Well said.
It's very easy to understand that content on a physical disk I own will not be scanned by some government-friendly surveillance program, and content I upload to somebody else's servers will. I am comfortable with [subsets of] my files existing on both sides of this distinction, but only because I understand it.
Now Apple is letting the surveillance apparatus reach into my own physical hardware, blurring the lines with some overwrought, proprietary crypto-gobbledygook solution. Given the details they've provided, I get why they might have thought this was in line with their general privacy ethos of keeping everything on-device, but the fact is that it is too complicated to build a reliable understanding of in my mental model of my own data privacy--and that's for somebody (me) who is quite technical and has even dabbled in crypto.
Now that I no longer understand Apple's practices as a steward of my private data, I can no longer trust them with it. It's a real shame.
When it stops being about the children, it'll be about the terrorists. When it stops being about the terrorists, it'll be about whatever the next excuse is. This seems like a compromise between those unfortunate scenarios - upholding privacy (we don't see the content) while still attempting to solve for the problems that privacy inherently allows for (we can still identify CP).
No. Don't make that excuses for them. If it were true it would be a shocking revelation which might result in thousands of cases being overturned.
If the NCMEC searches by providers are being done as a result of government coercion then the fourth amendment requires there be a search warrant. Since there isn't one, these searches would all be unlawful if there was coercion.
Thus far, tech companies like Google and AOL have gone out of their way to testify that there is no coercion (I haven't found a case involving Apple).
If there were coercion it would be a shocking conspiracy. I wouldn't argue that it's impossible: The USG has done some shockingly unethical and illegal things in the past but it fails occams razor.
Moreover, the excuse doesn't actually make apple look better: Instead of being a corporation compromising user privacy and security for commercial gain, they'd be an active participant in a conspiracy to violate the US constitution.
Apple is doing this because they believe they'll make more money this way, and because they believe the complaints raised here about people rejecting devices betraying their trust are fundamentally inconsequential.
Show them otherwise, don't make excuses. Don't blame the government. The government may well be to blame too, but Apple's actions are apple's fault.
This comment is as if the 2001-2010 decade never happened. Secret wiretaps. Secret Evidence. Overseas torture facilities. Imprisonment without charges. What makes you think that checks and balances would miraculously appear after having disappeared for over a decade.
NOTE: this is a USA-centric viewpoint
Those are USA-centric examples.
I'm sure the viewpoint is just as valid across five eyes and even worse in places like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China et al.
I'm from Australia, allegedly a 1st world democracy - and secret wiretaps, secret evidence (and even secret trials!), overseas torture facilities, imprisonment without charges - are all public policy, covered my the media, and enshrined in laws passes by both of the two-party political system.
Don't forget raiding journalists homes and public broadcasters (using illegal warrants!) for reporting on proposed secret spying and hacking laws.
Nice "democracy".
If the conspiracy exists Apple is an active participant in secretly and illegally undermining the constitutional rights of well over a hundred million Americans. If the conspiracy does not exist, then they're simply lawfully invading people's privacy in order to improve their profits.
But you're right, none of the people who broke all the laws Snowden showed us were getting broken has suffered any consequences.
Not a US citizen, so I’m not familiar with this argument. As I understand it the government isn’t searching anything themselves so would the requirement for a search warrant apply?
I think what the US government is requiring is that if a service provider comes across CSAM they must report it. Since I don’t see why searching your own service would be anything to do with search warrants either, is it constitutional to make such a requirement for other reasons?
Finally even if Apple could avoid this requirement, which they seem to have largely been doing until now, was it viable for them to continue like that? Even without a legal mandate to actively search for CSAM, knowing there must be millions of unreported CSAM images on their service can’t have been a comfortable position to be in.
What is permitted is that if a private entity of their own free will and self interest searches and then finds something, the government can require them to make a report when they found something. Just as you say.
But the government cannot require them to search in the first place, not without extending the fourth amendment protection against search.
Apple can decide that the commercial value of reducing the risk that they're accused of helping perverts is greater to them than the commercial value of respecting the customers privacy. Indeed. But lets call that what it is, and not make excuses that they're forced to search: They're not. They are choosing to search.
> it’s known that illegal content exists
A point of clarification: The system divulges the encryption keys to content when the content's "perceptual hash" matches one in the database the specific user is being tested against. Apple claims that the hashes are provided by NCMEC "and other parties". It is already known that the NCMEC databases has at least some hits for non-illegal content. Who knows what these databases might contain in the future. There is certainly no structural requirement in the system that the content is illegal or some specific kind of illegal.
For users in Thailand the apple database could just as well be full of hashes of cartoons insulting to the monarch (which are illegal there, as I understand it) and no one would be able to tell, at least not before apple users started being rounded up and summarily executed.
On your second point, yes… that’s a very real possibility and one that I’m sure Apple has already considered and has responded to.
For that you'd need a sham court full of rubber stamping judges handing out bogus search warrants for every single questionable and illegal request that comes to them. That seems a stretch of the imagination? What judge would to _that?_
We could call that the FISA Court, right?
Which is quite a modern take on a historically reviled phenomenon, so you should call them for what they are: general warrants.
There's a difference between cops paying someone to break into a suspect's house to steal evidence without a warrant, and a 3rd party that, while doing business, comes across material that might be criminal evidence.
The former case, in the US, falls under the doctrine of the "fruit of the poisonous tree"[1]. Evidence collected illicitly won't be allowed in court, and any evidence or argument based on the tainted evidence can be thrown out, as well.
I think the line is blurred with the system in the OP, where it seems like it kind of fits the latter case. It's fuzzy to me when parties are working in tandem with law enforcement, even going as far as running law enforcement's own systems voluntarily, or collecting or giving up information without a warrant when simply asked. To me, that seems a lot more like former case, where the government persuades someone to collect evidence on their behalf without warrants or subpoenas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
In the US, that is currently where we've drawn the line.
They can cooperate, but it has to be voluntarily and the private party can't be government-by-another-name (e.g. not NCMEC which has a special legislative permission to handle child porn and is overwhelmingly funded by the government), but an actual private party.
https://olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/PrivateSearchDoctrine.pd...
In the US, if the Government were to mandate Apple search the users content, then Apple would be acting as an agent of the government and the searches would require a warrant per the fourth amendment. This is the unambiguous case law.
If Apple is being forced they should say so explicitly rather than secretly participating in an unlawful conspiracy to violate their customer's fourth amendment rights.
Other providers, such as google, have been unambiguous in their testimony in court that they are not being coerced, for example quoting US v. Miller (6th Cir. 2020):
> Companies like Google have business reasons to make these efforts to remove child pornography from their systems. As a Google representative noted, “[i]f our product is associated with being a haven for abusive content and conduct, users will stop using our services.” McGoff Decl., R.33-1, PageID#161.
> Did Google act under compulsion? Even if a private party does not perform a public function, the party’s action might qualify as a government act if the government “has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the” government. [...] Miller has not shown that Google’s hash-value matching falls on the “compulsion” side of this line. He cites no law that compels or encourages Google to operate its “product abuse detection system” to scan for hash-value matches. Federal law disclaims such a mandate. It says that providers need not “monitor the content of any [customer] communication” or “affirmatively search, screen, or scan” files. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(f). Nor does Miller identify anything like the government “encouragement” that the Court found sufficient to turn a railroad’s drug and alcohol testing into “government” testing. See Skinner, 489 U.S. at 615. [...] Federal law requires “electronic communication service providers” like Google to notify NCMEC when they become aware of child pornography. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a). But this mandate compels providers only to report child pornography that they know of; it does not compel them to search for child pornography of which they are unaware.
Besides, if they could get the warrants they could get access to all the data in any case (e.g. by getting access to the users backups to steal the users credentials and then accessing the icloud accounts).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-4/p...
Because the scanning is happening without a warrant, if the government compelled apple to perform the search the search would be illegal. It is only legal for Apple to perform this search because it is in no way compelled by the government.
The government cannot obtain a blanket warrant against everyone. This kind of dragnet scanning has to be voluntarily performed by a private party for it to be lawful.
