Yes, that is one option.
Unfortunately there is no competitor matching the iPad. And synching across devices. Its a convenient ecosystem without a true competitor.
Difficult decision for me
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Apple's iPhone scanning scandal and the Mac
- Thread starter Blue Quark
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Unfortunately there is no competitor matching the iPad. And synching across devices. Its a convenient ecosystem without a true competitor.
Difficult decision for me
I'm laughing at you for wanting me to list them, like they don't exist. MacRumors reports on Apple being sued all the time for IP and patent usage.
The very idea that somehow this is Apple invading your privacy is a misrepresentation. Some things to keep in mind -
1) if you don’t have iCloud photo synch turned on, none of this happens. If you *do* have iCloud photo synch turned on, you are already sending your photos to Apple. These are encrypted, but Apple has the keys - these are not currently “end-to-end encrypted.”
So, to be absolutely clear, if you are affected by these new changes that means you were already sending your photos to Apple and Apple already had the capability to see them.
And, no doubt, when required to by governments, court orders, etc., Apple was already doing so.
2) If Apple allows child porn to reside on its system, it faces legal liability. Apple also uses third parties (like AWS) to store some of the iCloud data, and you can bet they don’t want Apple putting its‘ customers child porn on their servers.
3) In the new system, if you have less than N (some unknown number that is greater than 1, and probably less than 10) known child porn photos - that is, photos which have already been determined by authorities to be actual child porn - on your device, you have less than a one in a trillion chance of Apple seeing *any* new information. Remember, you have to (a) have turned on iCloud photo synch, so that you are already sending your photos to Apple and (b) have to have more than N photos which are either actual child porn or which the algorithm has confused for child porn. Again, the chances that the system is triggered accidentally are one in a trillion.
4) In the 1 in a trillion case where you have been mistakenly accused of having more than N child porn photos, Apple then will look at very low resolution versions of these photos to confirm whether they are child porn. Now, if that offends you, keep in mind that you have already voluntarily given Apple the full-resolution versions of these photos via iCloud photo sync - otherwise none of this would ever happen.
I have to think that people who object to all this are objecting because they have guilty consciences.
Keep in mind, that what this system finally allows is for Apple to turn on full end-to-end encryption for iCloud photo sync. Before, if they did that, they wouldn’t be able to assure the government that they were not hosting child porn. Now they can fully encrypt photos in a manner where they don’t have the keys, and still be able to ensure that no child porn is on their servers.
I have nothing to hide, but I am so hoping they flag something by accident so I can get a huge chunk of that 2 trillion. 😄
You wouldn't even post one of them. That totally invalidates your post. Remember YOU asked ME the question and I answered requesting you to clarify. You didn't because you couldn't. ?
I haven't heard this before. This makes sense as a reason why the photo must be scanned before upload to iCloud. Once in iCloud, it will be encrypted and inaccessible to Apple.
You wouldn't get one red cent. If Apple flags one of your pics the most that will happen is they will email you stating "One or several of your pictures were flagged as inappropriate and did not get uploaded." That's not grounds for a lawsuit. Good Lord.
As Cmaier says, this move by Apple allows them to increase our privacy with end to end encryption. This means not having to face the opponents of privacy who would use potential CSAM as an excuse to prevent enhanced privacy of legal material. It also accomplishes it without Apple bearing the costs and downsides of cloud scanning everything.
I very much doubt this will stop a single individual who behaves illegally, but it does allow Apple to draw a line in the sand publically in a stance against CSAM. I’m sure some customers will leave, but also am sure it will also do Apple good in the public eye generally and possibly result in more new customers - as it paints the other (non-Apple) options a darker shade of nefarious.
I very much doubt this will stop a single individual who behaves illegally, but it does allow Apple to draw a line in the sand publically in a stance against CSAM. I’m sure some customers will leave, but also am sure it will also do Apple good in the public eye generally and possibly result in more new customers - as it paints the other (non-Apple) options a darker shade of nefarious.
I may be missing something, but what is the point of on-device search when the photos are in the cloud? I thought the on-device search is scanning the photos *on the device*.
"If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear…" …especially if you live in China, Russia, etc. – I am sure this will never be abused in any way, right?
