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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

Huh? It’s a real dichotomy. We have one model today that all companies use. Apple proposed an alternative that people hated, so we still have the secret cloud scanning with no auditability or transparency.

How in the world is that a false dichotomy? It is literally a choice betweeen two options that people were very adamant about.

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It is always the implication when people point out false dichotomies that there are more than two options. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader. Flex those critical thinking skills.

I don't use any public cloud, so they can scan to their heart's content in their cloud for whatever they want.

As long as they keep their grubby paws off the device we're all good.

Apple's proposal only scanned content just before it was uploaded to the cloud. Anything you keep locally (or at least don't use their servers for) was not scanned.

Don't want to reopen that can of worms since a lot of people were triggered by the distinction but in my case I simply don't want that functionality on my device at all (regardless of when they initially planned on using it) - the only way to never have it "accidentally" scan other content is for it to not exist locally at all.

Imagine Microsoft Defender (which is enabled by default on 99%+ of Windows machines) suddenly starts scanning all your local content against some opaque government-provided databases of "bad" hashes. But they pinky swear they won't ever report their findings unless you upload your files to OneDrive. Would you trust them?

You are missing the third option: no scanning anywhere.

>You are missing the third option: no scanning anywhere.

What a take. Thankfully the vast majority of Americans don't agree with you in the slightest. Also private companies can do whatever they please.

I don't think "pervasive digital surveillance is bad" is an unpopular opinion here.

HN is not America (thank god)

Private companies catching child predators is actually pretty popular.

And IBM compiling databases with ethnic background was pretty popular with a particular Teutonic political movement. You guys should look it up, you'll find lots of handy strategies to copy.

You're quite right. It's a reductive, simplistic opinion, but extremely popular.

Well how about the fourth option: nobody ever does anything bad?

Seems about as realistic and well-grounded as your proposal.

Apple introduced optional end to end encryption for photos after withdrawing the on device scanning plan. Do you claim a back door?

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