By all means! please prove to us that the government secretly has ordered Apple and other companies to scan users private data: If you do so it will result in overturning tons of convictions due to the unlawful searches which were concealed due perjury by the government and tech companies who have consistently claimed that the scanning by the tech companies is completely voluntary in in their own self interest.
This planned system means less violation of privacy in cases where a warrant exists, and more violation of privacy where there is no warrant. That's not exactly an amazing tradeoff.
And depending on what's in the database, signatures and thumbnails can be really bad.
Isn't Google a company with billion dollar government contracts? No coercion required...
If that were the case and Google honestly testified that they performed the searches based on the belief that the government would withhold business from them it is likely that the warrantless searches would be disallowed. Courts have found that even covert encouragement can apply. What matters is that the if it's functionally the government's choice if the searching does or doesn't happen, then its subject to the fourth amendment.
Doesn't need to be fear. Doesn't even need anybody to insinuate something threatening.
The conflict of interest is enough, to willingly do anything you're asked and play the good boy out of greed - to keep/get more contracts.
And possibly, as mentioned in an earlier post on HN, as a defense against Anti-trust litigation.
Ben Thompson's suggested approach for them in this article is to just do the unencrypted iCloud model with normal CSAM reporting like FB does and make that the tradeoff.
Apple actually wants things to be more secure by encrypting everything e2e with this CSAM hash approach to still fulfill that obligation (and protect themselves from future regulatory requirements that are more broad).
Reasonable people can disagree on these approaches to policy, but it's not obvious that Apple's move here is strictly worse for end users - if they do make moves to e2e then it's arguably better for user privacy to do it the way they're doing it.
Furthermore, since the end is compromised, it's no longer a true end. The true end is the user and a system compromised in this way doesn't offer any guarantees to the user.
What is actually bad about their plan is the potential for scope creep and might wider scanning in the future. Your own, handwritten messages and personal photos can be secure even while this destroys many freedoms and lives.
Edit: thanks dpkonofa, I made the description vague in the hope that it's more correct.
Personally I've been dying for the next gen of M1 macs to come out. I also wonder if this tech has some magical way of getting around a hosts file and little snitch. If I can't gap my data from Apple it would raise ethical issues with my storing client secrets on the machine.
I don't think that's exactly where the "one in a trillion" claim comes from. Rather, it's that a single matching hash isn't enough to trigger the reporting; there needs to be multiple matches, and when there are enough of them to cross an unspecified threshold, then the reporting is triggered. There's theoretically only a one in a trillion chance of that threshold being crossed without having actual CSAM matches.
If I understand the white paper correctly, this even goes a step farther than that; they can't decrypt the signatures of the images corresponding to the matched hashes until the threshold is passed, because those images form a kind of decryption key together.
On a technical level, I'm actually pretty impressed. They absolutely could set up E2E encryption and still implement this system, and it largely assuages my worries about false matches of innocent photos (with the extremely big caveat that a false match has a very high potential of ruining someone's life). As the linked article points out, though, the real privacy concern here comes from having this matching capability on-device at all, because once it's there, limiting the data set to just this one provided by NCMEC becomes a matter of company policy. If an agency of any government demands Apple add their data set, they can no longer say, "we can't do that without drastically compromising the way our devices and services work," because it will be public knowledge that this in fact how their devices and services work already.
> Facebook is one of the biggest social media services. Back in 2013, they were receiving 350 million pictures per day. However, Facebook hasn't released any more recent numbers, so I can only try to estimate. In 2020, FotoForensics received 931,466 pictures and submitted 523 reports to NCMEC; that's 0.056%. During the same year, Facebook submitted 20,307,216 reports to NCMEC. If we assume that Facebook is reporting at the same rate as me, then that means Facebook received about 36 billion pictures in 2020. At that rate, it would take them about 30 years to receive 1 trillion pictures.
Bad cop: I want access to all your information.
Good cop: Oh, these guys are after you. Let me see if I can intervene for you. I can implement a selective limited search, that make these bureaucrats happy and at the same time will protect you. I am on your side, I hate them too. This is the best practical solution.
I wonder how we ever survived with the level of privacy we had before the advent of the internet. It must've been a living hell. /s
Privacy is not a problem, it is necessary in order for freedom from tyranny to be possible. Even if all the governments of the world mandate that all communication devices must be compromised like this, criminals will still be able to have private communication channels, but lawful citizens won't.
And I doubt this system, which looks for known files, is going to do very much to impact production.
It’s like a double airlock. If your content never leaves your device, there’s no way for them to provide it to someone upon request. It’s definitely a complicated situation but I have yet to see someone provide a solution for how to achieve what Apple has while never transferring your data to them in the first place.
This unfortunately appears to be true, and part of me is impressed by [the idea of] the solution they've come up with. But, like I said in my first comment, it means in practice that I have an opaque and unaccountable surveillance program running on my personal physical hardware, which is undeniably an escalation. Whatever they claim it's doing is both completely unverifiable and probably complicated enough, and subject enough to change, that it's practically impossible to form a complete and persistently correct understanding of the attack surface it exposes—even if it were open-sourced and exhaustively documented, which it isn't and presumably never will be.
I am much more comfortable simply knowing that anything I upload to somebody else's servers is subject to snooping, and anything I keep on my hardware is not. That's how the other cloud storage providers do it, and I may not like it, but it's at least easy to account for when I'm thinking about my own data security and privacy. It's admirable that Apple tried to come up with something better, but (I'd argue) from certain important perspectives it's arguably worse.
Software is a chronic disease. Once you let it in, it never goes away, and changes beyond the scope of "fixes" seem to infallibly make it more intrusive and/or harmful. We are like frogs with many bodies, each being boiled in a different pot by a different chef. I have no interest in yet another unaccountable daemon inhabiting my private person.
This isn't true quite yet. It's pretty easy for me to keep some of my data truly private (e.g. on a secure Linux machine with an encrypted disk, if I'm really paranoid) while still participating in modern society, using the internet, and so on.
Apple has simply removed itself from the set of vendors whose products don't preclude uncompromised local data security.
Getting CSAM pictures in the iCloud photo library of someone you don't like does not even require physical access sometimes: For example, WhatsApp has a "Save to camera roll" option that's enabled by default: just send a bunch of bad pictures via WhatsApp, those will get synced to iCloud after a little while, and now that person is in big trouble.
According to Apple, the only content being scanned are the images you are storing in iCloud. So how is this breaking your rule?
Thats the whole point of this debate. TODAY (if you trust apple is honest) it's only stuff being stored in icloud. But there is no technical reason for this to be true - just a "policy" reason. The scanner is already deployed to devices, we already let in the trojan horse. Tomorrow, the rules could change (and we might not know)
I thought this was fairly clear from the later parts of my comment.
The world is a much different place than when I grew up in the 80s. I can't imagine what it would look like in another 40 years. I hope I'm dead by then, because it doesn't seem like it's going to a place I want to live in.
In a way, nothing changed. Apple could've done on-device scanning forever. In another way, everything changed.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good.
EDIT: And they have CCTV and undercover security officers everywhere. More than you can possibly imagine.
Everything else with I agree. The eco-system of all these companies is never-ending (cars, food, cities, etc.). It's like those sci-fi movies where one corporation owns everything. The only difference is it's 5 or 6 companies because they haven't yet started to merge.
For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade. Apple tends not to upgrade the oldest computers, leaving you with an insecure OS where you can't run the latest software. I have my battle Thinkpad that with Linux runs better than most Macbook and we are talking about a PC that has more than 10 years and I bought used on Ebay for 100$.
Really Apple is not that great. I once used to buy their product thinking they were superior, and maybe once they were, nowadays they are just the other crap made in China but sold at (at least) twice the price because they have the Apple logo on it.
If you compare two phones at 200$, sure. But it is not possible to buy a phone with a better CPU than the 500$ iPhone SE 2. Impossible, no CPU can beat it. So no Android phone has better specs.
For a laptop, if the case is considered a spec like it should, then you have a much clearer picture. Apple has perfected its aluminium processes to provide a rigid and shock-resistant casing, and inevitably when people provide legitimate examples of PC laptops to buy, they never mention that the laptop you'll get will have a shitty plastic case with a heavy steel frame. The worst of both worlds, and many friends have come to me saying they need to change their laptop when theirs is fairly recent. The culprit? their case broke or the display hinge did.
