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Comment by rzimmerman | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe how uninformed, angry, and still willing to argue about it people were over this. The whole point was a very reasonable compromise between a legal requirement to scan photos and keeping photos end-to-end encrypted for the user. You can say the scanning requirement is wrong, there's plenty of arguments for that. But Apple went so above and beyond to try to keep photo content private and provide E2E encryption while still trying to follow the spirit of the law. No other big tech company even bothers, and somehow Apple is the outrage target.

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> a legal requirement to scan photos

Can you provide documentation demonstrating this requirement in the United States? It is widely understood that no such requirement exists.

There's no need to compromise with any requirement, this was entirely voluntary on Apple's part. That's why people were upset.

> I can't believe how uninformed

Oh the irony.

Should have said "potential legal requirement". There was a persistent threat of blocking the use of E2E encryption for this exact reason.

> Can you provide documentation demonstrating this requirement in the United States?

PROTECT Act of 2003 - Details CSAM materials as being illegal which is enforced by FBI + ICE.

Also NCMEC which is a non-profit created by the US government that actively works in this area.

> a legal requirement to scan photos

There is absolutely no such legal requirement. If there were one it would constitute an unlawful search.

The reason the provider scanning is lawful at all is because the provider has inspected material voluntarily handed over to them, and through their own lawful access to the customer material has independently and without the direction of the government discovered what they believe to be unlawful material.

The cryptographic functionality in Apple's system was not there to protect the user's prviacy, the cryptographic function instead protected apple and their datasources from accountability by concealing the fingerprints that would cause user's private data to be exposed.

There isn’t a law that requires them to proactively scan photos. That is why they could turn the feature back off.

A law by the government requiring proactive scanning of photos would in fact make the whole situation worse in the US because there would need to be a warrant if the government is requiring the scan. As long as it's voluntary by the company and not coerced by the government, they can proactively scan.

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