It only scans photos that are on your phone. But it only does the scanning if you have iCloud photo sync enabled. That’s just the way it works, to preserve your privacy. If you have already given away your privacy in a much more severe way (by enabling Apple to have access to all your photos), then Apple figures you have nothing to complain about. Even if you have iCloud photo sync enabled, after all, there are copies of photos (at least some of them) on your devices, and these are scanned. At the end of the scanning, a “voucher” is sent to Apple for each photo indicating whether it is likely child porn. Only if it receives more than a certain number of positive vouchers can Apple decode the information associated with those vouchers (the identity of the photos and the low-res versions).
As for “China, Russia, etc.” this system only works in the United States.
And, yes, if you’ve done nothing wrong, then mathematically you have less than a one in a trillion chance of even having APPLE look at your photos. And if they look at your photos, what happens then? Straight to the gulag? Nope. In that incredibly unlikely event, the worst that happens is an Apple employee has looked at low-res representations of the photos that have been incorrectly flagged. Is that something you really fear? Really? Then I assume you don’t use iCloud Photo Sync, because using iCloud Photo Sync allows apple to look at ALL your photos in full detail. Sure, they say they don’t, right? But you believe them when they say that, but not when they say there is a 1 in a trillion chance of them even ever looking at low res versions of a few of your photos?
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Except that they haven’t announced that this is coming in tandem with this change or ever. Sure, in theory this would allow for end-to-end encryption for iCloud Photos, but no announcement has been made along these lines.
I’d be curious to see if Apple ever ships it given the ease with which one can suddenly lose their entire photo library if iCloud’s E2E encryption setup doesn’t work as expected and they have to erase everything. I’ve already had several family members concerned over that setup step, and thankfully, they had nothing irreplaceable E2E-encrypted and could go ahead with erasing E2E-encrypted content to proceed. Adding photos to the mix complicates that greatly.
Yes, as we all know Apple’s mere months from insolvency. If it’s for Apple’s protection and not mine — this feature does nothing for me one way or the other — they should shoulder the costs, as they appear to currently.
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Zzz, same old police state stuff, "why can't I search your car if you have nothing to hide?".
"why can't I search your home if you have nothing to hide?"
It's like "post the entire content of your computer on public dropbox, cmaier, if you have nothing to hide.". That would be non-sense.
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Nope. I just value my privacy and want my device to not have spyware. CSAM is disgusting and wrong. Both of those things can be true. When I upload it to the cloud, search for CSAM all you want. But don’t install spyware on my phone, regardless of how good the intent is.
They can simply scan files and pics on the iCloud servers like they’ve been doing for years and like all other cloud providers. There’s no need to add a backdoor to your phone.
If this were true Apple would certainly have announced it, considering the negative reactions to their plans. Besides, I wonder who would want to pay for end to end encryption of their photos with a system on all of your devices that is capable of surveillance beyond imagination, including spying on the very same photos that you want to remain private…
And that's exactly the point. There is absolutely no reason why they couldn't just scan iCloud Photo accounts. Anything I'm sending out to the world, be my guest and scan away. Yet, they want to implement this technology deep into the OS, they're trying to sell it as a "protect the children feature" now, when the next step is to use the same technology to scan for unpopular opinions and other things.
I'd really like to know if this will be a US only thing from here on we'll have different OS versions for different markets or if this is in every OS and enabled/disabled on a per country basis.
Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life
Apple has announced impending changes to its operating systems that include new “protections for children” features in iCloud and iMessage. If you’ve spent any time following the Crypto Wars, you know what this means: Apple is planning to build a backdoor into its data storage system and its...
At the moment.
I wonder where the "one in a trillion" number came from. There are fewer than eight billion people in the world and I'm pretty sure not all of them own Apple devices. One in a trillion means that nobody is ever going to have their photos seen until the population of Earth reaches a few trillion and then one person will get an oopsie?
Actually, yes, I do. Because if they were lying, they wouldn't mention this new system at all. They'd just pull a… was it Google whose speakers suddenly turned out to actually have microphones they forgot to mention in the documentation? So, now you can't complain, because Apple told us all in advance. Of course I can simply stop using all cloud services (good luck, future me), iMessage, and whatever the system turns out to cover a year from now.
I've got a M.Sc. in math, I use iCloud Photo Library, I have finished replacing all the devices in our household with Apple ones a few months ago because of privacy concerns, and I have "nothing to fear" until the law changes and it turns out that I do.
