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An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

appleprivacyletter.com

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Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#91
post #4

I recently listened to a Darknet Diaries episode on messaging app Kik. This app is apparently being used by many people to trade child pornography. In this episode, there was some criticism expressed on how Kik doesn't scan all the images on their platform for child pornography. I would really like to hear from people who sign this open letter, how they think about this. Should the internet be a free for all place wi…

“Apple is opening the door to broader abuses”. Wouldn't not doing anything open a different door to broader abuse?

Actually I believe that in regards to "not doing anything open a different door to broader abuse" - no. Starting scans will lead to broader, and no tin foil hat needed.

If we compare 1-apple starts scanning for known hashes, not "looking at all your naked pics and seeing if you've got something questionable"... this is just looking for known / already created by others / historical things... by doing a scan for one thing - they open the pandoras box to start scanning for other things - and then they will be compelled by agents to scan for other things - and I believe that is broader, much.

Next month it will be scan for any images with a hash that matches a meme with fauci - the current admin has already stated that in their desire to stop 'disinformation' they want to censor sms text messages and facebook posts (assuming also fbk DMs and more).

There is a new consortium of tech co's sharing a list of bad people who share certain pdfs and 'manifestos' or something like that now right? Might as well scan for those docs too, add all them to the list.

What power this could lead to - soon the different agencies want scans for pics of drugs, hookers.. how about a scan for those images people on whatsapp are sharing with the black guy killing a cop with a hood on?

What happens when a new admin takes the house and white house and demands scans for all the trumped a traitor pics and make a list?

See this is where the encryption backdoors go.. and where is that line drawn? Is it federal level agencies that get to scan? can a local arizona county sheriff demand a scan of all phones that have traveled through their land/air space?

Frankly, public chats, public forums.. if you post kids or drugs or whatever is not legal there - then it's gonna get the men with guns to take note. What you do in private chats / DMs, etc - I think should stay there and not go anywhere else.

I don't like the idea that Msoft employees look at naked pics of my gf that are added to a pics folder because someone setup a win system without disabling one drive. So I don't use one drive and tell others to not use it - and not put pics of me there or on fbk or tictoc.

For all those people that have nothing to hide - I feel sorry for you - but wonder if your kids/grandkids should have thousands of agents looking into their private pics just to make sure there is nothing not legal there.

so would these scans get nudes sent through whatsapp? That would kill the encryption thing there kind of.

Would this scan get a cach if someone was using a chat room and some asshat posted something they shouldn't - and every person in the chat got a pic delivered to their screen. so many questions.

I also question what the apple scans would scan as far as folders and what not.. would it scan for things in a browser cache? like not purposefully downloaded.. if someone hit a page that had a setup image on it - would that person now be flagged for inspection / seizing?

If they are working with nice guys in Cali that just want to tap people on the shoulder and have a talk with people - will they send flagged notices to agents in other places who may go in with guns drawn and end up killing people?

I'm sure many people are fine with either outcome - I think there is a difference between someone surfing the web and someone who coerces real world harm, and not all those who surf the web deserve bullets to the chest, and there is no way to control that.. well maybe in the uk where cops aren't allowed to have guns maybe.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#92
post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

> Please talk to non-tech people around you about this.

They were already sold into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 12's, M1 Macs and iPad Pros. They are going to have a hard time moving to another platform.

Best part? Apple is a huge customer of Google Cloud for storage so you can now tell Google about all the files on your iCloud account. [0]

'With privacy in mind.' /s

[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-goog...

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#93
post #14
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a very deep and troublesome philosophical issue here. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. A picture of child abuse /is not/ child abuse. Let me ask you a counter-question. If I am able to draw child pornography so realistically that you couldn't easily tell, am I committing a crime by drawing?

What is this absurd counter? Who’s talking about surrealistic drawings? We’re talking about actual material in real life, being shared by users and abusers. To be clear, I’m not supporting surveillance, just stating facts.

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#94
post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

Talking about this with non-tech people might make the distrust in anything they don’t understand worse. Think vaccines.

