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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

#221

Post by ok_dad »

naruhodo wrote: post #219
varenc wrote: post #130

This whole thing is reminding me of the outrage over Apple and Google's privacy preserving 'Exposure Notification System' system from the Covid years. It defies intuition that they can alert you to exposure without also tracking you, but indeed that's what the technology lets you do. Similarly here, it feels like the author is leaning into a knee jerk reaction about invasion of privacy without really trying to evalua…

I would love to evaluate the privacy of these technologies. Someone reply with a link to the source code so I can see exactly what it is doing, without having to take an internet rando's word for it. Better yet, let me compile it myself.

You had better build your own silicon chips and phone hardware as well in that case.

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

#222

Post by simondotau »

Koshkin wrote: post #177
simondotau wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want anything sent from MY device without my consent Then don’t run someone else’s software on your device. It’s not your software, you are merely a licensee. Don’t delude yourself that you are morally entitled to absolute control over it. The only way to have absolute control over software is with an RMS style obsession with Free software.

The “moral entitlement” has nothing to do with this. The software is legally required to abide by its license agreement (which, by the way, you are supposed to have read, understood, and accepted prior to using said software).

I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. A license grants the end user permission to use the software. It is not a series of obligations for how the software operates. This would be excruciatingly obvious if you read any software license.

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

#223

Post by thegrim33 »

brookst wrote: post #95
Gabriel54 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Notice is always good and Apple should implement notice. However, "my data is being sent off my device" is incorrect, as GP explained. Metadata, derived from your data, with noise added to make it irreversible, is being sent off your device. It's the equivalent of sending an MD5 of your password somewhere; you may still object, but it is not factually correct to say your password was transmitted.

Well that's what you're told is happening. As it's all proprietary closed source software that you can't inspect or look at or verify in any manner, you have absolutely zero evidence whether that's what's actually happening or not.

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

#224

Post by AJRF »

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…

> This is what a good privacy story looks like.

Not at all. A good privacy story is not sending this data anywhere.

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

#225

Post by thousand_nights »

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…

this is what gaslighting looks like

how about they don't send anything about my photos to their servers and i get to keep my shit on my own device

i suppose we're past that to the point where techbros like you will defend personal data exfiltration because.. uhh idk? trillion dollar corporation knows best?

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

#226

Post by gigel82 »

latexr wrote: post #208
gigel82 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Got it, so if Windows Defender (that is enabled by default on all Windows PCs) pushes an update that scans all your files on all connected drives and uploads hashes to the mothership, enables this by default and proceeds to execute the scan and upload immediately after update, but also includes a setting that lets you turn it off when you find out about its existence from some 3rd party article, that is all perfectly fine? (since there is no subterfuge)

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

#227

Post by matheusmoreira »

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'm not sure what the right call is here.

I am sure.

The right call is to never send any data from the device to anyone unless the user explicitly tells the device to do it.

The only thing the device should do is whatever its user tells it to do.

The user didn't tell it to do this. Apple did.

> But the conclusion "Thus, the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send data off the device." isn't true

Irrelevant. It was never about privacy to begin with. It was always about power, who owns the keys to the machine, who commands it.

Vectorization, differential privacy, relays, homomorphic encryption, none of it matters. What matters is the device is going behind the user's back, doing somebody else's bidding, protecting somebody else's interests. That they were careful about it offers little comfort to users who are now aware of the fact "their" devices are doing things they weren't supposed to be doing.

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

#228

Post by thousand_nights »

Drew_ wrote: post #199
brookst wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice is always good and Apple should implement notice. However, "my data is being sent off my device" is incorrect, as GP explained. Metadata, derived from your data, with noise added to make it irreversible, is being sent off your device. It's the equivalent of sending an MD5 of your password somewhere; you may still object, but it is not factually correct to say your password was transmitted.

> However, "my data is being sent off my device" is incorrect, as GP explained. Metadata, derived from your data, with noise added to make it irreversible, is being sent off your device. Sounds like my data is being sent off my device. > It's the equivalent of sending an MD5 of your password somewhere Sounds even worse lol

[flagged]

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

#229

Post by nixpulvis »

I'm disappointed in the discourse around Homomorphic Encryption and Differential Privacy here. As someone who briefly studied adjacent subjects these tools excite me more than they scare me.

We trust TLS with our SSNs and CC numbers, hopefully one day we can trust secure multiparty computation too.

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

#230

Post by user3939382 »

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…

> This is what a good privacy story looks like.

What a good privacy story looks like is that my photos aren’t sent anywhere in any way shape or form without explicit opt in permission.

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