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Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

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Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Pushing Spyware Engine is literally abuse to all people including children and it's much worse then any problem they would claim to fight. Even if you believe them. >> It is an attempt to legalize such Spyware Engine installation. Nothing more. The story is just to sell this move using emotional response from naive people . >> Those people should be educated what the real abuse is and they should teach their child…

Yeah - fair point. I've over stated my position. I'll re-commit to "most" people criticizing. I will restate that regardless of the poor taste, it doesn't change the points validity. But you are correct. I did miss their minimization of the issue. Obviously due to my own bias.

> will restate that regardless of the poor taste, it doesn't change the points validity.

Just wanted to point out a oft overlooked tidbit for the non-philodophers in the room.

Validity only conveys that an argument has proper form. There are many valid arguments that are nevertheless bull, because while they have valid structure, they do not follow from true premises. You should not be pursuing mere validity, but soundness. The state of having valid structure, and following from true premises. I also try to go for complete as well, meaning one has admitted all relevant evidence to the topic at hand, but that tends to be more of a rhetorical drawing of the line.

No one questions there are awful people out there. God only knows, I've had my share of of awful things found on computers I've been the steward for. At the end of the day though, I have to weigh my utility as a means of control and oppression against my normative moral compass and axiomatic underpinnings of how the world works. Mine tell me that there will never be a shortage of people willing to keep those people in check without handing to governments the foundations of population scale control mechanisms. The difficulty of mitigating a government in the process of abusing one of those is way higher than merely being a proactive when the situation warrants.

Solve problems at the level they are best solved. Centralization is almost never the answer except in questions enforcement of control, or applying leverage against someone else's will.

It might make me odd, but I can still look at something vile like CSAM scanning, and recognize it for what it is: violent non-consensual violation of what is expected to be private for the furthering of a small groups political aspirations.

I condemn this no less than I would dragnetting abolitionists, whistleblowers, revolutionaries, or other agents of change.

I assure you, there has been much sleep lost in contemplating whether my moral compass has gotten screwed over time. I don't take these issues lightly. I care about it so much that any doubt on my part is grounds for immediate high intensity scrutiny. Yet I keep coming to the same outcome. This. Is. Wrong. On so many levels, and in so many ways.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#222
post #6

An Apple recruiter recently reached out to me. I am in a fortunate position to turn down opportunities, so I made sure to explain that I am not interested in working for a company that is at the forefront of enabling further infringement on people's privacy. If you are able to push back, do it in any small way that you can.

In many ways Apple is also the world leader on consumer privacy, pushing for changes when the rest of the industry is walking in the opposite direction. Paying with Apple Pay makes you safer because it gives out minimal payment information; the Target fiasco would've been avoided. Sign in with Apple allows users to provide minimal information in signing up for accounts; the idea that casual users should know how to s…

You get the feeling though that this held water, until recent news thought right?

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. Only photos you attempt to upload to Apple's iCloud are scanned. If you turn off iCloud photos, NOTHING is scanned. >Q: So if iCloud Photos is disabled, the system does not work, which is the public language in the FAQ. I just wanted to ask specifically, when you disable iCloud Photos, does this system continue to cre…

> Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. That isn't what I said. Also, that's not why most people are so upset. Most people are so upset mainly because Apple has now proven that the capability exists, so they can now be more easily compelled by governments to scan for "extra things". Prior to this, if a government asked Apple to scan someone's phone, Apple…

The notion that scanning cloud data on device is somehow worse than doing the same thing on server is deeply flawed.

If you have a false positive on device, nothing is sent to Apple's servers. It takes several (possibly false) positives at once to trigger a human review.

If you have a single false positive on server, that data is sitting there where it can be subpoenaed and abused.

Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#224
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very naive to assume those hashes won't be treated differently on the backend. The most logical thing would be to send those directly to the CPC/NSA, since Apple's human review is clearly a smokescreen at the point where non-CP hashes are added.

But someone has to write code to hold multiple sets of hashes. And someone has to write the code which treats reports differently. It all has to be written and maintained. Thus developers at Apple will still know that the system is being used for something other than CSAM.

Not to worry that is just the "terrorist" hashes

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bad move by Apple even if the point is to set up E2EE later. However, one thing that everyone seems to forget is that all these pictures were already being sent un-encrypted to iCloud. ALL of the same issues already completely exist today and were already being scanned and we have heard no outcry. ALL of the same loopholes and unreasonable warrants can be used against you today with all of the un-en…

Even if it is possible in other ways as well today, this is a black pattern of going down step-by-step. When it will be when people will say no? These are all small steps only.