> So no Android phone has better specs
Because it's all matter of CPU. To me is more important internal storage, with 200$ you get nowadays a phone with 256Gb of memory plus a micro SD slot. Or it's important RAM, you get 8Gb of RAM (the same amount of my desktop computer), meaning you can have all the apps in background without issues. You get a fingerprint reader, that is more secure and usable than the stupid face ID. You get a USB-C connector that nowadays is everywhere, not the proprietary lightning port. You get a bigger battery that you don't have to charge everyday. You get a bigger screen with an higher resolution. You get an headphone jack. You get a FM radio (a stupid thing, but I don't get why iPhone doesn't put it).
> Apple has perfected its aluminium processes to provide a rigid and shock-resistant casing, and inevitably when people provide legitimate examples of PC laptops to buy, they never mention that the laptop you'll get will have a shitty plastic case with a heavy steel frame.
I don't care about the cool case of the macbook. I care about having a solid case, even if it's ugly plastic. My thinkpad t440p that I bought for 150$ on ebay I can carry around without worrying, I can spill a coffee on the keyboard and it will not break, I can make it fall from a ladder and it will not break.
Also if something breaks on a macbook, the only option is to throw it in the bin and buy a new one. How do you replace the LCD panel on a macbook? You can't, because it's all glued together and you have to replace the entire lid of the computer, that costs more than the computer itself. On my computer? Pop the display frame with hands, 4 screw and you remove the LCD, a 10 minutes job. Want to access the internal components? Two screws on the bottom and you have access to SSD, RAM, Wi-Fi card and CPU.
Want to change the battery? You will have to do so sooner or later, well on the macbook not only you have to disassemble the entire computer, but it's also glued with a strong adhesive, not only it's difficult to remove but also dangerous, since it's easy to damage the battery and since it's a lithium battery it can even explode. On my laptop just unlock the mechanism and the battery comes out, put a new one in and job done, 15 seconds.
Which specs? When I last checked, the latest M1 Airs were dominating the entire laptop market on CPU performance, battery life and not making noise. These are important considerations. I mean, sure, for the same price you can probably find better displays, more RAM, a bigger SSD, a better port selection, and all sorts of other things, but there are always tradeoffs, it's not like any laptop beats an Air wholesale on all specs.
If someone doesn't particularly care about upgradability (most people don't), the Air actually seems a pretty good deal. Perhaps they were overpriced before, but I don't think they are anymore.
Bought the latest SE over a year ago at considerably less than my last comparable Android device. Have spent under $100 in the App Store since.
Phone does everything that I want it to do including some fairly complex multi-app automations 15 minutes before I leave, when I get an SMS, etc...
I've read a lot of stuff by RMS and am certainly aware of his concerns.
I have an iPhone and Mac so I guess you would consider that I "ignored" him. This is a ridiculous conclusion. I considered the risks and trade-offs of non-FOSS software, and regrettably accepted them, because the FOSS alternatives had trade-offs that cumulatively (for me) were much worse. Unlike RMS, I am not a one-dimensional person that only evaluates tech on the single dimension of freedom. Tech is not a religion for me; it's just a tool.
RMS pontificating about FOSS does not magically bring iPhone comparable FOSS software and hardware into existence. If the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, ratio of pontificating about to building consumer products needs to be much lower.
After emancipation, there were plenty of slaves who wouldn't leave the plantation, and became slaves-by-another-name in the sharecropping system. I don't think any of them were so up their own asses that they blamed the slaves who left for not making it easier to leave.
Also, RMS didn't talk about "FOSS." He talked about the inevitable future if we continued our trajectory, and suggested Free Software as the solution.
I'm also not going to make lowering your carbon emissions just as easy and convenient as using all of the carbon you want. Take responsibility for yourself, or at least don't actively denigrate people for being right.
All I said is if the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, the path forward is making things consumers like, NOT blaming us for "ignoring" RMS, because no one ever did that.
Basically everything your post implies (that I think I am entitled to something, that I think everything should be easy, etc...) is not true.
As I keep pointing out again and again, all I'm saying is that people don't use FOSS, but it's not because they don't value privacy, not because they don't value freedom, and for the love of biscuits not because of anything to do with RMS or ignoring him.
The options are use an iPhone (not freedom), use an Android phone (not freedom), or use something like LineageOS. Using something like LineageOS is major commitment that most people don't have room in their lives for, because they have different priorities, which might also be very good.
EDIT: Here's a metaphor, it'd be like if you asked your friend who owns a car with an ICE why he keeps ignoring Al Gore's warnings about the climate. It's like, Al Gore can be right, your friend can believe in Climate change, and he can still decide he needs an ICE car because he's barely making ends meet and is trying to support a family. You can claim that your friend has made bad choices, but there is no argument that he "ignored" Al Gore.
I think humans - having been nomads for the most part of their existence – just aren't equipped to care for their habitat (say: ecosystems). It's rather recent that became important, <8k years compared to 250k before.
No, it's because FOSS has no economic model.
it always some one else that is to blame, the rich, the evil corporation, the right wing, the left wing, china,.... etc etc etc
> RMS pontificating [...]
Uh, no. RMS was right all along and you're still not getting it.
You bought devices you can't upgrade, you can't run software on, that oppress indie devs, that tax 30% of the market, that sell out freedom fighters in oppressive regimes, and that now spy on you. And now you realize the problem.
The only way out of this madness is to get the sensible representatives in Congress to move forward with an antitrust case. Breaking up the power monopoly will perhaps get us back to a place where we have rights. The way it is now, Apple is a central point of failure.
Again, everything RMS spoke was truth, and it's here again rearing its ugly head.
Our government isn't one person or one party, and that's a strength.
One of my local reps is leading the big tech breakup movement, and I'm incredibly proud to have her representing me.
Can you help me with a few? Maybe 5? I'm pretty low on the US government at the moment. I can name quite a few things we lead in that are horrible.
>One of my local reps is leading the big tech breakup movement, and I'm incredibly proud to have her representing me.
I think that's great but I doubt that will ever be allowed to happen. Too much money will be thrown at congress and they will either do nothing, or do nothing in a way that makes them look like they did.
I might agree with parts of your list, but I think that people are way too down on the US and its accomplishments. I wouldn't want to live elsewhere.
25th most democratic country ("flawed democracy") [1]
Which metrics? Defense spending? Healthcare cost?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
I have yet to see a phone with the build quality and value add that I need a mobile phone to have from Free Software endeavors. These are the table stakes for the majority of people. Not the list you just rattled off. You aren't even in the running to compete on the other value adds if you can't do the above.
What are you looking for out of this anti-trust case? Apple is not a monopoly. There are numerous privacy-focused phones and Android distros available. I think there just isn't a huge market for a privacy-focused phone (no, 1000 people on a HN and twitter is not a huge market.)
Actually it's not like FOSS community is fighting for your adoption, you know? It's you who should do something in order to make good things happen.
Ok, it is a "tool", but it's like an axe controlled by another person, not you. Maybe you trust that person with such a tool; I don't.
Not trusting Apple doesn't magically bring a trustworthy iPhone competitor into existence.
For example, say US government. I trust the US government not to kill me (Dutch citizen, not a terrorist, not a criminal, etc etc). Does that mean I trust the US government with my personal data? No, that's a different discussion. And if I were to trust them with my personal data, does that mean I believe the US government has integrity? No. I've been very disappointed with the US government with regards to a recent war (I'll refrain from details as its irrelevant), so they need to earn back credibility. In my language there's a saying 'vertrouwen komt te voet, maar vertrekt per paard' which translates to something akin to 'trust comes on foot and goes on horseback'.
Well, purchase a Pixel 5, install CalyxOS or Graphene, lock bootloader again. Job done. Probably you'll lose some convenience, but you know, you may always ask some FOSS dev to bake a feature for you and pay for it.
The amount of money needed to bring CalyxOS to the iPhone level of polish and to get the same sets of popular apps on there is probably in the millions.
