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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

This is by far the biggest misstep of Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple thus far.

If they don’t kill this program soon, it’s going to overshadow the entire upcoming iPhone event, and will follow Apple around like a dark cloud for years.

I can see the headlines now: “New iPhone launches amid massive new privacy concerns.”

Anytime someone praises Apple for privacy, anywhere on the internet, there will be a tidal wave of people bringing up this program in rebuttal. From people who would have previously defended Apple to the grave!

I cannot fathom how on earth anybody thought this was a good idea. It’s like taking decades and billions of dollars worth of hard won reputation for privacy and throwing it in the garbage at the worst possible moment.

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The folks who choose iPhone in part because of a perception of relative privacy and respect for the user (like myself) will think twice.

My two concerns are that Android as an ecosystem is almost certainly still worse, and that the vast majority of users will not care.

I’m tempted to jailbreak my devices going forward, although I guess the folks at Apple would say that makes me a pedophile.

Edit: seeking recommendations for Android phones with strong performance and reasonable privacy protections. Ideally one that can be used without a Google account.

I'm very nostalgic for Blackberry again. I feel like on a platform where the whole point was to prevent anyone who wasn't the corporate IT department from being able to access it, this local code execution would have been a massive non starter.

I put LineageOS on an S5 a while back (with gApps, but there are non-Google alternatives) and it went pretty smoothly. Works with several more modern phones.

You can use something like CalyxOS with a pixel 5

I'm switching to a Pixel 3 or 4 running CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, or LineageOS. I'm eager to have my choice of OS on my phone, build it myself, etc.

https://calyxos.org/get/

https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Thanks, that seems to be the right answer.

I just recently migrated everything to Apple + iCloud, but now it appears to be time to switch to synology+pixel/graphene+Firefox

Apparently obsidian.md can be end-to-end encrypted through their service, for anyone else planning to ditch iCloud.

Android devices are much more open than iOS devices. There are quite a few alternative OSs with much more privacy than Google and Apple

Unlike Apple, Android devices are not vendor locked into just one OS.

I would never ever touch anything made by Apple from now on. I was never a fan, but was considering getting an ipad for drawing etc. After this, Never.

This I think is a bit of HN myopia.

I've talked around and nobody I know is even aware of this, when I brought it up, they didn't care about the issue.

It's not news in the commons, it's not on CNN, Fox or MSNBC right now as a headline.

It's one of those tertiary concerns that frustrates some groups, but most people are not aware and would only marginally maligned, and a good 2/3 of people really don't care. I suspect most people would have a difficult time with the 'slippery slope' issue and would accept the 'it's for the children' terms at face value.

It is what it is, but it's worth understanding how regular people think about these issues.

That's true. However, Apple is part of the same tech bubble as HN users. There are Apple employees reading this thread right now. Most regular people don't care about privacy either and just follow soundbites in the mainstream media e.g. "WhatsApp is spying on you!!!". But as long as HN/Apple think that they do then all is good.

Just wait until the September event. Apple’s media attention quadruples during that time.

“Apple creates authoritarian government wet dream” will be the main narrative coming out of the iPhone event. Not the new phone. And investors will not be happy.

I doubt that. I mentioned it to a non-tech person today. They hadn’t seen the news, and their first instinct was to empathize with the Apple executives having to confront that their products are enabling pedophiles.

hearin the number of CSAM reports apple made (265) vs facebook (10 million) changed my perspective. i don't like it but they are going to have to start scanning icloud photos sometime

Yeah - I can hear Tim Cook quoting those numbers as he explains this on stage.

I don’t think anybody has a problem with iCloud scanning (don’t they do it already?). Apple owns their servers, so I don’t care if they scan them.

It’s the on-device scanning that is the massive overreach. It’s like being forced to allow a government employee to live in your home and watch your behavior 24/7 for anything they don’t like.

“Oh but John is only looking for specific bad behavior like drug use, you don’t have to worry. He would never report you for anything else, we promise! If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be upset that John is living with you now!”

> I don’t think anybody has a problem with iCloud scanning

The large number of people here who want iCloud to be E2E have a problem with it.

> (don’t they do it already?).

Apparently not for files and photos. They may well do it for email.

Unfortunately, it seems the majority of the population are assuredly already rather authoritarian-leaning.

I wouldn't necessarily say authoritarian-leaning. More like "just this once"-leaning, without realizing there's no such thing.

This is a potentially sensitive and conflicting topic. I don't think people can take strong view on this in real life for multiple reasons, one of them being pedophilia is a disorder that is not super uncommon.

The fact that WSJ did a story on this with and a lengthy interview with Apple SVP means this is already a mainstream story.

If they kill the program, headlines will read: “Apple refuses to protect sexually abused children” or “Apple sides with protecting child pornographers.” I anecdotally see no backlash outside of HN and the tech/libertarian-focused parts of Reddit. To the casual iPhone buyer making up their billions in revenue, turning back on the program wouldn’t be good optics. Obviously my statement is purely conjecture, I’ll admit that.

There's surprisingly high backlash on /r/apple

You’re not seeing the backlash yet because normies don’t pay attention to Apple outside of the September iPhone event (when coverage breaks into the mainstream for a few days).

Look at Google trends data for the search term “Apple.” It spikes every September by like 70% for a week.

I can guarantee you, every average joe learning about the new iPhone from mainstream media, is going to hear a sound byte about this fiasco as well.

I’ll be surprised if this program isn’t dead within 2 months.

I don't think they have to compromise on the CP protection.

They can just go along with what other cloud storage providers have been doing all along... that is, "we won't snoop into your phone, because that's yours. but if you upload photos to iCloud, onto OUR servers, then we reserve the right to scan for images in CP database.."

And I think most people will be perfectly fine with that idea.

Just like you sign away some rights and accept risk when you decide to store items in physical storage facility, same thing will happen when you use iCloud.

> It’s like taking decades and billions of dollars worth of hard won reputation for privacy and throwing it in the garbage at the worst possible moment.

How gullible Apple users are to think that their closed-source ecosystem was ever about privacy, but I still don't think they'll learn. It is a cult and will continue being a cult.

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