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Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

lapcatsoftware.com

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Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#201

Post by threeseed »

nimih wrote: post #181
bobsomers wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if we follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, we must move to a cabin in the woods, 100 miles from the nearest civilization, growing our own food and never connecting our computing devices to anything resembling a network.

I've read the post you're responding to like 3 times, and after pondering it deeply, I'm pretty sure the conclusion of their line of thinking pretty definitively stops at "Apple should not be sending data off the device without the user requesting it." If you think otherwise, you should maybe provide more of an argument.

Because the conclusion is not workable.

Almost every single app today interacts with the network in some way.

You would be constantly annoying the user with prompt after prompt if you wanted to get consent for sending any relatively harmless data off the device.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#203

Post by nicce »

nimih wrote: post #181
bobsomers wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if we follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, we must move to a cabin in the woods, 100 miles from the nearest civilization, growing our own food and never connecting our computing devices to anything resembling a network.

I've read the post you're responding to like 3 times, and after pondering it deeply, I'm pretty sure the conclusion of their line of thinking pretty definitively stops at "Apple should not be sending data off the device without the user requesting it." If you think otherwise, you should maybe provide more of an argument.

It is probably reasonable for average end-user to expect that landmark based search works without enabling the extra setting.

They have option to disble if they care.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#204

Post by uoaei »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #13
scosman wrote: post #11

"I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post" I do: - Client side vectorization: the photo is processed locally, preparing a non-reversible vector representation before sending (think semantic hash). - Differential privacy: a decent amount of noise is added the the vector before sending it. Enough to make it impossible to reverse lookup the vector. The noise level here is ε = 0.8, which is q…

I appreciate the explanation. However, I think you do not address the main problem, which is that my data is being sent off my device by default and without any (reasonable) notice. Many users may agree to such a feature (as you say, it may be very secure), but to assume that everyone ought to be opted in by default is the issue.

I guess it depends on what you're calling "your data" -- without being able to reconstruct an image from a noised vector, can we say that that vector in any way represents "your data"? The way the process works, Apple makes their own data that leaves your device, but the photo never does.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#205

Post by latexr »

threeseed wrote: post #113
talldayo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a coverup. Apple is overtly and completely aware of the optics surrounding photo scanning - they know that an opt-in scheme cannot work as they found out previously. Since they cannot convince users to enable this feature in good-faith, they are resorting to subterfuge. We know that Apple is vehement about pushing client-side scanning on users that do not want it, I do not believe for a second that this was a m…

> they are resorting to subterfuge This is illogical. If Apple wanted to engage in subterfuge they would simply compromise the OS. When a company controls the entire stack either you trust everything they do. Or nothing.

Exactly. It is absolutely bonkers that people are claiming that Apple is trying to cover up something for which they have a settings toggle and public documentation.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#206

Post by brians »

ryandrake wrote: post #119
Gabriel54 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In response your second question, opt in would look exactly like this: don't have the box checked by default, with an option to enable it: "use this to improve local search, we will create an encrypted index of your data to send securely to our servers, etc..." A PhD is not necessary to understand the distinction between storing data locally on a machine vs. on the internet.

Exactly. It's the height of arrogance to insist that normal users just can't understand such complex words and math, and therefore the company should not have to obtain consent from the user. As a normal lay user, I don't want anything to leave my device or computer without my consent. Period. That includes personal information, user data, metadata, private vectors, homomorphic this or locally differential that. I do…

Every TCP session leaks some PRNG state for the ISN. That might leak information about key material.

Every NTP session leaks time desync information, which reveals—on modern hardware—relativistic travel, including long airplane trips.

Every software update leaks a fortune about what you run and when you connect.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask that people consent to these; I don’t think they can. I absolutely agree that photo metadata is different and at a way higher level of the stack.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#207

Post by saurik »

emchammer wrote: post #153
Msurrow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does address the main problem. What he is saying is that multiple layers of security is used to ensure (mathematically and theoretically proved) that there is no risk in sending the data, because it is encrypted and sent is such a way that apple or any third party will never be able to read/access it (again, based on theoretically provable math) . If there is no risk there is no harm, and then there is a d…

Hypothetical scenario: Theo de Raadt and Bruce Schneier are hired to bring Apple products up to their security standards. They are given a public blog, and they are not required to sign an NDA. They fix every last vulnerability in the architecture. Vladimir Putin can buy MacBooks for himself and his generals in Moscow, enable Advanced Data Protection, and collaborate on war plans in total confidence. Where are the bo…

I am pretty sure that if we had those people in charge of stuff like this there would be no bar above which "opt in by default" would happen, so I am unsure of your point?

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#208

Post by latexr »

gigel82 wrote: post #117
latexr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what a coverup looks like. That’s starting to veer into unreasonable levels of conspiracy theory. There’s nothing to “cover up”, the feature has an off switch right in the Settings and a public document explaining how it works. It should not be on by default but that’s not a reason to immediately assume bad faith. Even the author of the article is concerned more about bugs than intentions.

Would you feel the same if Microsoft turned on Recall on all Windows PCs everywhere with an update? They worked very hard on security these past few months, so it should be all good, right?

That is not the point at all and you either didn’t try to understand one iota of it or are outright arguing in bad faith.

I am not claiming for one moment that enabling this by default is OK. In fact, I have explicitly said it is not.

What I am saying is that it is ignorant to call this a cover up, because a cover up requires subterfuge. This feature has a freaking settings toggle and public documentation. Calling it a cover up is the type of uneducated rhetoric that makes these issues being brushed off by those in power as “it’s just a bunch of loonies conspiracy theorists complaining”.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#209

Post by bolognafairy »

fijiaarone wrote: post #167
threeseed wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also no guarantee that Apple isn't lying about everything. They could just have the OS batch uploads until a later point e.g. when the phone checks for updates. The point is that this is all about risk mitigation not elimination.

I’m stealing your information. Hey! That’s wrong. But I promise I won’t do anything wrong with it. Well ok then.

This is still a very dishonest representation of what’s actually happening.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#210

Post by fragmede »

scosman wrote: post #122
Gabriel54 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In response your second question, opt in would look exactly like this: don't have the box checked by default, with an option to enable it: "use this to improve local search, we will create an encrypted index of your data to send securely to our servers, etc..." A PhD is not necessary to understand the distinction between storing data locally on a machine vs. on the internet.

Even here with HN crowd: it's not an index, it's not stored on a server, and it's not typical send-securely encryption (not PK or symmetric "encrypted in transit", but homomorphic "encrypted processing"). Users will think that's all gibberish (ask a user if they want to send an index or vector representation? no clue). Sure, you can ask users "do you want to use this". But why do we ask that? Historically it's user c…

The third choice, after opt-in and opt-out is to force the user to choose on upgrade before they can use their device again. "Can we use an encrypted, low-resolution copy of your photos that even we ourselves can't see?"
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