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Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

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Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#491
post #419

I feel we've been collectively losing the battle to keep our conversations private. The anti-encryption laws are likely vocally opposed only by a minority, while the majority believes they had no privacy to begin with and governments can read your messages at a whim. And perhaps that's true to some extent. But since most people believe the battle is lost, moreso that this has always been the status quo, then any batt…

>I feel we've been collectively losing the battle to keep our conversations private.

A big part of the issue is that the nature of the conversations has changed. Mail and Telephones were never at any point perfectly private. The idea of having complete privacy in such conversations is actually rather new.

The difference is that those communication mediums now represent nearly all communication, rather than a small fraction of it, and that the effort to meaningfully break that privacy has dropped significantly over what it would have required to surveil millions of people in the 1950s. It doesn't require an East-German-esque security state anymore.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#492
post #11

> Apple previously withdrew plans for its own CSAM-scanning feature for iCloud Photos, following pushback from customers and human rights groups. Apple’s solution was more privacy-preserving than what is now proposed by the UK government. Preface: I don't have an opinion on one side or the other. Question: what were the arguments lobbied against apple that caused them to withdraw? Also, is CSAM the motivating factor…

Apple's solution was to run every photo through a perceptual hash algorithm with a neural network inside of it and then compare that against a list of known hashes. This is actually not materially different from the system that every image host has used for a while now. The main difference was that they were going to use a bunch of cryptography to ensure that... - Images could be scanned only after a threshold number…

Most don't use the naive way to scan for images, NCMEC distributes hashes as PhotoDNA which is a perceptual, not a cryptographic, hash, which is tolerant to some level of changes.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#493
post #207

The same Apple that lets the CCP operate its entire App Store in China? It's easy to criticize a government when you know there will be no retaliation. To judge a company's true stance on such issues see how they behave when there's a prospect of real financial loss.

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Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#494
post #419

I feel we've been collectively losing the battle to keep our conversations private. The anti-encryption laws are likely vocally opposed only by a minority, while the majority believes they had no privacy to begin with and governments can read your messages at a whim. And perhaps that's true to some extent. But since most people believe the battle is lost, moreso that this has always been the status quo, then any batt…

> I feel we've been collectively losing the battle to keep our conversations private.

The USA is still doing pretty good but the UK and the EU are staunchly anti privacy. They're pretty good on consumer privacy but don't believe that privacy from the government should exist.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#495
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is mass-sharing their safe of child-porn worldwide with thousands of other child-porn voyeurs. I wouldn't call 1 on 1 chats mass sharing

You can have multiple 1-on-1 chats, and CP collectors are pretty good at finding each other online. While I'm very much against this UK legislation, people in the tech sector do themselves no favors b¥ minimizing/handwaving the CP problem.

[deleted]

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#496

I wonder why the UK legislators not preparing a new regulation mandating every keys to every door and safe having a bypass mechanism for government officials. Behind every door and every locked place there could be child pornography and illicit materials hidden!! Every house, every hotel safe are suspects! Criminal oversight, criminal oversight! (and if they think their reasoning for backdoors into online chat and co…

Given the possibility of invisible and essentially free screening of private conversations, the analogy is probably more "install cameras in every home that only the government can access". But we promise, they'll be turned off most of the time.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#497

Hm, I wonder what they do in China. In China they are running their own infrastructure on servers owned by party-affiliated businesses. I wonder how strong their encryption is over there? China blocks many services with strong encryption but it doesn’t block iMessage.

Facetime is disabled in China, and on any phones purchased in China.

iMessage worked, last I went there.

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#498
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they would have compromised they wouldn't have been banned. So, yes?

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042915/why-f... China never asked them to compromise. They were banned in 2009.

And you know for a fact that they never communicated with Facebook and just banned them out of the blue?

Or is this just speculation (fitting considering the source)?

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#499
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll play Devil's Advocate (because I enjoy throwing myself into the fray — especially when arguing against a point I actually agree with). No one is mass-sharing their safe of child-porn worldwide with thousands of other child-porn voyeurs. The internet and its ubiquitous accessibility combined with digital image file formats has changed the landscape for those that would fight these heinous crimes. It is indeed a n…

> No one is mass-sharing their safe … They literally are though? Numerous cases of child abusers abusing their children and publishing the footage of it from their homes, not to mention the mass storage and hosting (hosting _may_ be less common now). People physically abuse their family and children at scale (domestic violence is not rare), a really good way to stop this would be to mandate cameras and microphones in…

I was going to say that I know someone who went to jail for sharing pictures of under-age porn. It happens.

(But Apple is in the right in this case.)

Re: Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption

#500
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042915/why-f... China never asked them to compromise. They were banned in 2009.

And you know for a fact that they never communicated with Facebook and just banned them out of the blue? Or is this just speculation (fitting considering the source)?

Seeing that every non Chinese social media company was banned and that Zuckerberg later tried to get back into China

> In 2018, Facebook attempted to set up a $30 million subsidiary in Hangzhou to incubate startups and give advice to local businesses. Permission to run the startup was quickly withdrawn

Do you really think that Facebook is out of China for any moral reason?

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