Once again, this scan takes place on _their_ servers on data that is stored on _their_ servers. It does not take place on the device itself, which is the case with this new Apple thing.
Only photos you attempt to upload to Apple's iCloud are scanned. If you turn off iCloud photos, NOTHING is scanned.
>Q: So if iCloud Photos is disabled, the system does not work, which is the public language in the FAQ. I just wanted to ask specifically, when you disable iCloud Photos, does this system continue to create hashes of your photos on device, or is it completely inactive at that point?
A: If users are not using iCloud Photos, NeuralHash will not run
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...
That isn't what I said.
Also, that's not why most people are so upset. Most people are so upset mainly because Apple has now proven that the capability exists, so they can now be more easily compelled by governments to scan for "extra things".
Prior to this, if a government asked Apple to scan someone's phone, Apple could respond with "we don't have that capability", and it would presumably be a tough legal battle to force a company to add a capability that doesn't exist.
This hurdle is now much lower. The effort has gone from "force Apple to design a new system for scanning phones" to "add these couple of hashes to the pre-existing database".
Also, expanding this from just iCloud upload candidates to the entire device is a very small leap now. I mean, the bad guys could just turn off iCloud, and we must think of the children...
Then you have Apple's "reassurance" that they won't comply with government requests to scan for additional things, which is completely moot considering Apple relies on a third party database and has absolutely no control or idea of what the hashes really are.
If you have a false positive on device, nothing is sent to Apple's servers. It takes several (possibly false) positives at once to trigger a human review.
If you have a single false positive on server, that data is sitting there where it can be subpoenaed and abused.
Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court.
I can only think of one instance where they did that (the San Bernardino shooter case), and the request was hugely overreaching (the FBI wanted them to compromise their software update signing services), and also they actually DID comply with giving the FBI access to their iCloud data -- just not the software update service.
In fact this report suggests that Apple cooperating with the FBI when it comes to subpoenaing iCloud data is nothing new: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
You might want to Google it then. It’s well known that Apple has been asked and refused multiple times. It’s really easy to find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
This is a big part of the reason people are surprised and concerned about the scanning program, because it seems like a departure from what Apple has said and done about privacy of iPhone data for the last decade.
If you want to rely on other people behaving a certain way in the future, either form a personal relationship or write up a contract.
Many of us are taking the perspective of decades long changes given our current trajectory.
If not in our time, it could be in our children's time. This is an extremely dangerous system.
Collect data and monetize it. That is what google is. They don't provide free email or analytic software out of the goodness of their heart.
Scanning on-device (where a single false positive cannot be subpoenaed and misused to incriminate their customers) is simply more private.
>Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...