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Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

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Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#111

Post by techdragon »

simondotau wrote: post #102
jjcon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP and not speaking with any authority on this more just curious: If alongside this Apple rolled out the ability for them to initiate a scan on any phone for any thing (not a tool for mass surveillance but targeted surveillance) how would we know given Apples closed ecosystem? This doesn't necessarily speak to the issue here but more to the Apple ethos in general, but I am curious.

This twitter thread is a useful read: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/14248736290037022...

Very good breakdown of the situation. But cold comfort for anyone not in the USA. Because we know once Apple ships this it will be expanded to other countries with similar CSAM laws … many of which do not have robust Fourth Amendment type rights enshrined in their legal systems.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#112

Post by techdragon »

542458 wrote: post #46
BTCOG wrote: post #43

Fuck the cloud. Offer 256 and 512GB iPhones and up and give a feature set to entirely and permanently disable cloud function. Save that, and I'll throw my iPhone in the God damn trash. I'll use a raspberry Pi or flip phone if I have to do so.

Real talk, a Raspberry Pi phone could be amazing. A $150 (or similarly low cost) hackable phone with a near-guaranteed solid community around it - I’d buy that. One of my big disappointments is that canonical decided to go super-premium with their attempt at phones. I wish Firefox OS had done better (the f0x phone in particular was incredibly cool) but they never managed to get the sort of community traction they nee…

Check out the PinePhone. While not exactly a “Raspberry Pi Phone” it’s pretty close to that in its basic concept.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#113

Post by puddingforears »

simondotau wrote: post #102
jjcon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP and not speaking with any authority on this more just curious: If alongside this Apple rolled out the ability for them to initiate a scan on any phone for any thing (not a tool for mass surveillance but targeted surveillance) how would we know given Apples closed ecosystem? This doesn't necessarily speak to the issue here but more to the Apple ethos in general, but I am curious.

This twitter thread is a useful read: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/14248736290037022...

That’s a lot of assumptions of good faith within publicly known constraints

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#114

Post by hda2 »

carom wrote: post #85
joe_the_user wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So either we take this approach, or end up with a worse one, like pure on-cloud scanning with no transparency whatsoever. With cloud computing, I can choose my cloud provider and I can upload encrypted files. On device scanning is evil because it's move to create a computing architecture entirely outside the user's control.

This is disabled if you choose to not use iCloud.

For now.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#115

Post by hda2 »

simondotau wrote: post #101
fmajid wrote: post #4

Of course. Politicians and officials hate whistleblowers far more than pedophiles, and it's obvious this mechanism will be used to find future Chelsea Mannings and Reality Winners with better opsec to make examples out of them.

Any such searches, because they are compelled by the Government and occur on private property, would be an unequivocal violation of the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

What if those searches were conducted by another country? Say another five-eye nation?

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#116

Post by simondotau »

hda2 wrote: post #115
simondotau wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any such searches, because they are compelled by the Government and occur on private property, would be an unequivocal violation of the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

What if those searches were conducted by another country? Say another five-eye nation?

By raising five-eyes, you are suggesting that another country could launder the request on behalf of the USA in order to circumvent the 4th Amendment. Okay then, let's play that out.

Australia demands that Apple augment CSAM detection so that every iPhone in the USA starts scanning for (and reporting back to Australia about) some other set of images. There's absolutely no scenario where Apple wouldn't walk out of the room laughing.

End of hypothetical.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#117

Post by simondotau »

techdragon wrote: post #111
simondotau wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This twitter thread is a useful read: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/14248736290037022...

Very good breakdown of the situation. But cold comfort for anyone not in the USA. Because we know once Apple ships this it will be expanded to other countries with similar CSAM laws … many of which do not have robust Fourth Amendment type rights enshrined in their legal systems.

This is true, but there aren't many countries which Apple would even consider risking its global reputation in order to retain that market. US, China, Europe, maybe a couple of others.

To begin with, there's no prospect of this being done in secret. So we're talking about Apple complying to demands being made in public.

In the case of the EU, it would have to be passed into law in a way that makes equal demands upon all of Apple's competitors. And in that case, everyone must comply with the law irrespective of whether any existing CSAM detection apparatus was in place. (Thus it's a sheer cliff, not a slippery slope.)

If Saudi Arabia or Sudan tried to turn the screws, the business case for Apple is absolutely clear-cut: they would leave. It wouldn't even be up for debate. There would be far too much at risk globally than they'd ever hope to gain/retain in that domestic market from compliance. Not only would they never risk serious damage to their global reputation (something they'll be extremely sensitive to, as the last two weeks have taught them) it would represent a massive opportunity for Apple to earn weeks of free media coverage that aligns with their security narrative.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#118

Post by hypothesis »

greyface- wrote: post #98
hypothesis wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they could probably push it through into any iOS, but all currently available documents claim it’s a iOS 15 feature and presumably there will be lot’s of new legalese like specifically for those new features.

You're not wrong about Apple's messaging around this. I was specifically responding to your claim that pushing it to iOS 14 would require modifications to the EULA. It would not.

Fair enough.

There are a couple things that are nagging me though: 1) Apple has loads of legalese for each and every feature and 2) it sounds like they could just cut all that down to two points that you cited and be golden.

I definitely see your point and I guess we can leave it at that until a lawyer can explain this...

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#119

Post by gerash »

If someone is ok with Apple handing over iCloud keys to the Chinese government to comply with local laws then scanning for CSAM is no different.

Basically, if you have issue with this go change the law rather than ask large corporations to act illegally for some greater good.

Re: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

#120

Post by gambiting »

tzs wrote: post #83
gambiting wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's even worse - so now apple is deciding whether to report something even if it matches the data provided by the government. It's not their role to judge the contents, only whether the match is correct or not, otherwise even with actual CSAM content, are they going to be making judgement calls? What if the system matches loli content which I imagine is in that database but legal in places? Are they going to then…

> It's not their role to judge the contents, only whether the match is correct or not. Which is what they would be doing. Some government gives Apple a purported CSAM hash database, which Apple only accepts because it is a CSAM database. An image gets a match. Apple looks at it and it is not CSAM. Therefore, unless the government lied to them about the database, it must be a false positive and gets rejected as an inc…

My point was, what if you have content in there that is CSAM in some places but isn't in others(for instance - drawings). If apple employees report it to authorities in a state where it isn't illegal, they just suspended your account and reported you to authorities without any reason. So like I said, then you get into this trap of - do apple employees start judging whether the match "should" count? What if a picture isn't actually pornographic but made it into the database(say a child in underwear, maybe it's there because of a connection to an abuse case, but it isn't a picture of abuse per se). Again, is this random person at apple going to be making judgement calls about validity of matches against a government provided database? Because again, I don't believe this can ever work. Maybe those are edge cases, sure, but my point is that as soon as you allow some apple employee to make a judgement, you are introducing new risks.
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