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Comment by bequanna | Hacker News Reader

Does Tim Cook have a choice here?

I would be surprised to hear that the genesis of this idea was inside of Apple vs. one or more govts pressuring Apple to add this functionality for them.

It is also likely they even suggested that Apple should market this as anti-pedo tech to receive the least pushback from users.

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If Apple is performing the searching of user private data due to pressure or incentive from the government it would make apple an agent of the government from the perspective of the fourth amendment. As such, these warrantless searches would be unlawful.

If what you suggest were true, we should be even more angry with Apple: it would mean that rather than just lawfully invading their users privacy, that they were a participant in a conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Americans, Chinese, Europeans, everyone. This is an equal-opportunity privacy rights violation. Investigatory and spy agencies around the world must be thrilled that this is moving forward.

Of course, we’ll accept it and the dullest of us will even cheer it as “doing the right thing” while stating that they “have nothing to hide”.

The time to be angry with apple was years ago when they launched their false marketing campaign claiming privacy on their closed devices. A lot of people fell for it, and were happy to believe whatever they said. All the while they have been two-face-timing by turning over user data to governments (including the US and putting user data on Chinese servers) anyway, with the highest data turnover rates actually. Everyone was happy to turn a blind eye to these happenings as long as it didn't affect them.

We should be angry with _ourselves_. What's happening now is that this has hit closer to a lot more people, who are now dissecting every detail, blaming others, performing mental gymnastics, and launching 'open letters' so that their brand identity and perceptions aren't proven wrong. Convincing them to roll back their recent changes will not somehow make Apple devices private, when it was never private to begin with.

What can I, as an individual, do to protect my digital privacy then? Would that mean ditching the Apple ecosystem, and going full linux laptop & phone? As much as I would love to buy a pinephone, they just don't seem like a truly viable alternative...

There's been a few relevant threads on how to switch. I have these two handy since I started them:

Non-surveillance phones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28164208

Non-surveillance laptops: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216287

Thank you! These are both great posts.

I've seen this argument before. Yes, perhaps I could have switched my OS back then.

I don't really buy the implication though. "The time to be angry is years ago"; "We should be angry with ourselves". If these are true, what are you saying? That we should suck it up and be quiet? That we missed our chance and need to deal with it?

Fairly sure this is one of those logical fallacies used on young children who forgot to use the bathroom before a long road trip.

The latest episode of The Daily podcast [0] from The New York Times said that Apple executives were told by members of Congress at a hearing that if they didn't do something about CSAM on their platform the federal government would force them through legislation. And it's not a completely idle threat; just look at the proposed EARN-IT Act of 2020 [1], which would pretty much outlaw end-to-end encrypted services without a law enforcement backdoor.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/podcasts/the-daily/apple-...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020

Be that as it may, there has not been presented any proof that Congress would dictate client-side scanning on users devices.

But it still doesn't change that Apple needs to stop on-device scanning.

Government by threatened legislation is much worse than government by actual legislation. Legislation is public, Legislation can be opposed, legislation can be reviewed by the court and so-forth. Allowing yourself (and your users) to controlled by threats of legislation is allowing democracy to be discarded.

Wow good take. Appreciate this perspective. Let the system do its work!

Sure there is a choice.

They could open source the OS allowing independent auditing and independent privacy focused builds to emerge so people have a way to opt out, as they have on Android via projects like CalyxOS.

That is of course if privacy was actually a serious Apple objective.

Apple doesn't have a history of complying with every request from governments and police. They care more about their bottom line IMHO. So I was surprised by this "feature". I don't see how it sells more phones for them. Actually it could scare away some customers because of false positives. Everybody with small kids risks a match on some of their children pictures.

If Android also implements something like that I could end up with a Linux phone as my main phone and an Android one at home for the 2FA of banks and other mandatory apps. No WhatsApp but I'll manage.

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