this implementation and any regulation requiring similar measures.

> And it's always there also for whoever they claim to want to catch, so this measure is useless.

Right. This will, a) catch the low hanging fruit type of criminal and b) keep honest people honest while forcing them to give up something for nothing.

c) non-trivial chance it will be used for something much worse than what (a) & (b) fix, without solving the main issue

That risk is not tiny, can you imagine any authoritarian government asking a compliant Apple to remove inconvenient pictures?

> let's face it, if you wait for the politicos to come up with a solution and force it through with legislation, they really would put in actual backdoors and encryption bans given half the chance.

They've tried to do this for decades and have failed. If they're going to do it then let it be on record. Let's see how voters like it.

Well, they could always try putting pressure on the tech giants in other places via other means in order to get them to acquiesce to these sorts of anti-privacy measures. Maybe via things like anti-trust measures which seem to be popular.

90% of the voters are too stupid or probably don't even know what encryption is. Many are also going to stick to party lines. It just matters whether the 10% swing voters will care about this issue *more than* the other awful things the leadership is doing.

Plenty do know and care when news outlets' tech experts report on seemingly incomprehensible topics such as net neutrality or encryption. You can't white wash expert opinion. Again, the government has been asking for this for decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

Bad news, buddy: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/?la...

ETA: in short, about a month ago they did get the votes, at least in the EU, and it's now "allowed" for providers to scan all content. In a little while, they're going to have a vote to change "allowed" to "required", and we have no reason to think it'll go differently.

Bad news for the EU maybe, if that were to pass. That sort of thing never passed muster in the US. There is always a huge backlash because it infringes on the speech rights of both companies and individuals. You'd essentially be forcing banks to build in backdoors that criminals could use, and also making it so that only criminals can use true E2E encryption.

There is no sense making laws you can't enforce. It erodes trust and credibility.

If you think EU policy only impacts the EU, you didn't pay attention to what happened with GDPR. Some companies might scan only EU-to-EU communications, some might scan communications where only one end is in the EU, and some might just scan everything because why build two completely separate systems rather than just doing whatever is compliant everywhere you operate?

Maybe, what's your point? You want this legislation to pass? You seem intent on delivering news of a future dystopia.

I don't think any of these scanned systems or policies will survive in the long run. They're inherently insecure and won't lead to growth.

Your post I originally replied to said

> They've tried to do this for decades and have failed.... Let's see how voters like it.

My "point" is that I thought the same way you did -- look what a mess Clipper Chip was, they always want backdoors but surely a voice of reason will show up, etc -- but something has changed. Couple the vote in the EU with the way the major tech companies reacted to GDPR (you'd be surprised how many sites simply block all of Europe rather than comply) and it's a wakeup call. There is a real chance of the bad guys winning here.

My opinion here is that such policies are unenforceable and will therefore blow up in the faces of whoever implements them. Whoever does not will have the people's backing and will pave the way to the future. Of course, none of us can see the future, so we'll just have to wait and see. If I lived in the EU I would make my voice heard about that legislation.

Maybe I'm just too jaded but I don't think "making voices heard" matters -- in the link I posted upthread, the overwhelming majority of voters did not want the Chat Control measure to pass, but it did anyway, "for the children". (I can't even do that -- I'm an American living over here, I have no say in politics but am subject to a lot of their rules.)

Maybe we'll get lucky and the next vote will fail, or maybe if it passes there will be providers that refuse to comply. I think if it happens, it's far more likely that most will cave, and a few will just pull the plug and stop offering service.

> I don't think "making voices heard" matters

Of course it matters. Politicians must listen to voters on topics of import or they're out. If you're arguing against democracy and for some imagined alternative, then I can't help you because that's a worse outcome.

It's true some policies do pass that a lot of people don't want. It's up to the voters to make an issue of that in the next election cycle. As an American living in the EU you can certainly use your voice. That may be as consequential as your vote if you are convincing. Since I do not live there I don't engage in those politics, despite the connectedness of the world. There's enough to deal with on our home turf.

I'm not arguing against democracy: it's the worst system except all the other ones. I didn't think much of Brexit, I think they really shafted themselves, but at the same time I get the strong impression that EU governance is hopelessly broken.

I don't have to bring a solution to notice that the system we have is not working. (That's not to say I don't wish I had one, I just don't.)

This is worse.

If they ban encryption tech sector will kick up enough noise that even non tech people will at least notice.

This way, it essentially opens a backdoor. Changing this from scanning hashes of pictures stored locally, to scanning for arbitrary things stored locally probably is not monumental task ( next in line probably hate speech ).

And once you have that capability it's hard to argue to governments that you cant let them scan the content of either particular phone, or all of the phones, for whatever they want, which could be: .*

This way, the message to non techies will be, we are protecting children, but bunch of online weirdos and maybe pedophiles don't want us too.

I'd say next in line would be stuff oppressive governments don't like. Winnie the Puuh might be front runner along with men standing shirtless in front of tanks.

Everything sold in China, already has that.

Remember ICloud is operated by Chinese company in china.

And we all now that these governments stop carrying about their citizens at the border. Not.

Are you claiming that China will force Apple to scan the phones of US citizens now?

Not necessarily, but I jave no reason to believe China, Saudi, Turkey, the UAE or other countries with some kind of leverage won't try. Especially with their own citizens living abroad.

I’m sure they will try, but I don’t see how this mechanism will help them.

Really? Now they are technically capable to do so. Before that, they were not. Or they were and just didn't tell anyone. Still kow idea how that mechanism might help?

Capable to do what exactly? What technical capability are you referring to? This isn’t a general purpose file scanning mechanism.

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