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Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

There is an easy way for Apple to handle this. During iPhone setup present the following screen:

"We here at Apple do not want our servers to host images of exploited children, but we also respect your privacy. So you're free to use your phone with the photos stored locally, but if you'd like to enable iCloud we need you to press the button below to *install* our CSAM detector."

Then the argument basically goes away. It's like a virus scanner that you voluntarily installed. But having it baked into the phone as it ships rubs me the wrong way.

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In my understanding, iCloud is not E2E encrypted. They hold the keys. They can scan content on ingress if they want.

But they don't want to. They want to keep the content encrypted on their infrastructure to reduce the risk of leaking it. They only decrypt it with a court order.

That makes sense but isn't introducing this capability to the device even worse? With this capability in place, the only thing preventing them from abusing it is policy.

In my suggested world, you are free not to install it. If you distrust them enough to think that they'll change their policy to be more invasive, don't install it.

Personally, I'd rather have the detection happen on my phone than in the data centre. And I don't mind opting in to have my photos analyzed before upload. But the thing I don't like about Apple's CSAM thing is that it comes with my phone. And you know someone somewhere is going to accidentally enable iCloud and then claim they never did. Or maybe they didn't? Bugs do happen after all.

Makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

> It's like a virus scanner that you voluntarily installed

Not really. Virus scanners don't snitch on users to governments.

That's what they want you to think.

I'm joking, but only halfway.

That implies that the end goal or simply next step is not to scan all photos and the device whether or not you use icloud

It is not a goal.

And it was not a goal that the unsecured boulder at the top of the hill should come tumbling down over the road and into the house, it just so happens that when an unsecured boulder lies on the top of a large hill where teenagers gather and it doesn't stay there for too long.

Same goes for liberties and certain politicians.

For this reason we secure boulders, teach teens about consequences, keep invasive tech out of reach from wanna be authoritarian politicians and teach history in school.

The problem is once you add this functionality, the cat's out of the bag and replies to requests to further invade users' privacy on-device change from "we can't" to "we won't", a position Apple can't possibly hope to maintain, esp. with the likes of China or the US government.

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