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WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

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Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#81

Post by mikro2nd »

kfprt wrote: post #10

'Child Safety' is extremely disingenuous. Their 'plan' provides no benefit to the safety of children and only strips users of their remaining shred of privacy. Authorities care more about stopping images than actual children currently being abused (lack of investigation into Sophie Long allegations). Of course this is because 'child safety' is merely a smokescreen for authoritarianism and tyranny. Just like China.

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." —Adolf Hitler

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#82

Post by [deleted] »

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#84

Post by ndr »

traceroute66 wrote: post #80

I'm in two minds about this Apple news. In one part, the pro-privacy part of me is of course aghast at the whole idea. However... If you "read the room", there have been increasing noises from the global political world in recent years, and perhaps especially in the US. So if you think about it that way, it might be a case of Apple jumping before they were pushed. I mean, let's face it, if you wait for the politicos…

> There's always GPG and a whole litany of other tools and apps for those who know what they are doing in terms of privacy.

And it's always there also for whoever they claim to want to catch, so this measure is useless.

This is not protecting anyone, Apple might very well be anticipating the regulation, but that does not automatically deserve our praise. We should fight against this implementation and any regulation requiring similar measures.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#86

Post by studentrob »

traceroute66 wrote: post #80

I'm in two minds about this Apple news. In one part, the pro-privacy part of me is of course aghast at the whole idea. However... If you "read the room", there have been increasing noises from the global political world in recent years, and perhaps especially in the US. So if you think about it that way, it might be a case of Apple jumping before they were pushed. I mean, let's face it, if you wait for the politicos…

> let's face it, if you wait for the politicos to come up with a solution and force it through with legislation, they really would put in actual backdoors and encryption bans given half the chance.

They've tried to do this for decades and have failed. If they're going to do it then let it be on record. Let's see how voters like it.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#87

Post by bitcurious »

elzbardico wrote: post #57

This applies only to photos that are uploaded to iCloud. Apple is doing to do the processing on the device though, but only for the photos that are going to be uploaded to iCloud. Like other services do. WhatsApp is a Facebook property and decided to use this confusion to hit Apple politically with a low punch. People that should know better prove once again that most people read no much than the headlines and base t…

That’s like building a tank and saying it’ll only be used for deliveries. Once the infrastructure is in place on every device to detect arbitrary images/messages on the device the switch will be flipped.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#88

Post by nyuszika7h »

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

I find it laughable whenever someone says "this is the last straw" because it just shows how incredibly misinformed they are.

Yes, backdooring E2E encryption in general is a bad idea. However, consider two things:

* iCloud Photos was never E2E encrypted in the first place. They already can scan your photos all they want server-side, and they have been scanning for CSAM since 2019, while Google has been scanning for it since 2009. Yes, if iCloud Photos were to become E2E encrypted leaving in a backdoor like this could be bad, but it's still the lesser of two evils. Would you rather they keep photos non-E2E forever and have even more unfettered access to them than a "backdoor" allows? It does NOT scan photos that are not uploaded to the cloud, despite being on-device. And it's important to note the threshold and manual human review system put in place before the authorities receive any notification at all.

* For iMessage, all this entails is warning children under 18 about explicit content, and optionally notifying parents if the child is under 13 and the parent opted in. (I don't think it even sends the photo itself to the parents, but that's not explicitly clarified anywhere.) At no point do Apple or the authorities learn the contents of E2E encrypted iMessages. (Also worth noting: if you use iCloud Backup, your messages are no longer E2E encrypted in the backup, as Apple holds the keys to that. This was true even before the new system was introduced.)

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#89

Post by dahfizz »

hutzlibu wrote: post #72
Fnoord wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's like three major options if you want to run a FOSS smartphone, and I'll sum them up. Pinephone: Cheap. The device isn't very powerful. With people coming from an Apple device, that's a problem. Fairphone 3: Fair. The hardware isn't very powerful either, and the device is more expensive, but the product is better for the people who assembled it and the environment. Librem 5: Open. Even more expensive than Fair…

"Fairphone" It is nice the the fairphone trys to be nice and fair, but I would rather have a focus of a actual open phone under my control and they do not deliver this (not to blame them, the issue is hard). Fixing the global exploitive economy is a different issue and trying to solve everything at once is not working usually. "Librem 5" How useful is a microphone killswitch, if there is no killswitch for the speaker…

> if there is no killswitch for the speakers, that can be used as a microphone, too?

I know that physically / electronically, a speaker is a microphone, but is there any way for someone to actually record sound through the speakers on the librem? There is a lot more to a microphone than just the diaphragm...

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#90

Post by cascom »

a254613e wrote: post #79
holstvoogd wrote: post #65

I'm so fucking tired of these asswipes from companies are a thousand times worse pretending they are better. They literally sell all your data to anyone who wants is, but noooo, apple bad! I'm not saying apple is some kind of bastion of privacy or whatever, but at least they are not selling my data to pay for their spyware vessels. To those 'experts': Get off you high horse and do better. Prove me wrong, go build a w…

> They literally sell all your data to anyone who wants is Where/how can I buy all data for, let's say a dozen users, that facebook collects? No wonder public is completely misinformed about how ad revenue based companies operate when even on HN blatant lies are highly upvoted.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/catholic-priest-...
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