But spending your money on Apple products certainly won't either.
I'm afraid that'll never happen, at least, until most people don't care about their privacy and are willing to accept one-sided tradeoffs with phone vendors. BUT, there are alternatives like LineageOS that do a pretty good job. They only need more acceptance by public to be able to compete at the level of a trillion-dollar company like AAPL.
My beef is just with statements like "people ignore RMS," as I have yet to see any evidence of this. Everything I have observed is that anyone who has heard of RMS is fully aware of his concerns, but most of those people just have different priorities.
I'm pretty sure that most go with habit and convenience. I mean.... Apple could lock MacOSX down tomorrow and charge you $100 for terminal access and "informed decision" people would still argue how good MacBooks are (they aren't that good)
I literally have to have an app to make my bluetooth mouse scroll in the opposite direction than the trackpad, because there is "Scroll Direction" checkbox in both mouse and trackpad... but it's actually one config option. And with every update I hope that they don't screw up that app... OSX has less and less of "less is more".
It's a mutually-beneficial trade-off, it's just that one party gains individually, and the other gains by quantity. Advertisers wouldn't care a lot what restaurants you like, but they care a lot about what restaurants people in your city like.
Well it would mean giving up the phone entirely.
Doesn't make him wrong.
RMS is as close to the opposite of hypocrite as it gets. He definitely practices what he preaches to the degree that he used a slow Loongson when he couldn't get an Intel machine with free BIOS, for example.
He might not act diplomatic, be way outside social norms, or not people-please, but that does not make him a hypocrite.
No electric meter at his house, no internet (even if his router is running open source, the ISP he's connected to certainly isn't), no transportation of any kind, no entertainment of any kind, no shopping of any kind (inventory management, cash registers, logistics). The equipment used to manufacture all the pieces of his precious decade old laptop was running proprietary software (not to mention all the small firmwares like wifi and Ethernet controllers).
You cannot escape it.
So, we should be pragmatic about it. We should push for it, but realize that it's impossible to live in society without interacting with closed source software.
> I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.
> However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
> Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
> That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
> As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal part of use, so it is a computer.
How do you figure this. Cars did not always have computers in them, and you can still find older cars available.
>The equipment used to manufacture all the pieces of
Who actually cares about this? The consumer should only care about the thing produced.
And yes, he is concerned about microcode--he still uses a Core 2 Duo laptop that can work without the microcode blobs in firmware, as opposed to more modern processors, for that exact reason.
Like the Amish.
Both condemn certain tech, but then use it. Both are not being honest, but hypocrites.
It's also a poor characterization of the anabaptists, for that matter - they are not in general against technology but against the impacts of particular technology (nothing to do with RMS's concerns, theirs are about community).
For example, some anabaptist communities disallow cars, some allow them in limited ways, some allow them completely - but this is decided based not on a doctrine but on their communities evaluation on the impact of peoples housing spreading apart...
You are vastly mischaracterizing the few sentences I wrote.
In the case of RMS it is non-free software tech. In the case of the Amish it is many kinds of tech and depends (as the child comment mentions) on the community. One community I lived among they weren’t allowed to own phones, but they would borrow them all the time.
To call everybody to stop using non-free software phones while depending on thise same people to own them and let you borrow them in order to live is hypocritical. Sorry if that bothers you.
I thought I remembered other instances, but none of them come to mind and obviously googling has turned up a ton of opinion pieces without a lot of actual substantative points made, so I'll leave it at that; not enough to argue that he is, by his nature, a hypocrite, but also not 100% pure to his principles in every circumstance.
In fact, he has stated his principles/policies publicly and clearly, and someone posted it here as well. He never says "You are not supposed to use someone else's cellphone, but it's okay when I use it." That would make him a hypocrite.
Thus your example is a strawman here, with the implicit assumption that he has said "you ought not to use any cellphone" which he never said.
I think most misunderstandings of RMS come from the fact that people project on him what they think he would say and how he would act, not what he actually says and how he actually acts; while assuming he is merely some sort of activist engaging in civil disobedience and boycott, just trying to make a point and show the world a pure example of how to live. The way he should actually be thought of is he is fighting a war against people building proprietary software that, based on his theory, inevitably will lead to unjust power over users' lives through control over their devices. He is very pragmatic in that sense and willing to take any strategic advantage he can get in that fight, not deprive himself of that just to make a point. My understanding is at the beginning he used proprietary UNIX compilers to build GCC, for example.
Maybe he's not being hypocritical, but that position -- I will pragmatically use others' phones for my convenience, but I will not retain one myself -- just seems shitty. Not sure why, maybe because it's even less of a universally applicable tenet than "phones are bad, mmkay," it's just "I'll use the systems as convenient for me, no matter how others may suffer under them."
I think he makes a pretty big tradeoff that nobody else would, without completely shooting himself in the foot. Even if he had a fully FOSS phone, the people he called probably wouldn't. He's drawn the line far enough out that I don't doubt his sincerity.
It's the well dressed, well socially adjusted people with their silver tongues that convinced the masses that giving up privacy is in their interest. People like that are the people responsible for the shitshow we're now observing.
RMS is strongly opinionated, and without that kind of strong conviction, we would be far worse off. I do agree he's taking an extreme position, but when you're standing against giants with money and power, being extreme is sometimes the only way to stand a chance.
For whatever failing RMS has, hypocrite is obviously not one. There are few people on the world who are so consistent in their message and actions as RMS.
Are you sure you fully understand the definition of hypocrisy?
My guess is that this applies to about as many people as the opposite “wants to control their device” stance. Which is to say approximately nobody. Most users probably don’t think about these things much if at all. They want a smartphone that runs the expected smartphone apps and has the expected smartphone features, and do not care whether or not some nerd can install and run some apps they’ve never heard of on his own device.
I imagine, though, that most people would have an opinion one way or the other about phones snitching on their owners.
I wish the android hardware ecosystem had half the longevity you get with the cheapest iphone.
Those are much more fun explanations than just realizing they probably have plants to start the cheering in a room full of fanboys
With current change, they have "partial" E2E encryption and Apple can decrypt them only if CSAM treshold is reached. If we leave all speculation, this is a great improvement for privacy in CSAM context.
You can opt-out from scanning by not using iCloud.
Source?
The distinction still needs to be made between AOSP and whatever ships on your phone or is included in play services. Especially on HN of all places.
That's why I specified "decent smartphone". I wouldn't consider the UX of Android without Play Services to be "decent".
But computers are another story. So far we still maintain some privacy there thanks to Linux.
The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers".
And the computers that don't have "bad apps" are hacked and encrypted by ransomware. Is that better?
Spyware is older than smartphones.
I'd rather give all of my DNA to an advertising company.
Back in the day, before cellular phones, mainframe and minicomputer vendors tried their best to restrict the software that could be run on “their” hardware. They realised that they could squeeze the most out of their customers that way.
Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down. The reason is more that the industry hasn't bothered selling locked-down computers yet by default. The tech is there, Secure Boot + TPM. They just give us the options to override in the BIOS. For now.
It can though. See: GPLv3.
IMO the greatest failure of Linux was not upgrading from GPLv2.
More than half of YC’s hardware startups, not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever. (Android has some means to do so and an audience much more interested in doing so but the point stands.)
I’m also interested in the legal framework around a software license that’s able to dictate the architecture and design of components around the software, and I suspect it will not survive if challenged, particularly in Europe.
The greatest failure of free software, to me, is thinking in absolutes and not studying how the world actually uses computers as time goes on. The concepts, ideas, and demands are stuck in 1991 and are basically “man shakes fist at capitalism,” while writing capitalist exceptions into the very Tivoization clause in question under pressure.
You and I don't seem to share the same definition of Free Software. I personally pay for, and know others who pay for Free Software. Free is about freedom, not price.
> not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever.
All they have to do is not go out of there way to lock down the ability to flash the firmware. It does not require extra effort to support this. It requires extra effort to block this.
They have to release that code anyway. All they have to “invest” in is not implementing measures to prevent people using it.
