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Comment by unityByFreedom | Hacker News Reader

> That was just for scanning photos in general.

Are you trolling? What Federighi proposed before was scanning "for CSAM" on device [1]. Same angle.

> Doing it on device is probably preferable to on cloud and at worst no different.

Please elaborate. How is it better to force users to run software they don't want than to let them decide whether or not to have their photos scanned when they choose to upload them to the cloud?

Anyway it's a false dichotomy. Apple isn't doing on-device scanning, and now they've announced they won't do it in the cloud either.

[1] https://youtu.be/OQUO1DSwYN0?t=426

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Well the scanning was allegedly supposed to take place only when uploading. If a user chooses not to opt-in for cloud library the device scanning was allegedly supposed to be turned off.

So yeah allegedly no worst.

You might notice i used the word "allegedly" a lot, it's because we are speculating about a feature that was never actually rolled out and that nobody audited externally to my knowledge. If you don't trust Apple then this argument don't apply and you are probably better of not using an iPhone.

Nonetheless it's still not worst than actually rolled out CSAM scanning feature of Google Cloud that already had major user adversial effect. So you should trust Google even less and you definitely shouldn't use a stock Android device.

iOS is closed source. Literally every part is unverifiable and "forced". I have no way of proving that my iphone isn't and hasn't always been scanning my photos. But I don't have the time or energy to care about that, I've decided that using an Apple product is safer than an Android I didn't audit (which is essentially impossible). By scanning on device it enables the possibility of end to end encryption which reduces the risk of a hack or bug exposing my photos.

Yes, this whole thing is just another public relation exercise of "Apple cares about your privacy" bullshit when they are actually saying that they still plan to scan your device for CSAM. "End to end" encryption of backup on iCloud is also a joke when they are going to store the encryption keys on the iDevices on which you can run no other system software apart from the closed source ones provide by Apple.

Nope. This is a step forward for privacy.

How is having a hash-based scanner a step forward for privacy compared to not having one?

Meant end-to-end encryption, as mentioned by poster, is a step forward. Even if the devices aren't running OSS.

Ah sorry, yes I agree.

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