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by mfer
1777 days ago
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> Apple’s plans seem creepy to me, but I have been less than impressed with the specificity of arguments against it. Most seem to stop at “what if the government forces them to expand it” without addressing exactly how, under current federal law, the government would do that. It's not "the government". There are many governments around the world. What happens when China, Russia, or another country legislates using this technology for some other purpose. Those are big markets. Will Apple back out of them or give in? |
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They will give in, at least in China. They currently host all of their iCloud content in China on Chinese servers (and turn over encryption keys), they have banned all VPN apps from the Chinese app store, and they removed the Hong Kong protest app at the behest of the CCP. They will do whatever China tells them to, because, at least from their perspective, they have to. All their manufacturing is in China.
I can't even imagine an outcome where Apple doesn't start looking for pictures of tank man or anti-government images on Chinese citizen's phones. The Chinese government will hand them a list of hashes and say "these photos are illegal here, tell us whenever you find one". Maybe Apple will hold the line of "only photos uploaded to iCloud", but even then they just built the capability to scan everything on someone's phone, and the iCloud part is simply a switch that we have to hope they don't flip.
I'm trying not to be too hopelessly negative here but I can't believe Apple decided that encrypting iCloud backups is worth trading for a file scanner on your phone. What the fuck.