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After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

mobile.reuters.com

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Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#71

Post by adventured »

post_break wrote: post #50

Apple these days is the type of company to make a mistake, think they are never wrong, blame anyone but themselves and then change a little bit, only for it to go over like a dead balloon. It reminds me of the Apple Silicon dev kit. No refunds, ok refunds but you have to spend them in a certain time, ok fine you can use them for a longer period and for anything. They are probably completely flabbergasted that people…

They've been like that since the early days of the company, it's core to their culture, which was built by Steve Jobs. Apple has always had an elitist snobbery at their center, such that if you don't get a thing then you're wrong. That's what Think Different is all about, that's a hyper arrogant proclamation that could only be spewed out of an elitist never-wrong orifice, it's borderline assholic in nature. Part of the cult of Apple has always been that attitude, the Apple fans eat it up, they love the idea that buying Apple products made them feel different (or it used to, before Apple became mainstream), made them feel separate from the masses. Steve Jobs points that out in the D5 interview in 2007 with Gates, how Apple needs the inferior taste of the masses to prime their superiority off of (which is another way of saying: they're wrong, we're right).

Go back to their response over the iPhone 4 reception problems ("you're holding it wrong"), same asshole culture then as now, and that culture has been in place for decades:

https://www.engadget.com/2010-06-24-apple-responds-over-ipho...

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#72

Post by pembrook »

This is by far the biggest misstep of Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple thus far.

If they don’t kill this program soon, it’s going to overshadow the entire upcoming iPhone event, and will follow Apple around like a dark cloud for years.

I can see the headlines now: “New iPhone launches amid massive new privacy concerns.”

Anytime someone praises Apple for privacy, anywhere on the internet, there will be a tidal wave of people bringing up this program in rebuttal. From people who would have previously defended Apple to the grave!

I cannot fathom how on earth anybody thought this was a good idea. It’s like taking decades and billions of dollars worth of hard won reputation for privacy and throwing it in the garbage at the worst possible moment.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#73

Post by heavyset_go »

norov wrote: post #62
cletus wrote: post #28

And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they are doing huge damage to their reputation and trust for bigger reasons. Perhaps there are international or national security issues they are told to comply with that are not quite in the public view yet.

Occam's razor says they aren't playing 11th dimensional chess and that they just fucked up. It happens.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#75

Post by CommieBobDole »

schappim wrote: post #9

With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?

The thing that strikes me as most suspicious is their insistence on keeping the client-side scanning feature while wrapping it in all sorts of supposed restrictions so it's essentially server-side scanning, just implemented on the client device for some reason.

If the problem is "We need to scan stuff on iCloud for CSAM" then "Let's build a client-side scanning agent and distribute it to hundreds of millions of devices and figure out a way to protect the hashes from the end user and then figure out a way to lock it down so it can't be used to scan other things even if we wanted to or somebody ordered us to" is a singularly (and suspiciously) inelegant solution to the problem.

Just scan the files on your own servers, like everybody else does. Anything else is rightly going to make people suspicious that you've got some ulterior motive.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#76

Post by musha68k »

finolex1 wrote: post #58
cletus wrote: post #28

And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…

Unfortunately, I don't think this has been anything more than a small blip to Apple's reputation. If I were not on Hackernews (like 99+% of Apple users), I would have either not heard or given second thought to this move.

It’s on Reuters and many other news outlets. The press are still doing their job for the moment at least.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#77

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

floatingatoll wrote: post #17
schappim wrote: post #9

With this much bad PR (and Apple hates bad PR), why is Apple pretty much holding its position?

They're convinced that it's worth the benefit to abused children to let the tech community vent fears about the world at them for a while. I don't really blame them. My views don't align with the mob here, so it would be a waste of my time to discuss them while y'all are upset and angry about this; best just to hold my position, remain silent or reserved, and wait for the pitchfork mob to find another target or exhau…

> I'm honestly surprised Apple even commented at all.

I think they commented because they expected a brief storm of outrage that quickly dies down, but instead it has become a growing wave that is spilling into mainstream media, with a mostly negative reaction, and threatening to completely destroy their "Privacy. That's iPhone" mantra that has been the core of their marketing campaign this year.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#78

Post by firebaze »

I'm not sure if this addresses the main point. Apple promised privacy, as long as you're not violating laws. The most recent move changed this: now you're a suspect by default, your photos will be scanned even on your local device, and you won't know what the criteria are to flag you, since they're hidden from your knowledge and you can't defend yourself against that hidden criteria.

So what's gotten better by this? In the kindest interpretation, you'll be safe from Fascististan's hashes. But what if Fascististan has been bribed by China or the US? And so on.

A line which should never have been crossed was crossed.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#79

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

paulie4542 wrote: post #29

Trust lost last week. This doesn’t matter.

I wouldn't say "this doesn't matter", I'd say "this makes it worse" because they're reaffirming that they want to push forward with this despite the criticism.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#80

Post by wilkystyle »

dwighttk wrote: post #39
dkersten wrote: post #19

So they're still retaining the ability to look on users devices? I have nothing against them looking at the abuse material, I have a problem with them having power over my device, which could be piggy-backed on by state actors (or others) for their own purposes later. Nobody is against them trying to prevent child sexual abuse, pretty sure we all agree that fighting that is important, but doing so by creating what is…

Don’t use iCloud photos

This is as unhelpful as saying "don't have CSAM on your phone." As has been reiterated many times, the problem is not the capability it is claimed to start off with, it is how the capability will be evolved, abused, and exploited as time goes on.
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