[flagged]

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#95

Disappointing. While moderating CP distribution and storage is obviously the right thing to do, I do not think this approach will be a worthwhile endeavor for apple and governments. Let me explain: imagine you are bad guy with bad stuff on your iphone, and you hear apple will be scanning your phone. What is the next logical thing you would do? Migrate your stuff to something else, obviously. Encrypting a usb stick do…

It is not the role of infrastructure providers to reach into private, on device content.

That is like the USPS opening every letter and scanning what is inside. Even if it's done with machine learning, that is absolutely not okay, no matter what it is for.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#96
Both of the announced features sound fine on their own — Apple has always been able to scan iCloud and send your data to police [0], and PhotoDNA is a decade old; whereas on-device machine learning on kid phones does not (according to Apple) involve sending anything to Apple reviewers and the govt.

But announcing both features in the same post makes it inevitable that they get conflated, e.g. “Apple’s machine learning will send suspected child porn-like images from your iMessages to iCloud, where it will be reviewed and possibly sent to the police”. Apple obviously knows this — so them being ok with that raises some serious eyebrows, as if they’re quietly setting the groundwork to make that a reality.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-fbi-icloud-investigati...

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#97
post #92
post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

> Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. They were already sold into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 12's, M1 Macs and iPad Pros. They are going to have a hard time moving to another platform. Best part? Apple is a huge customer of Google Cloud for storage so you can now tell Google about all the files on your iCloud account. [0] 'With privacy in mind.' /s [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/0…

In all fairness, in theory, they could have all that data encrypted with keys that google doesn't have.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#98
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a very deep and troublesome philosophical issue here. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. A picture of child abuse /is not/ child abuse. Let me ask you a counter-question. If I am able to draw child pornography so realistically that you couldn't easily tell, am I committing a crime by drawing?

Yes. People have been convicted for possession of hand-drawn and computer-generated images. Editing a child's image to make it pornographic is also illegal. So some "deepfake" videos using faces from young celebs are in all likelihood very illegal in many jurisdictions. Images can be illegal if all people are of age, but are portrayed as underage. Many historical dramas take legal advice about this when they have adu…

Not sure where you get your advice from. Supreme court has ruled loli as legal. You can find it on 4chan in about 30 seconds.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#99
post #4

I recently listened to a Darknet Diaries episode on messaging app Kik. This app is apparently being used by many people to trade child pornography. In this episode, there was some criticism expressed on how Kik doesn't scan all the images on their platform for child pornography. I would really like to hear from people who sign this open letter, how they think about this. Should the internet be a free for all place wi…

The boundary should be that user generated personal data that is on a user device should stay personal on a user device unless explicit consent is otherwise given. That's it. The argument is always well "don't you want to save the children" to which I give this example. In the USA guns are pretty freely available, relative to other countries. There is a huge amount of gun violence (including shooting at schools targe…

>> The boundary should be what is on a user device should stay personal on a user device.

But how many apps only store the locally on the device versus sending data to the cloud, getting data from the cloud, or calling cloud APIs to get functionality that cannot be provided on device?

Having the power of a personal computing device is huge, but having a networked personal computing device is far greater.

Keeping everything on-device is a good ideal for privacy, but not very practical for networked computing.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#100
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see where in the first quotation it says that the scanning takes place after iCloud upload. It just says monitoring.

The first quote says it happens to “all photos stored […] on a user’s iPhone”. The second quote clarifies that it only happens to photos that are going to be uploaded to iCloud Photos, and that the scan is performed before the upload happens.

Man. Sometimes English is an imprecise language. I guess the second quote I posted doesn't preclude scanning all photos. It would be a weird use of wording, but if all photos were scanned all the time, then technically that sentence would still be correct.

I'm not 100% sure if this is about the on-device portion of this. Gmail and OneDrive already use this (and have for the better part of a decade) and I haven't seen any large outcry. Also, Apple has confirmed that turning off icloud photos means this doesn't work (this is separate from iCloud backups).

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