An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

> "Can’t the police do good old fashioned police work to catch people doing these things?"

I'm a detective that works exclusively on online child sexual offences.

The short answer to this is "no", although the question doesn't make much sense to me. Policing has always been near the forefront of technology.

Perhaps you could expand more on what "good old fashioned police work" means, in this context?

The common, instinctive reaction in tech circles & HN seems to be some version of "consumer action," vote-with-your-dollar stuff. This isn't going to work. It almost never does. At most, it'll be affect a minor tweak or delay.

This is a political issue, IMO. A thousand people protesting outside Apple HQ and/or stores is worth more than 100 thousand consumer striking. IMO, the main non-political avenue here is alternatives, especially FOSS alternatives. It's hard to see a way to widely adopted FOSS phones from here, but if we had a viable alternative things would look different. That's producer action, rather than consumer action.

Make it an issue in elections. Stand outside Apple stores with a sign. Push for a Digital Freedom law. Etc. An Apple labour union, maybe. The conscious consumer game is a dead end. It usually is.

American police has never been de-funded, and if you really think "good old fashioned" police work ever actually worked for most people, you are misinformed.

Without even discussing policing across racial and poverty lines, one only needs to look at police failing to catch serial killers, rapists, and even just house burglars.

The situation was much worst 10, 20, 30+ years ago. Nowadays police have some of their work done for them by technology and they are at least able to catch a few more criminals. Technology has also helped prevent false arrests in some cases. Apple's content scanning is problematic, for sure, but technology in general has been great for community safety.

I think the problem with your response is that you aren't proposing anything better. It just sounds like you're saying "give in, it doesn't make a difference anyway".

That capitulating, "crabs in a barrel" attitude is why things are the way they are. The majority just sits around waiting for something to happen and for some miracle to happen; for a leader to show up, galvanize the masses to change their ways and save the day. At the same time you don't believe that will ever happen, so you stay complacent, non-active and immobile (physically and mentally).

Stop preaching futility and do something positive. Try and be the positive change you want to see. Just because you've given up doesn't mean you have to try and convince somebody else to give up. You're part of the problem.

The existence of Spyware Engine is a problem, not technical details of how current version suppose to work. Suppose to work because we have not idea what it will do. Did you see the source code?

We are not that naive to believe for a second that this Spyware Engine will do what is claimed.

This is simply viewed as calculated attempt to legalize Spyware Engine on a personal device covered by some bs story intended to get emotional response from the audience to fog the real issue. It is always done this way so no surprises here. All limitations of free speech on the web in Russia were done under umbrella of protecting children and immediately used against political opponents to this very day.

This is discussion about values [1] not technical details! Simply because Spyware may be already installed. It should not become any legal though or morally accepted anyhow.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084578