I still remember Scott McNealy's 1999 quote from when he was at Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
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An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
241–250 of 713 posts
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#242Earlier 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…
> This is why American porn companies shy away from cheerleader outfits, or any other suggestion of highschools.
Lol I'm not sure if this is the case anymore? I've seen tons of "high-school-ish" professional produced porn completely with cheerleading outfits.
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 how…
This is quite interesting. I'm writing this on their Librem 15 and can't recommend it enough. No problems with booting or anything. Battery life got short with time (but I never cared about it).
> Wifi had a range of maybe ten feet (not joking).
Purism is using the only existing WiFi card that works with free firmware. It is less performant than typical proprietary ones. If you don't care about your freedom strongly, you can replace the card (they are very cheap on ebay). Also, check Purism forums for such questions. It works better than "ten feet" for me.
> On the other hand, Pine64 is very focused on their hardware stack.
And the software is provided by Purism (Phosh, for most Pinephone users). Pinephone is great, I'm using it, too. But Librem 5 is much more performant. Many videos show it's working fine, except of the non-finished software (same as for Pinephone).
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#244Please 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.
Privacy is not something Apple, or any company, gives us. But it’s something they extract from us; by tracking us and harvesting data. If Apple were serious, as opposed to positioning themselves as less extractive than GFAM and others, they would not be taking this road. Yes, they say it’s on iCloud for now, but the signs are that it will be done client side in future. Whether you believe that will happen or not the risks are too high; so it’s prudent to assume the worst.
This is this a first step to "Detective in your Pocket", cloaked intentionally, or not, by a well-meaning objective. An objective we can all support. If you wanted to put in a thin wedge on distributed surveillance, where better to start? As pointed out CSAM filtering/scanning is already done so that’s not the issue here. There’s a big debate to be had, and being had, on the upsides/downsides and benefits/dangers of AI and false positives. That’s a huge issue in itself; but that’s not the biggest concern with this move. If Apple pushes on with this it’s a clear signal that they wish to march us all to a new world order with Distributed Surveillance, as a Service. A march in step with the drumbeat of your increasingly authoritarian (or if you are lucky or more generous, safety conscious) government.
I have signed the letter to express my very strong personal concerns but also as a CEO of a company that takes CSAM seriously and seeks to provide solutions, in search, without surveillance.
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though we were okay with Gmail doing the same because "hey, it's free!". But I understand your concern here. All our lives are now digitalised and maybe stored forever somewhere and anything you do, even if completely benign, could be considered a crime in some country or even in your own country in a few years from now.
Are you claiming GMail looks through the emails to match them with crime keywords and reports you to the authorities? citation needed
I'm claiming they use the content of your messages to profile you and better target their ads until they stopped this practice in 2017 in favour of reading your email "for better product personalisation".
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#246how is this not a violation of the 4th amendment if Apple is performing this search on behalf of a government entity?
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Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#247I applaud Apple for this. It reaffirms the reasons why it's one of the few companies I feel strongly about. If you can't understand the logic of a decision like this, maybe you don't realize the mountain of suffering that is caused from people trading this material. I recommend listening to Sam Harris's podcast with Gabriel Dance (#213 - THE WORST EPIDEMIC) to get a better picture of the problem.
The main beef people seem to have here is the slippery slope argument. Binary choices are nice, I agree - but almost always they obscure a complex surface that deserves nuance.
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
Hopefully this is another configurable option that falls under the already very extensive family screen time feature. I understand where you're coming from and respect your position, but I fall on the opposite side. This is something I do want for my kid.
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah as I mentioned down the thread, once you act against the users, you're dead. I'm done. They are going from my life. Good job it's ebay 80% off fees this weekend here in the UK.
I mean eBay isn’t exactly free of bad behavior…
Guess I'll just keep my spyPhone then. /s
Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology
#250More horrifying is the number of people defending or apologizing for this move. Truly mind boggling!
Anything for the children!!
I think that earnest acceptance of “well, it’s for a good cause” style arguments indicates a severely stunted ability to generalize: either to generalize applications of the technology (it works on any proscribed content, not just stuff people generally agree is bad) or to generalize outcomes of this kind of corporate behavior (Apple will continue to actively spy on their customers as long as they can come up with a tenuous justification for it).