[ianmiers]

Apple's banned image reporting wont stay iCloud only.iMessage is next. Maybe all data on your phone. 1) phone scanning is overkill for pics already on their servers. You don't build this and take the PR flack for something you can already do server side 2) Even if it's somehow not Apple's plan, they will be forced to use it on iMessage. Congress has been trying to for years.See the EARN IT act[0].

Apple just erroneously said "it's safe" despite the fact that it clearly can be abused.

[0] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/03/06/earn-it-...

[zepto]

> You don't build this and take the PR flack for something you can already do server side

That’s exactly what you do if you plan to enable E2E.

[ianmiers]

Yep. That certainly is the next step. And then, once you are scanning encrypted data, iMessage is next whether you want it or not.

[nicce]

It is not the next step, it is already there, if you read the technical papers. Additional encryption level comes to iCloud images with this change, and Apple can’t see your photos anymore unless CSAM threshold is achieved.

[zepto]

> And then, once you are scanning encrypted data,

They aren’t.

> iMessage is next whether you want it or not.

Is there some evidence you have of this plan? Sounds like this is just a fear you have.

[ianmiers]

>Is there some evidence you have of this plan? Sounds like this is just a fear you have.

The EARN IT act. It may not be Apple's plan, Apple's plan, as you suggest, might only be for doing scanning on encrypted iCloud and excluding encrypted iMessage. But what Apple will be pushed to do after that is pretty clear.

[zepto]

If the government passes a law mandating that encrypted messages be scanned, it won’t be done using this CSAM mechanism, and it won’t only be Apple doing it.

In short, you might be right to be afraid of this outcome, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with CSAM countermeasures.

[ianmiers]

Read the article and discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28118350. It makes the point pretty well.

>That, of course, is the rub: Apple controls the algorithm, both in terms of what it looks for, what bugs it may or may not have, and also the inputs, which in the case of CSAM scanning is the database from NCMEC. Apple has certainly worked hard to be a company that users trust, but we already know that that trust doesn’t extend everywhere: Apple has, under Chinese government pressure, put Chinese user iCloud data on state-owned enterprise servers, along with the encryption keys necessary to access it. What happens when China announces its version of the NCMEC, which not only includes the horrific imagery Apple’s system is meant to capture, but also images and memes the government deems illegal?

>The fundamental issue — and the first reason why I think Apple made a mistake here — is that there is a meaningful difference between capability and policy. One of the most powerful arguments in Apple’s favor in the 2016 San Bernardino case is that the company didn’t even have the means to break into the iPhone in question, and that to build the capability would open the company up to a multitude of requests that were far less pressing in nature, and weaken the company’s ability to stand up to foreign governments. In this case, though, Apple is building the capability, and the only thing holding the company back is policy.

[thw0rted]

From everything that I've read, iCloud Photo Library is currently encrypted on the server, with a key that Apple only uses when presented with a warrant. If I ran the company (disclaimer: I do not) I'd implement this with an airgapped system in a vault somewhere, where a very small number of people have access to bring encrypted images in on a CD-R under two-person control.

That being said, one of two things is true. Either Apple does exactly what they say, in which case they are not able to perform server-side content / fingerprint scanning, or Apple is outright lying about only using their key on behalf of law enforcement. This latter case would open them to all sorts of legal liabilities, like a suit from shareholders for false reports. It would also require the silence of every Apple engineer who has ever been involved in at least their iCloud Photo program, and probably a bunch of server infrastructure as well. Additionally, they'd be legally obligated to report their scan results to the NCMEC but would have to do so in a way that doesn't give away that they're lying about how their systems work.