"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 Irre…
Let's look at the primary alternative, Android. It generally does not provide you this level of granular control on network access either without rooted hacks. Apps and the phone vendor can do whatever they want with far less user control unless you're a deep Android nerd and know how to install root-level restriction software.