[slg]

>What is the functional difference between the government demanding Apple add code to break device encryption, and the government demanding Apple add signatures that extend their on-device scanning beyond its intended scope of CSAM?

Is this meant as a rhetorical question? Because they are pretty different from both a technical and policy perspective.

Breaking encryption means the government can have access to everything without restriction. It also means there is a backdoor for others to discover.

This approach of matching signatures means that the government needs to have specific content it is looking to match. The government asks "does the device have this specific file" and Apple returns a yes or no. They can't do broad searches for unknown content. Apple also remains as the gatekeeper between its users and the government when it comes to extending the scanning.

We can still be against the latter while acknowledging that this isn't as scary a scenario as the former and therefore it isn't purely a legal question of which approach Apple would be more likely to accept.

[snowwrestler]

The case this 2016 letter is about was not a request to break phone encryption in general. The government asked Apple to assist only in getting into a few specific phones for a specific reason, under the authority of a valid warrant. And many folks thought Apple had a strong legal case to say no.

Apple can’t search phones under the technology they announced, so the government can’t ask Apple for information about what is on people’s phones.

The government could only ask Apple to add hashes to an operating system that Apple runs. Structurally, this is the same as asking them to add functionality, which is what they objected to in 2016.

There is also a scope issue; if every iPhone has the same hash list, then the government is essentially fishing in everyone’s phone for a file. This is typically illegal. The government has to be specific about why they think a certain person/people have a piece of data before they can get a warrant to go get it.

Remember that (as the Twitter thread reminds us) the entire CSAM scanning effort is voluntary. The government is not forcing Apple to scan for CSAM, so how would they force Apple to scan for anything else?

[slg]

>Remember that (as the Twitter thread reminds us) the entire CSAM scanning effort is voluntary. The government is not forcing Apple to scan for CSAM, so how would they force Apple to scan for anything else?

Which is the point that you seem to largely be ignoring. Apple has its own motivations here and it isn't purely a question of what the government is forcing them to do. Apple knows that once encryption is broken, it is broken for everything. This new proposal is much more targeted and gives Apple control while also preserving their ability to say no on technical grounds for further privacy invasions. That is why they would prefer it over the previous government proposal.

[zionic]

The list Apple uses is the property of the secret police, which is owned by the government. The government can change the database at a whim and push new targeting data to your phone.