Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread.
Past security changes at Apple have also prompted concern among employees, but the volume and duration of the new debate is surprising, the workers said. Some posters worried that Apple is damaging its leading reputation for protecting privacy.
It’s a complete 180 from Apple’s behaviour and statements (in western markets) – of course employees are going to be worried. I’ve been warning for years that Apple’s position on privacy was nothing more than a marketing ploy, and now Apple employees, too, get a taste of their own medicine that they’ve been selling in China and various other totalitarian regimes.
We all know what’s going to happen.
1. Apple is going to do it.
2. Authoritarian governments will crack that backdoor wide open.
3. Apple will deny #2 is happening until #4 hits the press
4. Random hackers are exploiting the backdoor. (like that guy that was secretly recording through security flaws in the macbook cameras for years. Remember how it was only discovered once he started blackmailing the victims? Remember how Apple has a long history of outright denying that security problems exist?)
Fun fact: Child protection has nothing to do with this misfeature. Apple already scans things uploaded to iCloud for CSAM material. This is Apple putting a “scanner” in people’s computers. Are we supposed to believe a company like Apple can’t afford to pay for the processing power to scan stuff once they are in iCloud? Fortunately you can turning it off by disabling iCloud sync, but the precedent is not a nice one.
This has a massive slippery slope written all over it. But the simple reason Apple might want to scan on device is that they do not want those pictures on iCloud in the first place. A sure there is no safe harbour provision for those images.
This has massive fail written all over it. I can’t imagine any good will come of it.
Ha, with how AppleID works and if you happen to not use it anywhere but on the rare occasion you set up a new mac and want xcode, and have forgotten your password… or it just outright glitches out… I waited a month to get it recovered last time…
The world needs a non-Apple non-Google viable smart phone now more then ever. If only Nokia had stuck with …..
I winder if Apple has been asked (AKA instructed) to spy on citizens by some regime and is preemptively wrapping it in a child protection cover story ???
Iapx432,
I agree. Consolidation usually means consumers loose, but our markets favor fewer, ultra powerful companies over many smaller ones. Still, government regulation isn’t popular, so laissez-faire policies inevitably leads to a few dominant corporations taking over. It seems highly unlikely that we’ll get more significant competition any time soon. Even antitrust lawsuits often do way too little way too late after the competition is dead. IMHO we should take preventative measures to stop abuses before the competition gets wiped out.
I’m pretty sure apple already cooperates with law enforcement when they provide a warrant because legally they have to. The difference here is that they’re making the transition to warrant-less surveillance. Who knows if this is voluntary or not. Regardless, as the article mentions, once apple builds this it will no longer be possible to tell the government it is unable to comply This is why it’s such a slippery slope.
Alfman,
I don’t think that was always the case. Seems like a very different Apple in 2021 vs 2016.
https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
I don’t have an iPhone, but if I did I would not photograph my own kids, Why take the chance?
lapx432,
Wow, there’s a hell of a lot of contrast between apple’s statements then and today.
I’ve got a lot of nitpicks with apple’s PR assertions, but you are right there’s a stark difference that I didn’t quite remember before you posted the link.