The German government isn't complaining. Looking at the original German article it was a single parliament member from an opposition party that wrote a letter to Apple.
From the technical standpoint, Apple's implementation seems sound, although it does raise strong concerns about the future applications of the technology. Strong privacy laws can prevent abuse.
Yes, there is a need to thwart the production and distibution of child sexual abuse material. Yes, there is a need to monitor communication (following due process) to protect a democratic nation against those who want to harm it. A government in power however, will often seek to go beyond its "needs". In this particular context, they want, and demand, the right to unleash surveillance on everyone, without any due diligence or monitoring. This obviously has more to do with their desire for more power and control, than the actual needs of the nation.
While "cloud scanning" has some how been grudgingly accepted by many of us, Apple's CSAM tools go beyond that and lays the foundation for a future surveillance network that the BigTech and power-hungry governments have long been desiring. With this kind of technology (with legal backing) the BigTech get unrestrained access to our personal data that they can monetise. The governments gets the power to scan all our devices for content the government deems inappropriate (anything they deem illegal and / or that threatens their hold on power).
Apple's CSAM tools are thus a direct assualt on our rights - with it, we are no longer considered "innocent, until proven guilty". We also lose our right against self-incrimination. In a democratic setup, if a government accuses anyone, the burden of proving the accusation is on them. But if Apple's CSAM tools is extended into a surveillance network that is always monitoring for "illegal" content, the whole process will be turned around where we citizens will now have to bear the burden of always proving our innocence. Our rights, and democracy, go for a toss with this.
We should laud the politicians who bought up this issue in Germany and are defending the democratic rights and values that we all want to see prevail.
How can one harm a stable democratic nation truth "communication"? Normally it is harmed truth news-outlets and not one to one communication.
Sorry but it's not really working like that anymore...the metadata here is much more important then the call itself. And humint is getting more and more important too...again
Reading through these discussions, this is the one question I haven't seen a good answer to. Would any of us be speaking out like we are right now if Apple had chosen to do server-side scanning instead of on-device scanning, just like every other company?
There are many options for personal server hosting where the hardware and software are open for reverse engineering and inspection, so you could, at least in theory, host a server you control without needing to use Apple's offering. On the other hand, smartphones are proliferated by a duopoly and there are no viable options for using one where both stacks are made completely open. No company has the capability to openly push a scanning feature like this into the Linux kernel in the same way that Apple can openly announce they're going to add their own version of such a feature to their own operating system, because the power dynamic is completely different.
It sounds like the magnitude of the backlash people are expressing can be partially explained by the fact that Apple has such a large foothold on the personal device market in a world where smartphones are increasingly becoming necessary to live one's life, and due to the inability to choose a privacy-respecting device that is also competent enough to satisfy society's new expectations for smartphone usage, there is no good place to hide.
People had voiced concern when BigTech started cloud scanning - either motivated by profits (data mining users data) or to comply with government regulations. That's why we saw an increased awareness of encryption technology (and why governments have now started cribbing about how encryption needs to go). We also saw a boycott of cloud tech by many privacy advocates. But one of the reason it has been grudgingly accepted is because, to some level, we do understand that all business services are bound by some regulation to ensure they are not participant in something illegal. And we still have a choice to not use these services.
But, as you rightly pointed out, avoiding these services does limit users. And obviously people do feel outraged by the preposterous idea that just because you produce some content and want to share it with even a single person, you are now expected to submit to a scan of your device. This is such a subversion of our hard fought rights.
There you go, next
Ps: sorry if I double posted. I got an error the first time around and found not see the post.
Just wait until some bought-off cronies in the EU Parliament pushes for this feature. Never forget the Article 13 events!