German parliament wants Tim Cook to reconsider CSAM plans | Hacker News Reader

German parliament wants Tim Cook to reconsider CSAM plans

appleinsider.com

117 pointsmiles35 comments

> Apple's CSAM scanning system continues to draw criticism over its existence, largely at a misinterpretation as to what the system does and is capable of doing [emphasis mine].

Is that sloppy journalism blindly parroting Apple PR or an Apple shill?

An article by an apple hype website is somewhat dismissive of everyone’s apple concerns. You don’t exactly hire people for that job who aren’t big fans. It would be nice to find another source with the actual text of the letter but I wasn’t able to find one

We sadly have tons of such articles, but I would forgive "appleinsider.com" here. You can deduce what to expect.

That said, there are election in a few weeks... I think they are mostly lying and there are ambitions from all parties to increase control of online content caused by intangible fears. Parts of EU policy also is in direct contrast to this.

East Germans has first hand experience of mass surveillance by the state secret police (Stasi).

"Over 80% of respondents oppose its application to end-to-end encrypted communications."

you don't even need to go to the Stasi. In West Germany there also always was a recognition of the right to private communication which is why the so called Briefgeheimnis ('secrecy of letters'[1]) was enshrined in the basic law. Privacy of correspondence is very, very hard to circumvent for historical reasons but also because it just seems essential to me in a free society to not treat everyone as a potential criminal who is subject to mass surveillance.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

Now that Apple has proven they can do it, how long before it’s required by law, regardless of their wishes, and how long before Apple is forced to implement it for other types of images that governments may find objectionable or interesting?

In other threads, someone was asking about same type of images but stored as a pdf or as an archive, as those are not part of iCloud Photo category. It would be strange not to extend this search even further, including iMessage and what have you.

The government can read all the iCloud backups, what would that gain them? Vote for a better government

It’s the German parliament, not government (although I guess there are definitions that include all three branches, the latter seems to be used synonymously with ‘administration’ here).

The committee chair in question is from the liberal (as in libertarian, for Americans) party, which isn’t part of the governing coalition.

That being said, the criticism isn’t necessarily outside the mainstream, and both his Free Democrats and, even more so, the Green Party that would likely agree could well be part of the next government six weeks from now.

The governing coalition parties (CDU, SPD) members of the European parliament recently voted for similar measures to allow providers to conduct mass surveillance on their users:

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/

> But this is not the end of the story: For autumn 2021, European Commission announced that it will propose a follow-up legislation that will make the use of chatcontrol mandatory for all e-mail and messenger providers. This legislation might then also affect securely end-to-end encrypted communications.

Do government people use iphones? What do they use?

I'm curious how they ensure their own security and how Apple's plans affect that.

Put it this way – when newspapers wanted to know if Biden had spoken to world leaders about the Taliban, they asked the NSA.

I think it’s safe to assume at this point that many politicians in the US are compromised by domestic intelligence agencies.

They have "custom" devices.

But from which manufacturers?

As much as I oppose this, calling this the “biggest breach of the dam for the confidentiality of communication that we have seen since the invention of the Internet” is a joke. I can see how apple ‘thinks’ everyone is misunderstanding it. Other service providers have implemented these measures (apples is the least invasive) already a long time ago, and nobody seems to care with them.

Apple is installing spyware on devices you own and sending your data to law enforcement. This is a major breach.

> Apple is installing spyware on devices you own

I don't get it. Have they hacked your phone? In that case isn't that illegal?

The real answer is that it was never "your" phone. It was Apple's. They are installing spyware on their own phones. There is no "breach".

The solution is simple, buy a phone that you really own. Don't rent one from Apple.

Other service providers. Meaning when the data goes through their hands. This is different.

There's an awful lot of Apple fans out there over this in the "bargaining" phase of grief with posts like this.

If someone pitched you a Linux kernel which did this it would forks and outrage.

Citation for pervasive content scanning?

PhotoDNA: "is an image-identification technology used for detecting child pornography and other illegal content which is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) [...] It is used on Microsoft's own services including Bing and OneDrive, as well as by Google's Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Adobe Systems, Reddit, Discord and the NCMEC, to whom Microsoft donated the technology." [1]

I'm (almost) certain any Google service will tag CSAM for reports and will also hash content it deems illegal for the NCMEC too [2], so I wouldn't be surprised if Google Photos already did something like this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

[2] https://transparencyreport.google.com/child-sexual-abuse-mat...

On their property. Nobody is doing it on someone else's property.

My phone is not a service provider.

Even funnier coming from places like the EU, which allow govt access to all sorts of communications.

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