I live in the Netherlands. But my friends live in Hungary. In Hungary, "promotion of the LGBTQ ideology" to minors is illegal – and that includes as much as posting a photo of two men holding hands. Once Apple enables this functionality in Hungary, the one in a trillion chance will alert the Hungarian authorities if I send my friends a photo from my wedding. End-to-end encryption of pre-scanned files? Sounds useful and legit.
I am going to untag myself from this thread. Not because I feel I Possess The Truth, but because this is all deeply unsettling for me. The whole reason why I finished switching to Apple ecosystem was to not get this sort of news. And there is no point in having a discussion with someone whose mind is already made up.
(adding this because it appeared before I finished)
I don't imagine them producing a different OS for each country, so my bet is that it will be installed everywhere and activated depending on what the governments decide.
I wonder if the same people defending Apple on this would allow that cameras are placed throughout their home with automatic scans for criminal activity. They could always cover the lenses when not agreeing, but the cameras would be there. If they don't agree, I guess they've something to hide.
Absolutely invalid and ridiculous analogy. With an iPhone you're licensing the use of iOS as you are with MacOS. I own my home lock stock and barrel. I'm not licensing use of it. LMAO try again.I wonder if the same people defending Apple on this would allow that cameras are placed throughout their home with automatic scans for criminal activity. They could always cover the lenses when not agreeing, but the cameras would be there. If they don't agree, I guess they've something to hide.
I wonder if the same people defending Apple on this would allow that cameras are placed throughout their home with automatic scans for criminal activity. They could always cover the lenses when not agreeing, but the cameras would be there. If they don't agree, I guess they've something to hide.
Well that requires new hardware and things. How about we start with something simpler that Apple could turn on with the flip of a switch;
How about people let Apple (by not choosing to disconnect from the internet) do facial recognition on all of their photos for people wanted by the police so that information about their location might be found.
Don’t worry none of the information goes to Apple directly. Just the GPS coordinates sent to the police. Apple doesn’t even know you are the one who provided the information unless the police decide to ask them to tell them.
You people are unbelievable. Of course, we are living in the age of paranoia.
Apple has already been scanning every photo on your device since the inception of iCloud Photo Sharing. Each photo has checksum that is calculated using some hash method (MD5, SHA1,SHA256, SHA512). How else, is Apple going to make sure a exact photo is synced correctly between all devices linked to a particular Apple ID? The only difference is that now sometiime in future point release of iOS/iPadOS 15 and Monterey then Apple will be comparing that hash to a known hashes of CSAM in a database. That is it, end of story. There is no backdoor, this is syncing tech has been there since the beginning of iCloud.
Apple has already been scanning every photo on your device since the inception of iCloud Photo Sharing. Each photo has checksum that is calculated using some hash method (MD5, SHA1,SHA256, SHA512). How else, is Apple going to make sure a exact photo is synced correctly between all devices linked to a particular Apple ID? The only difference is that now sometiime in future point release of iOS/iPadOS 15 and Monterey then Apple will be comparing that hash to a known hashes of CSAM in a database. That is it, end of story. There is no backdoor, this is syncing tech has been there since the beginning of iCloud.
I don‘t have, at all. Thank you for accusing me and for making a point as to why I value privacy.
And I am surprised this is coming from you. You know where I live, what happened there. That sort of thought police is exactly what autoritarian regimes are built upon.
“you have nothing to fear as long as you are not pedo/commie/fascist/gay/whatever“ <==cross out what does not apply
Btw: what - in your opinion - is the EFF? Math-unsavvy, a group of shills or a bunch of pedos?
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How is this distinction even relevant? The iPhone is a deeply personal device that has access to the most intimate moments of your life. We are talking about Apple installing a deeply integrated spyware on this device. Right now, this spyware will only become active if you use certain cloud features abs it only uses data from certain sources (which are not necessarily trustworthy by the way). We only have Apple’s wire to trust that the spyware will not be used for other purposes. I find it very strange that there are people who dint find this situation unsettling.
Great post
And we don't really have to even imagine some of these examples..
Isn't it Ring that works with some police departments so they can activate the cameras at will and essentially have a make shift video surveillance network using customers Ring cameras?
Some of this is totally crazy.
What I'm really scared about is how little thought so many people put into the implications and ramifications down the line here.