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Apple has surpassed Facebook and Google in violating user trust. #

In one fell swoop, Apple destroyed its reputation for privacy and security, surpassing even Facebook and Google in violating user trust:

• Edward Snowden: The All-Seeing "i": Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy

• Ars Technica: Apple photo-scanning plan faces global backlash from 90 rights groups

• New York Times: Apple’s Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell

• Washington Post: We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous

• Mac Observer: Apple, You Broke Your Privacy Promises and Our Hearts

• Freedom of the Press Foundation: Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy — and press freedom

• EFF: If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship Around the World

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

• Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp at Facebook: [T]his is the wrong approach and a setback for people's privacy all over the world.

and then had the temerity to not only blame critics for their "misunderstanding", but also to call the scheme an "advancement" in privacy!

Apple has promised to refuse government demands to expand the surveillance, but their record is not exactly reassuring:

• 2018: Apple moves to store iCloud keys in China, raising human rights fears

• 2019: After China Objects, Apple Removes App Used by Hong Kong Protestors

• 2020: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

• 2021: Apple accused of giving Chinese government control over local data

not to mention that the technology itself is fundamentally broken:

• ImageNet contains naturally occurring NeuralHash collisions

• NeuralHash is BROKEN - How to evade Apple's detection & craft hash collisions (w/ Open Source Code)

• Apple's NeuralHash Algorithm Has Been Reverse-Engineered

• Apple's CSAM detection tech is under fire — again

inexorably leading to such outcomes as:

• How AI-powered tech landed man in jail with scant evidence

• AI is sending people to jail—and getting it wrong

• A simple plan to ruin your boss: plant child porn on his PC

• Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them

As Ars explains:

[T]he system's current design doesn't prevent it from being redesigned and used for other purposes in the future. The new photo-scanning technology itself is a major change for a company that has used privacy as a selling point for years and calls privacy a "fundamental human right."

NebajX pierces to the very heart of the matter:

Do we allow police a daily search of our homes because we have nothing to hide?

It’s now crystal clear why Apple tried to exclude dozens of its own processes from network monitoring last year; to pave the way for total (and leaky and dangerous) control over our digital lives.

Addendum

Topping it all off, the system as currently sold is simply farcical on the face of it:

• only scans for known CSAM images,
• only on devices with iCloud Photos enabled,
• only owned by the most dimwitted, news-deprived criminals.

Updates

• Apple blinks:

  • New York Times: Apple delays the rollout of child-safety features over privacy concerns.

  • USA Today: Apple to delay release of child safety features amid privacy uproar

  • MacRumors: Apple Delays Rollout of Controversial Child Safety Features to Make Improvements | HN

  • Wired: Apple Kills Its Plan to Scan Your Photos for CSAM. Here’s What’s Next | HN

• and has now (August 2023) course-corrected to the extent of explaining why their CSAM implementation was a terrible idea:

  • Wired: Apple's Decision to Kill Its CSAM Photo-Scanning Tool Sparks Fresh Controversy - [A]fter collaborating with an array of privacy and security researchers, digital rights groups, and child safety advocates, the company concluded that it could not proceed with development of a CSAM-scanning mechanism, even one built specifically to preserve privacy. "Scanning every user's privately stored iCloud data would create new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit," Neuenschwander [Apple's director of user privacy and child safety] wrote. "It would also inject the potential for a slippery slope of unintended consequences. Scanning for one type of content, for instance, opens the door for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types."

• More:

  • EFF: Delays Aren't Good Enough—Apple Must Abandon Its Surveillance Plans | HN

  • The Atlantic: Your Phone Is Your Private Space - Without evidence of wrongdoing, neither public agents nor private companies should be rifling through the photos on your personal devices.

  • Macintstruct: Protecting Your Privacy While Using Apple Devices

  • Russell Graves: Apple, CSAM Scanning, and You

  • EFF: Apple Has Listened And Will Retract Some Harmful Phone-Scanning

  • The Verge: Apple scrubs controversial CSAM detection feature from webpage but says plans haven't changed

• Apple's ongoing kowtow campaign:

  • 2021: Apple's cooperation with authoritarian governments

  • 2022: Apple Accused Of Censoring App Stores In Hong Kong And Russia

  • 2023: Apple has removed Meduza's flagship news podcast 'What Happened' from Apple Podcasts - The Russian state censorship authority had asked Apple to block the show

/mac | Aug 26, 2021

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