Apple is already scanning photos for faces and other objects. Just search in the photos app for something like dog or baby and you’ll see (assuming you’ve taken a photo of a dog or baby before).
How is this much different?
Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
631–640 of 860 posts
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
>As currently implemented, iOS will only scan photos to be uploaded to iCloud Photos. If iCloud Photos is not enabled, then Apple isn't scanning the phone. Except for the "oops, due to an unexpected bug in our code, every image, document, and message on your device was being continuously scanned" mea culpa we will see a few months after this goes live.
Apple can’t even keep settings values correctly. After they introduced AirTags I went and disabled item detection on all my devices. Yesterday I went into settings and guess what, that feature is enabled again. On all my devices! I’m not sure when that happened, but my guess would be that latest iOS update caused that… My point is, you will only have things working to the extent you have testing for, and test coverag…
Well its an unauditable locked down proprietary black box.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
Authoritarian countries are the least of the worries. There's a large class of illegal imagery that is policed in democratic countries: copyrighted media. We are only two steps away from having your phone rat you to the MPAA because you downloaded a movie and stored it on your phone. I can guarantee that some industry bigwigs are salivating at the prospect of this tech. Imagine youtube copyright strikes but local to…
> Authoritarian countries are the least of the worries. That really depends. And is quite a strange, perhaps worrying, take. Because, for many people, copyright strikes are the least of their problems. Not that I disagree on it being an issue.
The only authoritarian country that holds any sway over Apple is China and China can easily just ban iPhones if they feel like it, especially with Xi Jinping in charge.
Democratic countries are much more of a danger because Apple has offices in them and cannot easily pull out of the market if they feel the laws are unconscionable.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#634I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. I’m not even talking about any “slippery slope” scenarios and I’ll never have any of the material they are looking for. And right or wrong, I don’t really fear a false identification, so this isn’t about a worry that they will actually turn me in. I just don’t want them scanning my phone for the purpose of tur…
Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police?
Or their TV scans every frame displayed and every word said if it sees anything the TV manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police?
Or their blender has an array of chemical sensors in it, and if it detects a substance the manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police?
How about smart floorboards that detect illegal dancing by women in Iran? Shall we do that too?
Apple where are you on that one? I can point you to a country filled with eager customers, seems right up your alley.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#635Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communication safety in Messages is a different feature than CSAM detection in iCloud Photos. The two features are not the same and do not use the same technology. In addition: Communication safety in Messages is only available for accounts set up as families in iCloud. Parent/guardian accounts must opt in to turn on the feature for their family group. Parental notifications can only be enabled by parents/guardians f…
Yeah, for now this is what is stated. It should be alarming how much they pivoted and changed with out any background statment. Something more is at play.
Thats the thing - with an unauditable black box like iOS you have to trust the vendor that it actually does what they say.
If they suddenly start to break you trust - who knows what they will push to that black box next time ? You have no way to tell or prevent that, other than leaving the whole platform altogether.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#636Good. I would be furious if I worked there. After the San Bernardino case, I viewed them as the paragon of privacy and security, to the extent I ignored most criticisms, including their lack of support for right-to-repair and concerns over App Store rejections. All of that is back on the table for me after this decision. It is out-of-step with everything they've been doing up to this point, and it makes me wonder who…
What's fishy to me is the fact that they are letting this be known. Like, if you're trying to capture people who share CSAM or have it on their phone, why would you go around saying that you can now scan for it? I think this announcement would have been well known to cause a major outrage so why say anything? I'm wondering if this is a cover up for something else. Get people talking about this in the news and getting…
> I'm wondering if this is a cover up for something else. Get people talking about this in the news and getting outraged about it while something else goes unnoticed.
that's my thought, too.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#637I happened to speak to an employee of the police here in Germany. He is in charge of backing up data from suspects. It is mostly drug related, but second most: Child Porn. It is really frightening about the amount of data he has worked on in the last week. And that is only for a county of approx. 200k inhabitants.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#638Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who frequently has to help older family members recover from lost passwords and broken phones, I sincerely hope they leave strong encryption of backups to be "opt out". It's fine if you know you want to be the sole person in the world who can get to your data and have the discipline to store master passwords, and you accept Apple support cannot help you even if you have a purchase receipt for the device. B…
> help older family members recover from lost passwords and broken phones, Apple just needs to design good UX to help these people. Perhaps a large cardboard 'key' comes with every phone. When first setting up the phone, you scan a QR code on it to encrypt your data with the key, and then you tell the owner that of they ever lose the key to their phone, they won't be able to get in again. People understand that - it'…
So you are suggesting making everyone life more cumbersome with the very likely potential of losing all the data on your phone because you lost a piece of cardboard or forgot a key for which benefit exactly? Being hypothetically safe for government scrutiny concerning information they could a dozen other way?
I really like E2E encryption of messages with proper backups on my end. It's good to know the carrier of my messages can't scan them for advertising purpose. But for my phone if I know there is no way to easily get the data back if I have an issue that seems like a major hassle with very little upsides.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#639Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, the reason Stalin and Hitler could enact repressive measures unprecedented in human history was precisely new technological developments like the telephone, the battle tank, and IBM cards. Bad people will never value human rights; getting privacy from bad people requires you to make it actually difficult to implement the spying, rather than just lie about it. That's why the slogan says, "cypherpunks…
No, they could enact repressive measures because they had almost absolute power. The form that oppression took would obviously rely on the then current technology, but the fundamental enabler of oppression was power, not technology.
> but the fundamental enabler of oppression was power, not technology.
But bad people will always have power.
Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources
#640Earlier 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."
If Apple must scan my photos, I'd rather they do it on their servers. Scanning on their servers is much less privacy preserving for users but don't fret, Dropbox, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. already scan stored photos.
Not necessarily. The scanning implementation can be similar to what they plan on doing on your device. I don't want them to do the scanning on my phone. If shit hits the fan and I become a dissident, I would prefer to have the option to stop using iCloud, Dropbox or any other service that might enable my government or the secret police to suppress me.