> this is a black pattern of going down step-by-step.

This is very hard to argue. Functionality like spying all your files is trivial to add, and technically we haven't really moved anywhere. "Now technology is there", is not valid argument since it has always been there. Scanning your files and send some metadata is the feature which requires least effort to make from everything that Apple has released.

It might feel bad, when your device scans your to-be-uploaded-cloud images now, but iOS has never been yours. It is very closed system, a part of Apple-ecosystem. Only a guy who as has access for whole iOS source code knows what is actually happening in there. On Apple-ecosystem, only the final result matters in reality and what they say. Since your device is not really yours, you should think like that you are just using Apple-ecosystem, being part of it. If you don't want that, you should have switched into some Linux phone already.

You can speculate all-day what else it might do in hidden in the future. Speculation about hidden features is as valid now as it was yesterday or will be tomorrow.

In reality, we can only be really worried when they publicly say something, which finally makes the end results worse. This did not happen yet. Actually the opposite happened, but here we go.

We have been trusting Apple for quite some time, and they really haven't got caught on doing something else than they have said, so what has changed?

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, this scan takes place on _their_ servers on data that is stored on _their_ servers. It does not take place on the device itself, which is the case with this new Apple thing.

Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. Only photos you attempt to upload to Apple's iCloud are scanned. If you turn off iCloud photos, NOTHING is scanned. >Q: So if iCloud Photos is disabled, the system does not work, which is the public language in the FAQ. I just wanted to ask specifically, when you disable iCloud Photos, does this system continue to cre…

This fact is well known and changes nothing. The problem is that the system exists at all. The fine print WILL change - it always does, and that's also a well known fact.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#227
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this true, you can’t say that it is worse than current state. (Only server side encryption, plaintext in the eyes of Apple)

It is worse tho. The surveillance apparatus doesn't care much about your actual words and images, but your associations and relations. This makes finding needles much more efficient and pre-encryption exfiltration circumvents user added measures, like third party iCloud encryption. And I am pretty sure this will be baked into the OS deeper than your VPN/DNS's reach. Opening up this side channel isn't undone by trusti…

> Opening up this side channel isn't undone by trusting some "icloud deactivation".

If you can't trust that, then you can't trust the whole OS and all this speculation has been as valid as any given time.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. That isn't what I said. Also, that's not why most people are so upset. Most people are so upset mainly because Apple has now proven that the capability exists, so they can now be more easily compelled by governments to scan for "extra things". Prior to this, if a government asked Apple to scan someone's phone, Apple…

The notion that scanning cloud data on device is somehow worse than doing the same thing on server is deeply flawed. If you have a false positive on device, nothing is sent to Apple's servers. It takes several (possibly false) positives at once to trigger a human review. If you have a single false positive on server, that data is sitting there where it can be subpoenaed and abused. Also, recent history shows that App…

> Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court.

I can only think of one instance where they did that (the San Bernardino shooter case), and the request was hugely overreaching (the FBI wanted them to compromise their software update signing services), and also they actually DID comply with giving the FBI access to their iCloud data -- just not the software update service.

In fact this report suggests that Apple cooperating with the FBI when it comes to subpoenaing iCloud data is nothing new: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Gmail files that get scanned are contained on Google's property, in their cloud, on their machines. Entirely different context. It's the difference between the USPS coming into my home without permission and going through my documents, records, mail - versus if I send mail through their system and they track it,…

> Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. Nothing else is scanned. Scanning the files on server, the way Google and Microsoft do it, means that false positive data is lying around where it can be subpoenaed and used to incriminate innocent people. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizon…

>Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud.

And what if in the future they decide they need to scan more than images going to the cloud? What if there is some huge epidemic of child abuse or some other terrible thing and Apple decides they need to do more?

Once you open Pandora's Box you can't close it.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#230

My opinion about: 1. Every pedophile know about the existence of this system, so I don't think it will be useful to fight those monster, maybe only marginally; 2. Anyway, is that legal ? Even if some crazy store material on his Apple hardware isn't that illegal search non usable in law courts ? 3. Child abuse is often used as Trojan horse to introduce questionable practice. What if: - the system is used to looking fo…

Today they look for child porn, tomorrow it will be "Covid Misinformation" (which is today's terrorism). A blind man with a stick can see it coming.
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