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Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

reuters.com

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Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#401

Post by simondotau »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
himaraya wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the Fourth Amendment applies to private actors acting on behalf of the government.

> No, the Fourth Amendment applies to private actors acting on behalf of the government. It applies to private actors acting as agents of the government , it doesn't apply to private actors who for private reasons not directed by the government conduct searches and report suspicious results to the government (other property and privacy laws might, though.)

So the 4th Amendment doesn't cover Apple voluntarily inducing their devices to check for CSAM prior to cloud upload.

But the 4th Amendment would cover Apple being forced to modify their system to scan for anything else the Government has told them to.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#402

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #397
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think something else happened, and to be honest I think many at Apple behind this decision are likely pretty surprised by the blowback. That is, it seems like Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption, but they needed to do something to address the CSAM issue lest governments come down on them hard. Thus, my guess is, at least at the beginning, they saw this as a strong win for privacy. As th…

> That is, it seems like Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption, but they needed to do something to address the CSAM issue lest governments come down on them hard. This seems like an incredible reach to me.

Why? It's already been well-reported that Apple makes a teeny fraction of the NCMEC reports that other large cloud providers make, and that the reason they hold the keys to iCloud backups was from some requests/pressure from the FBI.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#403

Post by jack_pp »

CSAM is such a blatant excuse to me it blows my mind how such a huge mindshare on here believes this is actually about child protection or is a valid argument. Since this is public information do you think pedophiles will just get caught by this? Will this curb their appetite?

If somehow I found myself in an authoritarian state where porn was illegal just on apple devices do you think I wouldn't just switch to a different OS?

This is a bullshit excuse and we've seen it countless times. It is manipulation 101, get the victim to agree to a small request first then ask more and more.

I'm glad I never used apple devices and I'm not caught in their ecosystem.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#404

Post by righttoolforjob »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #265
righttoolforjob wrote: post #31

This is the ultimate lock-in strategy. If you switch from iPhone now, everyone will suspect you of being a pedo and you'll have to endure the social consequences.

People switch back and forth between iphone and android all the time.

Apologies for my joke.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#405

Post by int_19h »

shuckles wrote: post #399
int_19h wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the legal risk that is the biggest problem here. Now that every politician out there knows that this can be done for child porn, there'll be plenty demanding the same for other stuff. And this puts Apple in a rather difficult position, since, with every such demand, they have to either accede, or explain why it's not "important enough" - which then is easily weaponized to bash them. And not just Apple. Once tech…

This hypothetical lacks an explanation for why every politician has not demanded Apple (or say Google) do this scope creep already for photos stored in the cloud where the technical feasibility and legal precedent has already been established by existing CSAM scanning solutions deployed at scale.

I have to note that one of those solutions deployed at scale is Google's. But the big difference is that when those were originally rolled out, they didn't make quite that big of a splash, especially outside of tech circles.

I will also note that, while it may be a hypothetical in this particular instance as yet, EU already went from passing a law that allows companies to do something similar voluntarily (previously, they'd be running afoul of privacy regulations), to a proposed bill making it mandatory - in less than a year's time. I don't see why US would be any different in that regard.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#406

Post by alfiedotwtf »

travoc wrote: post #7

Can someone explain how Apple being coaxed or coerced into searching all of our personal devices for illegal files by federal law enforcement is not an unconstitutional warrantless search?

"The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy.""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#407

Post by emodendroket »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223
whoisjuan wrote: post #132

This CSAM Prevention initiative by Apple is a 180 degress change of their general message around privacy. Imagine investing hundreds of millions of dollars in pro-privacy programs, privacy features, privacy marketing, etc... just to pull this reverse card. Of course this is going to spark concern within their own ranks. It's like working for a food company that claims to use organic, non-processed, fair-trade ingredi…

I actually think something else happened, and to be honest I think many at Apple behind this decision are likely pretty surprised by the blowback. That is, it seems like Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption, but they needed to do something to address the CSAM issue lest governments come down on them hard. Thus, my guess is, at least at the beginning, they saw this as a strong win for privacy. As th…

I agree with your analysis -- I also think it was probably meant to mollify law enforcement without sacrificing encryption. The same thought occured to me independently right when it was announced.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#408

Post by emodendroket »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #381
js2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course that is true. I use iCloud Photos and find this terribly creepy. If Apple must scan my photos, I'd rather they do it on their servers. I could maybe understand the new implementation if Apple had announced they'd also be enabling E2E encryption of everything in iCloud, and explained it as "this is the only way we can prevent CSAM from being stored on our servers."

> "this is the only way we can prevent CSAM from being stored on our servers." Why is that supposed to be their responsibility? Given the scale of their business, there is effectively a certainty that people are transmitting CSAM via Comcast's network. That's no excuse for them to ban end to end encryption or start pushing out code to scan client devices. When you hail a taxi, they don't search you for drugs before l…

If you become known as a hub for this stuff Congress probably won't see it that way.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#409

Post by foobiekr »

whoisjuan wrote: post #132

This CSAM Prevention initiative by Apple is a 180 degress change of their general message around privacy. Imagine investing hundreds of millions of dollars in pro-privacy programs, privacy features, privacy marketing, etc... just to pull this reverse card. Of course this is going to spark concern within their own ranks. It's like working for a food company that claims to use organic, non-processed, fair-trade ingredi…

To me the issue is that it makes no sense: if it's just scanning iCloud photos, ___why does this feature need to exist at all__?

Apple is saying this: "we need to scan your phone because we need to look for this material, and by the way, we're only scanning things _we've been scanning for years already_"

Basiclaly, everything else aside, in the current state of things, this feature makes no sense. They are not scanning anything they weren't scanning already (literally, everything on iCloud) so why did they bother?

A bunch of people are making speculative claims that Apple is doing this to enable encryption of data in iCloud, but there's no reason to believe that's true. Apple certainly hasn't mentioned it.

So .. why?

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#410

Post by srswtf123 »

nicce wrote: post #350
cletus wrote: post #292

Apple's track record on user protection compared to Google or Samsung has been very good. For example, resisting wide net Federal "because terrorism" warrants as much as they legally can. There's a reason why Apple 0 day exploits sell for way more on the black market than Android exploits. Trust is hard to earn, easy to lose and even harder to regain. User trust is such a huge part of Apple's business and success, it…

I believe, that this chaos is mostly caused by the leaked information, which was presented in a bit missleading way. The fire was spreading, and Apple went along to announce it publicly. It was too late to argue for reading their materials properly. In-device scanning was on everyone’s head. Some have argued, that leak was even intentional to lower pressures on new regulations. Or it was just whistleblowing. But ther…

Where can I find some of this evidence? I haven't been following this closely
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