-- Alan Kay, https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
I have an iPhone, and pythonista is the only potential thing which fulfils the criteria of "computing", everything else is convenience.
Smartphones have done an incredible amount at bringing the consumption of the internet, audio, video and rich communication via social media.
But they have not brought "real world computing", because "real world computing" is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both hardware and software. It has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects.
You might want to read the wikipedia page.
>"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast."
I basically would half agree that iPhone brought more computing. Based on practical applications, iPhone has not brought radically more computing. iPhone replaced some stationary computing with ultra-mobile computing.
Cheap feature phones, that allowed people in Africa to make cashless payments, brought more computing to ordinary people... than expensive iPhone - that is owned by people who have/had other computers.
People who formally require computing - engineers(all kinds, incl software and structural), data collectors, music professionals and so on - still rely on other forms of computing. Some have shifted to iPad, which made computing more fun. But then all of the heavier forms of computing - they are still done on a "computer", not a phone or iPad.
> But computers are another story.
Librem 5 and Pinephone smartphones are computers running GNU/Linux.
With a close garden and close sourced apps, there are basically nothing you can do (to make sure you're not being monitored). Completely at whim, true for regular computers too, but a lot more choices exist for the latter group.
Would it be any different if Dropbox was scanning files before it uploaded them rather than afterwards? It already computes hashes of your files on your device so that it doesn't have to re-upload existing content, so I honestly don't understand the objection to doing image scanning on your device before uploading your content.
But this is not the time to throw our hands up and say there was nothing we could do all along. That the situation was never ideal does not preclude there being something worth fighting for.
The devices are good, but still Apple has a weak value proposition.
Also, handing them your money probably isn't going to make things better in terms of alternatives.
their devices are really good, but they come with so much crippling for the sake of the walled garden that their goodness is wasted in some fronts.
There's a large list of things they are (or can be with minimal effort) perfectly capable for, but are forbidden for reasons, like reverse wireless charge of other iphones / airpods.
In my book that's a step in the direction of privacy, compared to old status quo.
However, unlike with Apple's invasive on-device scanning, you can encrypt files before storing them at Dropbox or Google Drive. There are even simple turnkey solutions like Sookasa:
"Sookasa acts as a transparent layer over Google Drive to encrypt your sensitive files on the cloud and across connected devices..." https://www.sookasa.com/GD
"Sookasa protects data both on devices and in the cloud, and decouples the data from the encryption keys, meaning your data stays secure no matter where it goes." https://www.sookasa.com/dropbox-security/
This isn't a step towards privacy and it sounds (to me at least) like quite the logical contortion to argue that it is.
Why?
What's to prevent them from pushing specific hashes to a specific phone?
There is no technical reason why they could not push individual hashes to individual phones, only policy ones.
I’m going to go further and say that people are doing a very bad job articulating why the incremental privacy risk of the scheme is significant, over the always-existent privacy risk of a proprietary vendor updating software they entirely control to scan data uploaded to a cloud service which guarantees no protection from vendor access. A later software update to include more hashes or whatever could always regress privacy.
The problem with this sentence is that Apple assumes that they can't target specific individuals because every iPhone and iPad user has the exact same database in their iOS device.
But what if they have a hash in the database where they know that only one person has this exact image on their device? This way you could single out one individual with the same database.
The conversation is around Apple, which is critical, but we need to compare them to the rest of the industry, and discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
Then you get to choose whether to push your data to the third party or not, given the risks involved.
The author even notes they were opposed to Facebook's end-to-end encryption previously, I assume because as for defaults it sets a precedent and makes it unsearchable, but I'm not sure the specific tradeoffs they weigh and points they consider since it's behind a paywall (and I'm not sure I agree).
> discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
Right now the differences are essentially per-company, since we've let our experiences be controlled almost entirely by a small subset of companies. To abstract the implementation from the primary implementer is to obfuscate some of the cause and effect here. We should discuss this as a societal tradeoff, as you note, but we should not ignore that this was spurred by a company running out in front of what was required of it and implementing this system which many see as at the expense of their users privacy.
You get to choose whether to push your data to Apple and trigger the scanning with their solution too.
The key escrow option is strictly worse.
That's purely an implementation detail, and subject to change at any time. That's why people are upset.
One solution is limited to you actually pushing your data off your private device, the other is limited to a list of items you say you want to push off your device, but actually happens on your device.
That's the difference between someone searching a large warehouse you and many others have stored belongings, and someone coming into your house and searching through your items freely as long as they're on the list.
Beyond the difference in privacy that search entails fundamentally, people are very worried that the list itself is limited only by policy, and truly, the search of items on that list has full access to your private details but for the grace of those performing the search and controlling the list.
The key escrow option is strictly worse than the current implementation, but it is also naturally constrained and the exposure is entirely user controlled. If you do not put data online in that situation, there is no way for them to process it without first exfiltrating it, which we already have laws and systems in place to hamper.
That’s an evergreen complaint. If they want to introduce a general purpose scanning mechanism they can do so at any time. This is not that.
> That's why people are upset.
I don’t think so. I think they are upset because they don’t like the fact that Apple has any power over them and this remind them of that even though it is not in fact an abuse.
I actually agree with this, but I don’t think that claiming Apple’s implementation to be something it is not is helpful.
The key escrow solution is strictly worse in any future. If key escrow becomes established as a norm between cloud providers and law enforcement, then no free alternative will ever be possible.
I don't think that's true. Systems or programs to encrypt locally before pushing up to a shared platform are possible and currently in use. Those that want that additional security have recourse to get it. Alternatively, people could run their own cloud sync instances (also already available in some forms). This puts the control in the users hands (don't sync to cloud, pre-encrypt to shared cloud, or do some personal sync thing), while also setting a clear precedent of what is acceptable on users personal devices.
The problem here is that this implementation really has nothing to do with cloud sync. Apple has currently linked it to whether you're pushing that data to iCloud, but that's an arbitrary distinction. In the world without iCloud, they could make it scan any media that was sent across the network. The iCloud distinction is entirely arbitrary, which is why people are not satisfied with it. There is nothing beyond promises to keep it that way, and promises are less binding than laws and national security letters.
It is built into the photo uploading mechanism and only scans photos in a very narrow way that can’t be twisted into generic scanning.
> they could make it scan any media that was sent across the network.
Definitely false. It cannot match anything except photos in this very narrow way.
> There is nothing beyond promises to keep it that way,
Not true. The mechanism cannot be used as a general purpose media scanner.
What is true is that Apple could add a general purpose scanner in future, but it wouldn’t leverage this mechanism, and their potential to add arbitrary spyware has always been there and is not changed by this.
The part I object to having my life disrupted by having my personal accounts unilaterally deleted by a fucking buggy bot. Our phones are too important to us to just have them shut off without notice. That’s bullshit.
Scans on a local device feel quite invasive to me. Phones have become an extension of our person, let's not kid ourselves.
In a few places taking pictures of your child naked while swimming is considered child pornography. Other places having children run around naked on the beach is the norm. (I have a few pictures of me, at 3y/o, naked on the beach)
In the world of remote medicine, can a parent take pictures of their naked child to send to a doctor?
How are they going to fit their cultural specifics to the world?
Knowing how Facebook dealt with it - they are going to apply the strictest rules, so no naked child photos are allowed on your iPhone anymore. For no reason.
I was at Apple for more than a decade and a half. I saw an untold number of Michael Bolton bugs [0]. It's one thing when a bug causes a dropped frame in a video or a menu takes a tenth of a second too long to appear. It's another when it ruins your life and bankrupts you defending yourself.
They did this because they want YOUR phone to be a liability not THEIR servers.
by "US government position" I'm including negotiations and proposed/threatened legislation, not just the current laws on the books.
Why limit to iMessage and photos? Why not Signal on your device?
Why not your backups on Apple servers? Oh wait, already happens.
>The bill also crafts two addition changes to Section 230(c)(2)'s liability, allows any state to bring a lawsuit to service providers if they fail to deal with child sexual abuse material on their service, or if they allow end-to-end encryption on their service and do not provide means to enforcement officials to decrypt the material.
You have other Apple services and third-party apps that host material on Apple's servers.
