Apple just committed "suicide by consumer" on behalf of Governments. Huge internet backlash, Apple caught offguard spins PR drop early. Fight Back against SpyVeillance 1984! "It is an absolutely appalling idea, because it is going to lead to distributed bulk surveillance of...our phones and laptops," said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge. Alec Muffett, a security researcher and privacy campaigner who formerly worked at Facebook and Deliveroo, said Apple's move was "tectonic" and a "huge and regressive step for individual privacy". "Apple are walking back privacy to enable 1984." https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1423071186616000513 Ive had independent confirmation from multiple people that Apple is releasing a client-side tool for CSAM scanning tomorrow. This is a really bad idea. These tools will allow Apple to scan your iPhone photos for photos that match a specific perceptual hash, and report them to Apple servers if too many appear. Initially I understand this will be used to perform client side scanning for cloud-stored photos. Eventually it could be a key ingredient in adding surveillance to encrypted messaging systems. The ability to add scanning systems like this to E2E messaging systems has been a major ask by law enforcement the world over. Heres an open letter signed by former AG William Barr and other western governments. This sort of tool can be a boon for finding child pornography in peoples phones. But imagine what it could do in the hands of an authoritarian government? The way Apple is doing this launch, theyre going to start with non-E2E photos that people have already shared with the cloud. So it doesnt hurt anyones privacy. But you have to ask why anyone would develop a system like this if scanning E2E photos wasnt the goal. But even if you believe Apple wont allow these tools to be misused theres still a lot to be concerned about. These systems rely on a database of problematic media hashes that you, as a consumer, cant review. Hashes using a new and proprietary neural hashing algorithm Apple has developed, and gotten NCMEC to agree to use. We dont know much about this algorithm. What if someone can make collisions? Imagine someone sends you a perfectly harmless political media file that you share with a friend. But that file shares a hash with some known child porn file? These images are from an investigation using much simpler hash function than the new one Apples developing. They show how machine learning can be used to find such collisions. The idea that Apple is a privacy company has bought them a lot of good press. But its important to remember that this is the same company that wont encrypt your iCloud backups because the FBI put pressure on them. https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/1423204752947654657 Dumbed-down explanation: Apple's iPhones will soon start secretly calling the police if they find photos on your phone that match fingerprints of photos depicting child abuse and any content eventually deemed objectionable. This can/will be generalized to secure messaging. Removing "Apple enthusiast" from my Twitter bio. What a joke. If Apple doesn't walk back this decision nobody has any business calling them a privacy company anymore. https://apple.com/child-safety/ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-barr-signs-letter-facebook-u... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.am... https://towardsdatascience.com/black-box-attacks-on-perceptual-image-hashes-... https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/oye0li/report_apple_to_announce... https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/oye0bx/apples_iphones_will_soon... https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/oye2j2/report_apple_to_anno... https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/oylctf/apple_plans_to_scan_us_ipho... https://www.ft.com/content/14440f81-d405-452f-97e2-a81458f5411f https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-plans-scan-us-iphones-child-abuse-i... https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/05/report-apple-photos-casm-content-scanning/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/icloud-data-turned-over-to-chinese-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_Project_(investigation) https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/07/pegasus-project-apple-iphones... https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/edward-snowden-calls-spyware-tr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument