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Comment by 988747 | Hacker News Reader

And what if I have iCloud storage turned off? Will this local scanning still be applied?

Yes, Apple is opening up these APIs to 3rd party apps. Many commenters are unaware of this as the initial release said iCloud only.

Nope, only for photos in iCloud and destined for upload to iCloud.

yeup wink wink… the scanner will still be there … but Apple promises not to use it for anything else and only with photos going to upload.

Wheww that makes me feel better

Apple isn't trustworthy.

I bet this stance changes in under five years.

> Apple isn't trustworthy.

Why not? They've told you in detail what they're going to do.

> Why not

backtracking on promises after buying from them

Lando Calrissian: That wasn't part of the deal! You said the wookiee and Leia would stay under my protection!

Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. [departs in an elevator]

There's no point in clientside scanning, then. The photos in iCloud are already not e2e and are completely readable by Apple (and are regularly turned over to the USG without probable cause or a search warrant).

There is a theory that they might want to e2e encrypt iCloud and this was a prerequisite. Maybe it's just wishful thinking though.

Apple has previously attempted to e2e device backups and voluntarily declined to launch the feature (after already doing design/code on it) when the FBI asked them not to (not under any legal compulsion).

Apple as a whole organization doesn't care about end user privacy. People claiming such are ignorant of the facts and are repeating Apple's marketing narrative.

Of course Apple cares about privacy to the extent it benefits their business. They are not a data company, for them user data are a liability.

Legal compulsion or not, FBI was somehow obviously able to force them to abandon iCloud e2ee and now NCMEC (or whoever) was able to force them to do this.

What Apple are saying is they don't want to scan your library in the cloud, or have records of the outcome. There's a lot of process involved in them trying to have as little information about it as possible.

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

For now, Apple hinted at rolling it out to third party apps.

No. For now.

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