For example, if a user turns on iCloud backups, then every third-party app's Documents directory is backed up to iCloud. Would it be a violation to not CSAM scan that content? What if the contents are encrypted? Would they be required to be decrypted so that they are CSAM-scanned?
iCloud drive is another Apple service that backs up to Apple's servers. Wouldn't its absence from the list be a violation? What if a user hosts encrypted files on iCloud drive? Would the user be required to decrypt them so that Apple can scan them?
It seems that the real intention is to eliminate end-to-end encryption.
Yes. My point is that there's an ongoing dance between the tech companies and the government, and through their negotiations and government connections Apple probably views this CSAM-scanning move as making an EARN-IT-like law less likely to be passed. It's overall the less-invasive option. The US federal government is putting pressure on tech companies not to host CSAM, and if tech giants didn't agree to do stuff like this the government could respond by passing stricter laws to effectively make unbackdoored e2e encryption illegal.
Apple has a lot of influence but at the end of the day they're a US-based company that has to follow US laws. Voluntarily implementing CSAM-scanning is in their own interest as a "pro-privacy" company if it prevents more draconian anti-encryption laws from being passed that could effectively outlaw e2e encryption.
I don't view this as Apple singlehandedly trying to eliminate end-to-end encryption; that seems like a pretty radical view of the situation to me but of course you're free to hold that opinion.
This is more like Apple giving way gradually and the government happy since in the long run they get everything they want.
Examples: we don’t unlock phones for the government… but we give them all the data if you back up your phone… but you have so much privacy!
We don’t read your messages, oh wait now we do, but only for child abuse, oh wait, we don’t control what it looks for but let’s not talk about that because it hurts our marketing
It is weird that Apple would do this in the first place though, it certainly doesn't make me want to use their products.
"End-to-end" encryption is nothing to strive for if you're destroying the ends. With this change, the "ends" become the users themselves. By embedding an agent acting on behalf of Apple/government, the device in front of end users is no longer a tool but rather an adversary. This is computational disenfranchisement.
I’ll show myself out.
This already adds new level of encryption into iCloud stored images. They have essentially created E2EE system with a specific access (or backdoor), while preventing the use of backdoor for other purposes than CSAM (so nobody can ask randomly to decrypt something else). They can only decrypt images, when user's account reaches the treshold of CSAM hash count:
> Only when the threshold is exceeded does the cryptographic technology allow Apple to interpret the contents of the safety vouchers associated with the matching CSAM images.
While this is not perfect end-to-end encryption solution, it is better than only server side encryption. Now there are two levels of encryption. If someone breaches Apple's servers and they have also access for server side private keys, they still need matching NeuralHash value to decrypt the images.
[1]:https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
For argument (2), this might be valid, but yet again, all we can do is to trust Apple, as we do all the time by using their closed source system. Model can be changed, but it is still better option than store everything unencrypted? In case you mean forging hashes to decrypt content.
For the sake of surveillance, it is not strong argument because again, system is closed and we know only what they say. Creating such model is trivial, and is not stopping government for demanding if Apple would want to allow that. System would be identical for antivirus engines which have existed since 1980s.
This is such a PR failure for Apple, because all their incoming features are improving privacy on CSAM area, everything negative comes from speculation which was equally already possible.
I have been browsing their technical papers for couple of days now, and they have managed to innovate a system which has "kind of" end-to-end encryption, but enables access for specific (and only this kind of) content. They have managed to make encrypted system where they can lock themselves out, and can't answer for example the demands of FBI to show all images of specific user.
On the context of CSAM, this is an improvement for privacy, but being able to understand that, it requires great understanding of different technologies.
Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device.
Nothing new really. And they can still keep their promise of a good battery life -- which is quite justified by the way, I am using iPhones for 4 years now and they've consistently won over any of the 13 Android devices that I've used in the years before (and sometimes during).
There are ways to achieve both -- good observable battery life plus ability to use your phone for P2P computation -- and it's IMO obvious that Apple has succeeded in that for several years now.
I find this a bit shocking. Were all of these Android low battery devices?
I don't have a good point of comparison, as I've only used Android on phones, but there are a lot of Android devices with really large batteries and very long battery life. It'd be pretty amazing if iOS were beating them in the real world.
The secret sauce ingredient is the idle battery life. The Android devices I used -- all 13 of them, without exception -- routinely lost anywhere from 15% to 40% battery when I was out and about without me picking them up even once. We're talking anywhere from 2 to 5 hours with them being in my pocket or a backpack, in the middle of a big city, with excellent 4G coverage, so it should not be a constant radio antenna activity (although if their antennas were of lower quality that might just be it).
I installed all sorts of root apps to try and pinpoint the culprit and inevitably hit a brick wall when all the apps can do is point at a system service without any way to drill down further.
In contrast, the iPhones that I've used -- 6S Plus, 8 Plus and 12 Pro Max -- are all extremely frugal on using battery when the device is idle. I've grown used to picking the phone from my bed at 100% battery in the morning on days where I had to do a lot of stuff outside, be out and about for 4-5 hours and only pick up the phone once or twice, and then get back home and find the phone at 98% battery.
Android's idle power draw, at least on the S21 Ultra, is fantastic. I'll sometimes leave this phone on, with no SIM in it but connected to WiFi, sitting on my desk, using it every once in a while for Tik Tok or whatever, and it'll last a week or more. The iPhone is pretty similar.
But display-on time, apples to apples; the iPhone has fallen behind. With the 12 Pro, most days I'll end at 5-10%. At least once every couple weeks, the day will end with the iPhone having already shut down. In comparison, on the S21 Ultra: I give it ~20-40 minutes of charge every day while I'm working, just unplug my USB-C laptop and plug it into the phone, and that's it. I don't charge it at night. Its battery life is ungodly; by the time I go to bed, its at 50-60%. Wake up, plug it in while I'm showering and making coffee, good to go.
A more objective test would be for both to have SIM, or both to not have a SIM. Then again, iPhones have objectively weaker batteries compared to a lot of Androids (as in, less mAh).
I am not claiming that there are no better Android devices nowadays btw; not at all. I'd be happy if the OEMs finally caught up with this nasty problem! I am only saying that back in 2017 -- when I finally lost patience with Android -- things were looking pretty bad for it and for me that was the tipping point that made go for iPhones.
My point is comparing their battery lives when they have the SIM in them. So, not which one lasted the longest yesterday, one with the SIM and one without, but rather comparing across time, how did the S21 (my current phone) fair today, versus how did the iPhone generally fair a few weeks ago when the SIM was in it. Not exactly scientific; just what I've observed and felt.
And the unscientific conclusion I've drawn is that the idle time is pretty similar between the iPhone 12 Pro and S21 Ultra, but the "active" radios-on SIM-in screen-being-used-all-day time definitely favors the S21 Ultra.
> I am only saying that back in 2017 -- when I finally lost patience with Android -- things were looking pretty bad for it and for me that was the tipping point that made go for iPhones.
You're 100% right; Android's track record has been pretty darn bad when it comes to standby time. But, I think its actually gotten a lot better. There are some reports that Samsung's Android flavors, specifically, are very aggressive when it comes to background app killing; that may be it (and, frankly, I don't notice any negative side-effects from it. if its happening, its transparent). Or maybe it was something more general in a later version of Android. Or maybe just huge batteries. But; something has changed.
I'll respond to your earlier post too, but this is actually the answer that I was looking for. The Android world was a very different place back in 2017. The best battery life that I got out of an Android back then was an LG G2. I think that it was competitive with the iPhone, but many other Android devices of the era were not.
Is this true when the device is a year or two old? I've always found iPhone battery life impressive... but only until its about a year old or so. My iPhone 11 plus now requires nightly charging, or I will inevitably hit a Low Battery situation
I also always charge my phone overnight even if it's at 70% (which it routinely is) because I've been bitten by going out and about with 60% charge and having to spend 12h outside and my phone died. So I just started conservatively charging it each night no matter what I expected for the next day.
But yes, for most people an iPhone can easily last two full days and still be at 15-20% when you finally plug it in on the second day's end.
