Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

appleprivacyletter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 713 posts

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

#211

Post by ipodopt »

fsflover wrote: post #197
ipodopt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptop | Desktop: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem... Router: https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/ Media Center: https://osmc.tv/vero/ Cloud (Use TrueNAS Scale): https://www.truenas.com/systems-overview/ Phone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ Watch: https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-smartwatch-sealed/ Smart Thermostat: https://hestiapi.com/product/hestiapi-touch-one-free-shippin..…

Another phone: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 Laptop: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14

I have their laptop and do not recommend them. Honestly, I sort of regret the purchase.

- They lie about specifications like battery life (and other things). I get about 1 hour on my ~5 hour battery life when web browsing.

- My laptop had a race condition at boot that would prevent boot 50% of the time. There was a workaround.

- Wifi had a range of maybe ten feet (not joking).

I am sure there new laptop is better however I do not really trust them after my interactions. Especially for something more novel like a linux phone.

On the other hand, Pine64 is very focused on their hardware stack. All their products are running a very similar hardware unlike Purism. They are moving way more product then Purism and are better liked. Hence they have a stronger community. They are also much cheaper phone-wise for a similar feature set. And you can actually buy and receive the phone.

In terms of alternatives I think System76 is pretty good desktop wise right now. Laptop are alright. Waiting for their upcoming in-house laptop.

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

#213

Post by bambax »

defaultname wrote: post #66
toxik wrote: 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.

Anyone who engaged in such a discussion with a non-technical person is going to defacto seem like an advocate for child pornography, similar to how advocating for encryption can easily be twisted to being pro-crime. Having said that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about a pretty tame change. This seems like so much ado about very close to nothing. a) They optionally scan messaged pho…

> a) They scan photos for nudity using a NN if the participants are children and in a family (the account grouping), giving children warnings and information if they send or receive such material. A+++ thumbs up.

Leave my kids alone.

If they want to share photos of themselves naked, it's none of anyone's business except them and maybe me (maybe), certainly not a huge American corporation.

Neither me or my kids have iPhones, but as others have observed, I have no illusions that Google will follow suit. Our options are becoming pretty limited at this point.

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

#214

Post by judge2020 »

ls65536 wrote: post #111
donkeyd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be horrible if they opened all mail... However, if they had a system that could detect CSAM in unopened mail with an extremely low false negative rate, then I'd be fine with it. With many packages this already happens in the search for drugs and weapons and I have no problem with that either.

I suppose one important distinction here, if this makes any difference, is that drugs and weapons (to use your examples) are physical items, and these could arguably cause harm to people downstream, including to the postal system itself and to those working in it. In contrast, photos, text, written letters, and the transmissions of such are merely information and arguably not dangerous in this context (unless one is…

The proliferation of CSAM is extremely harmful to the victims in the photos and more people seeing them might encourage more CSAM production in general.

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

#215

Post by gerash »

donkeyd wrote: 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…

By that logic, can we send in someone into your house every day to look through every corner for child porn in digital or print form?

In fact there are a lot of heinous crimes out there some much worse than child porn IMHO. Singling out child porn as the reason seems like it's meant only to elicit an emotional response.

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

#216

Post by echelon »

jasoneckert wrote: post #89

I still remember Scott McNealy's 1999 quote from when he was at Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

Don't defend Apple. We have as much privacy as we're willing to stand up and defend.

Even if Apple continues down this path, perhaps the backlash will make techies abandon them. That would have a notable effect on their ecosystem.

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

#217

Post by daemoon »

arvinsim wrote: post #195
daemoon wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply turning off iCloud Photos will ensure that photos on your iPhone are never scanned. Why are you trying to make this thing about photos stored on-device? Photos in iCloud have always been available to Apple through iCloud backups. If you are concerned about privacy, turn it off. "And it does so while providing significant privacy benefits over existing techniques since Apple only learns about users’ photos if t…

So if an offender turns off iCloud then this move will absolutely be useless?? How would that help catch them if they can simply flip the switch?

> So if an offender turns off iCloud then this move will absolutely be useless??

No on-device photo scanning unless iCloud Photos is enabled. Isn't funny when you get the most important aspect wrong?

> How would that help catch them if they can simply flip the switch?

They never claimed that this would help "catch them" if they are not using iCloud Photos.

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

#218

Post by bishoprook2 »

My take is that by simply announcing this sort of thing the Rubicon has been crossed. If you see one ant, there's 100 ants somewhere.

The point in bitching to Apple isn't to make them change, but to bring attention to privacy issues to the hoi polloi. Cleaning up your own privacy act is the main lesson.

Maybe the only logical place to end up is a dedicated Chromebook in guest mode for financial transactions, air-gapped workstation to do artistic or other useful things, rarely-used dumbphone, get out more among physical people.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

brasscodemonkey wrote: post #201
sathackr wrote: post #42

US Government: We suspect the person in this photo of committing a crime. Here is your subpoena, Apple. You are directed to scan all iPhone and iCloud storage for any pictures matching this NeuralHash and report to us where you find them. Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for Tienanmen square. Delete all photos you find matching this or we will bar you from China. Apple has at this point already admitted thi…

Hasn’t Google been parsing Google Photos images, email content, and pretty much everything else since forever? Do you just stay off of smartphones and cloud platforms entirely?

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by judge2020 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #210
judge2020 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Photos runs PhotoDNA on all photos there, so it’s no different from Apple scanning photos destined for iCloud photos with similar tech. I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device (still only to photos going to iCloud Photos) instead of server-side, where they have to disable E2EE to do so?

iCloud Photos are not end-to-end encrypted in the first place.

This opens the door to doing so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081863
Post reply on HN