Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

Any perceptual hash apps to test that theory on?

If you can't understand the theory and reimplement it then you shouldn't even look at it.

The internet is full of pathological wizards and witches. Come here for obscure books but otherwise stay far away.

With regard to the conflict dynamics - I agree, although the amplification isn’t necessarily bad.

Also I think with regard to the ‘deeper truth’, often it’s not so much ‘deeper’ as simpler.

In this case for example, people strongly dislike being distrusted - it might well be a genetic disposition since it is a crucial part of our social psychology, and Apple is making a mistake by ignoring that. This isn’t about people not trusting Apple. It’s about people not feeling trusted by Apple.

Perhaps that counts as deeper, but there isn’t much to say about it - it’s not a loud sounding insight, and so all of the other arguments get built up as a way of amplifying that signal.

Yes, it is ultimately policy problem. But the way we get people in office who understand technology is to get technological capabilities in the hands of people before they get into office, as well as the hands of those who will vote for them. Just like "bad facts make bad law", bad engineering makes bad law.

Twenty years ago we forcefully scoffed at the Clipper Chip proposal and the export ban on crypto, because they were so at odds with the actual reality of the digital environment. These days, most people's communications are mediated by large corporations operating on plaintext, and are thus are straightforward to monitor and censor. And especially when companies lead the charge, governments expect to have the same ability.

If I could hole up and rely on Free software to preserve my rights indefinitely, I wouldn't particularly care what the Surveillance Valley crowd was doing with their MITM scheme. But I can't, because Surveillance Valley is teaching governments that communications can be controlled while also fanning the flames and creating glaring examples of why they need to be controlled (cf social media "engagement" dumpster fire). And once governments expect that technology can be generally controlled, they will rule any software that does not do their bidding as some exceptional circumvention device rather than a natural capability that has always existed. This entire "trust us" cloud culture has been one big vaccination for governments versus the liberating power of technology that we were excited for two decades ago. This end result has been foreseeable since the rise of webapps, but it's hard to get software developers to understand something when their salary relies upon not understanding it.

Apart from my ][gs (and later my secondhand NeXT), I've never been a huge Apple fan. But I had hoped that by taking this recent privacy tack, they would put workable digital rights into the hands of the masses. Design their system to be solidly secure against everyone but Apple, control the app store to prevent trojans, but then stay out of users' business as software developers should. But brazenly modifying their OS, which should be working for the interests of the user, to do scanning against the interests of the user is a disappointing repudiation of the entire concept of digital rights. And so once again we're back to Free software or bust. At least the Free mobile ecosystem seems to be progressing.