Caveat: every percent is not equivalent. Charging above 90% is harder on your battery than charging from 40-50%. Charging and even just using your battery while it is very hot (90 degrees or above) or very cold (below freezing) is also very hard on it. Apple defines operating temperatures as:
> Use iOS devices where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F)
and claims that using the phone outside those temperature ranges can permanently shorten battery life. Bit silly when you live someplace like I do where 60% or more of days are outside of that operating range, but I guess Apple is really just designing for Cupertino temperatures.
Basically after just 365 days of phone ownership, you're probably already over 50% of your way through your battery and capacity might be reduced by over 10%, up to 19% is still OK under warrantee. I've had a 2016 iPhone SE for over 5 years now, and I've replaced the battery twice in that time. Seems to be essentially required once every two years.
And above it all, batteries are very much a lottery. Sometimes you get a really great one, sometimes your battery falls apart within a year. I guess you got lucky.
Right before I sold that SE to my friend I checked the battery health, and it was in the high 80s. Yet I could not get a full day's use on a single charge. This led me to conclude that that Battery Health measurement was bullshit.
Apparently if I enable analytics I will get a report saying how many cycles my batter has lasted. Unless I use my phone for several hours of playing spotify and youtube I don't notice the battery dying during the day.
I think Android and newer chips have mostly fixed this. The Pixel 5 on my desk right now has gone from 100% to 81% in the last 7.5 hours with 1.25 hours of screen on time during that period. Last week, I had a session of 18 hours with screen on of 4.5 hours that went from 100% to 34%. IMO, idle draw is likely still a little higher, but then again I run a lot of little background apps (eg, tasker, the pebble app, wear os connectivity and others).
Most of my previous Android devices wouldn't have fared nearly so well, even back when I cared enough to spend time trying to find wakelock culprits. Thankfully, I haven't needed to do that in years either. :)
I'm super interested in getting a Xiaomi (and modifying it enough so I can be reasonably sure that it doesn't stream all noise around it 24/7) at some point so hearing about how Android got better in this regard is exciting.
As for the phones, I find I get 2-day charge out of a new iOS device. After 2-3 years it's about as bad as a new Android. 10% low-battery warning, and put in low-power mode right at bed time? It'll still have enough juice for the morning alarm and some morning HN reading. I mean, I try not to rely on that, but it does work. Difference has got to mostly be the software & firmware.
That hasn't been my experience.
My current (very crappy) Mi A1 still lasts 3-4 days with moderate use.
As a iPhone user (that uses an android device for work) myself, I can't confirm this at all.
Still, your anecdotal evidence does not nullify mine.
We don't have a perfect option, sadly. I evaluated Android quite fairly, for about 5 years, and found it lacking. I find the iPhone lacking as well, but in departments that I care less about.
Do with my posts what you will, I'll only say once that I have no bias either way. IMO both sides of the duopoly suck... but I do need a smartphone. I picked what served me better at the time.
I am glad that you got lucky. I had both a Galaxy S4 and Note 4 and both were completely awful on idle battery life; both barely lasted a day in the office with 30 minute commutes in both directions, and no more than 2h of active screen time, if even that. And I had like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr installed at the time. And Gmail. That was literally all I had installed on top of the stock ROM.
I don't get why are you coming here insisting that your experience somehow nullifies mine. That is what I'd call not arguing in good faith. I didn't do anything more except share my bad experience with Android (which is now severely outdated because it ended in 2017) and never claimed anything more than that.
What's your goal here?
> Does the expression "anecdotal evidence" ring a bell to you?
Read the guidelines.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Pretty sure they can infer your normal sleep schedule and, after your phone has fully charged (1h to 3h after you fall asleep) they can freely use it as a P2P computing device.
Do you have any evidence of this, or are you just making up something that sounds good to you?
More likely it's doing the background on-device work that Apple has actively advertised for a long time, like analyzing photos to attach metadata to them. (There's a lot more to this than is obvious at first glance - I can text "penguin" or "sunset" in my Photos.app library and get a set of matching pictures back, for example.)
Obviously I can't know for a fact. I also thought they likely analyze photos and that's my chief suspect even now. But critical thinking demands to keep an open mind -- and that's how I suspect they might use fully-charged iDevices (that are expected to sit on the charger for several more hours) for unsolicited and non-advertised P2P computations.
I don't claim it, I merely suspect it.
Monitor your network traffic.
Lots of people do this already for various reasons and haven't noticed anything like this going on.
You seem to have an axe to grind here and I refuse to participate. I even objectively admitted that I can't know and that I only suspect yet you (a) offer a non-solution and (b) likely downvote a comment because you don't like it.
Sheesh. Fine. You do you.
(The only useful application of that feature is email apps, I suppose; you do want to have your messages downloaded when you unlock your phone because Apple Mail takes ages to sync with Gmail... and it only gets worse with time.)
With that option set to "on" the idle battery life might quickly take a nose dive if you have stuff like Facebook / TikTok / Snapchat et. al. installed.
This sentence:
> Next, iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online
seems to suggest that the hash-matching happens only on iOS and iPadOS.
The rest of the text OTOH suggests many things happen across all types of devices and OSs.
Regardless, this seems very bad.
ETA: Apple quote: "unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices". Unreadable, unleakable, no doubt uninterpretable... unless someone reverses them to get a blurry 'visual proxy' collection.
Perhaps your understanding of the situation has changed so that you better understand how bad it is. But the situation isn't worse.
they do it with 'privacy' in mind and what they come up with is usually better than the worst case but it can still be pretty iffy
eg. a few months back when their notarization/entitlement verification system was being discussed
it's all just their vision of computing (which has some merits), hyper-controlled, locked down and "safe" it's not going to change if you're not comfortable with it you really shouldn't be using their products
Not everyone needs freedom, she's not downloading fitgirl repacks.
As the article points out, the capability to scan things on devices is already deployed on huge swathes of devices in the from of virus scanners and content search indexing. All the photos on iPhones and many Android devices get scanned for text recognition now anyway. I'm sorry, but 'OMG scanning things" is a genie that got out of the bottle decades ago. So no, scanning content is not a dangerous new capability, it's an extensions of existing capabilities to a new use case.
Now arguably this is a further slip down that slope of on-device scanning, but it is not some new watershed moment where scanning is happening for the first time. Also we can see that the trend is not to repurpose existing scanning systems for new purposes. Virus scanning, search indexing, text recognition and now this are all separate mechanisms implemented and operating independently in task specific ways. The prediction that these mechanisms will be subverted for other purposes has not panned out.
The real issue is what is being scanned and why, and the implementation of this system. That's the topic we need to focus on.
that's a ridiculous counterpoint. 1) no iphone has AV 2) AV and content indexing don't secretly contact the feds.
adding a new "background service that sometimes contacts the US government" is a big privacy regression.
This is already a shifted/normalized perspective.
If I rent an apartment or a house, it comes with an expectation of privacy. I don't know where to draw the line exactly, but a dumb storage-only cloud service should carry the same expectations. Things get more complex if a service is actually doing something with the data.
But the broader point is that with cloud services, we've already given up some established legal expectations of privacy without much awareness or realization, let alone resistance.
Disappointing, sure, but not surprising.
Since the introduction of the iPhone, Apple has made it clear that one of their core beliefs is that they alone know better than their users. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are happy to remove user control wherever possible. Their decision here fits that pattern perfectly.
I'm also curious and I don't mean this in a judging way, but are all the people who are planning to sell their iDevices also going to divest all their retirement holdings from Apple? Stock price is the thing that actually applies pressure. Everyone's comp is based on it. What would happen if enough people divested from these rent-seeking companies? We can't expect the government (though they should) or companies to behave in a way that is pro-consumer, but if we can align incentives we have a chance.
To me, it is such a weird implementation. The feature is about scanning on-device data, not data in iCloud, but for some reason disabling iCloud is the way to opt out? Did I miss any technical details?
Apple is always pretty OK with handing over iCloud data to authorities. Not only that they have already stored Chinese users iCloud data in state controlled entity, this was their whole argument regarding the San Bernardino case -- on-device data is user's sacred privacy, but if the shooter's phone uploaded data to iCloud, they were willing to send a copy to FBI in a heartbeat.
This makes me wonder, is iCloud the underlying technical boundary for privacy?
But Apple doesn’t want to know what they host for you on iCloud.
So they need to be sure that before something is uploaded to iCloud, it’s not CSAM.
So if you don’t intend to upload to iCloud (i.e. you disable iCloud on your phone), then Apple doesn’t care anymore if you have CSAM or not.
It is not a guarantee, but it leaves that door open, which currently would face very strong headwinds to get rolled out.
Is this true? I've always assumed apple can always do that (if they somehow needed to).
Sure, they haven’t killed you in your sleep yet… but they sure are acting weird and recently acquired the means to do so
Yeah, this is essentially impossible today. Even personal computers have processors with potentially malicious firmware. In order to get a trustworthy processor to run free software on, we need to limit ourselves to hardware from decades ago.
It's gotten to the point I don't we can trust any computer we haven't fabricated ourselves. Anyone can download a compiler and make their own software but hardware requires billions of dollars worth of equipment and personnel. Software freedom is doomed unless we somehow develop a way to fabricate chips at home.
This way Apple can scan for CSAM without having to actually violate privacy by scanning a user's images themselves.
This is false[1]. Apple can decrypt them, and they can decrypt them and send them to law enforcement should they get subpoenas. They're encrypted at rest with keys that Apple has.
I am a user uploading a photo to the cloud.
Google's servers scan photos after they are uploaded to the cloud, and have done so for the past decade.
>a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account
https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le...
Apple wants the device to scan the photo before it is uploaded to the cloud.
Both are equally invasive and both can only be avoided by refusing to use the cloud.
People have certainly run afoul of the law when the data Google has about them is misused.
>Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
We are only talking about what happens when you try to send the data to the cloud, after all. Not about all the data on the device.
None of this is true. A sibling comment describes the process:
>1. Only if you're uploading files are the files matched. 2. Only if the matches are very close are they considered matches. 3. Only if you have multiple very close matches is Apple able to decrypt the low-res versions of the images themselves. 4. Only if a human reviewer discovers any of the decrypted low-res images to be illegal content is any of your information shared with anyone else.
Google does reporting on how many National Security Letters requesting information about it's users that it responds to annually.
Why doesn't it just ignore them?
So does Apple[1]. Apple gave data on over 31,000 users/accounts based on National Security Letters in the first half of 2020 alone[1].
> Why doesn't it just ignore them?
In the first half of 2020, Apple provided data to the US government (non-FISA or NSL) about 9,000 times, and responded to requests for data with the data about ~85% of the time, and 92% in cases of "emergencies"[1].
Apple does not have a legal obligation to install spyware on your phone (at least not in the US, not yet).
2. What’s more important is you can reverse engineer algorithm that’s used locally to compare these hashes. Unlike with cloud-based searches other providers run, this puts significant limitations to what Apple or LEA can do on your phone. E.g. they can’t extract strings from PDF or grep through image metadata or request all images of certain users without knowing what these images would depict in advance. The frequency of hash database updates even if opaque will still provide more insight into what is being searched for compared to current status quo where public has zero insights because all search / aggregation queries are run on the server.
I get the arguments for why the fix for #2 is too dangerous to be worth it, but also get why they'd be inclined to choose it.
To the user - using your line of reasoning - they're both the same, right?
This isn't supposed to be a technical comparison, I just want to point out that the implementation matters as much (or more) than the customers' experience.
Technically Apple can do a scan regardless of wether or not you posted it to iCloud if they so desired to, or were ordered to.
Do you think it's likely they will do so?
Also, Google sells your data already don't they? Probably not a great counterpoint.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/2021/05/07/google-selling-user...
Nothing is happening to files you don't attempt to upload to the cloud.
Also, if Google is selling everyone's data to third party data brokers, it's news to me.
I am aware, but because the scanner now exists on the device, they have the capability of scanning images on your device regardless of whether or not you upload it to the cloud if they so choose to OR ARE ORDERED TO. Do you not see the difference in capability?
There is also the risk of algorithm mistakes. Without the trust + safety team or any cloud verification, does this just get immediately forward to the FBI?
What is the process to be made non-guilty if the Apple algorithm thinks you have something illegal and you don't if there is no human in the loop involved before it's forwarded to authorities?
At least if you upload to a service someone on the trust + safety team can verify the algo worked properly. I would be very nervous building this kind of system of the risk of false positives! Maybe even so nervous to introduce many more false negatives - which is in itself terrible in the case of something like CSAM.
1. Images which are going to be uploaded to iCloud are matched against known hashes. A match has to be very close in order to actually be flagged as a match. The results are uploaded to iCloud Photos along with your image. 2. If your account hits a sufficient threshold of matches (i.e. you have to have multiple/many images matched) then Apple is alerted and they are able to decrypt low-resolution versions of the relevant stored images. 3. Apple's team performs a manual review of the images to ensure that they are in fact inappropriate images and not false positives. 4. If any of the matched images are actually illegal, then Apple reports you to the authorities.
In other words, there are several safeguards in this process:
1. Only if you're uploading files are the files matched. 2. Only if the matches are very close are they considered matches. 3. Only if you have multiple very close matches is Apple able to decrypt the low-res versions of the images themselves. 4. Only if a human reviewer discovers any of the decrypted low-res images to be illegal content is any of your information shared with anyone else.
In my opinion, this is a vastly better system than literally any other cloud provider at the moment; it allows Apple to find and report even more CSAM with effectively no risk of reporting false-positives to law enforcement, while also preserving your privacy through encryption in transit and at rest.
Didn't Microsoft just start removing people's torrent clients from their computer without permission and announce that you wouldn't be allowed to use your own PC running Windows 11 Home without using an online Microsoft account to log in?
It is at still nice to see people are finally asking these sort of questions.
The majority of Apple hardware purchasers are probably not engaged in illegal activity. Yet all Apple purchasers are being forced to pay the price for Apple's mistake. Apple's hands are not clean.
No Apple purchaser ever intentionally requested that Apple copy their files to servers in Apple datacenters, or that Apple perform encryption intsead of the user, store and forward the user's personal messages through servers in Apple datacenters. Those were business decisions that Apple made to benefit Apple.
Technology allows, all computer users are quite capable of storing their files on their own portable media, and many are capable of encrypting and then sending messages directly to others, peer-to-peer, without leaving a copy with a third party. Technology allows, Apple has choices. No purchaser ever demanded that device storage capacity be reduced or ports for removable media be removed. Nor did any purchaser ever demand that her message be stored with Apple. Those are choices made by Apple, not users. Users should have choices too. Instead they are corralled into a user-hostile vision of personal computing that props up the world's wealthiest companies who horde money offshore while their domicile country falls into chaotic decline.
As the parent comment states, "One's device ought to be one's property..." Apple has actively and aggressively sought to overcome this basic tenet of common sense. As people online argue about "misinformation" please stop and consider the "lies" that Apple and the companies they compete with are telling the public about what exactly it is they do. Apple has taken Jobs' idea of the "Reality Distortion Field" too far.
Computer users need quality hardware. Apple can design and assemble it and be the best at what they do. Users do not need to be manipulated by a hardware vendor after purchase. Where did that idea come from. The sad fact is the "new" Apple is not competing with other hardware vendors. No other vendor even comes close. Apple has set its sights on competing with "tech" (middleman) companies that do nefarious things and cover up the truth. Apple wants user data after purchase. Why. To compete with "tech" (middleman) companies. Bad decision. Users pay the price.
The easiest way Apple could have fixed this problem with storing illegal files would be to stop storing user files and messages! Be a hardware company. Let purchasers use portable storage or arrange their own "cloud storage" with a more "competent" provider (let another company deal with the inherent flaws of the "cloud" concept^1). Let users discover how to encrypt their own data and use peer-to-peer transmission. Let them use the Apple computer to write programs without needing "permission" from Apple. Apple has only tried to hide these basic capabilities and competencies from the majority of new computer users, strengthening the "Reality Distortion Field".
A long line of bad decisions from a hardware company we once admired. They just keep getting worse. And all for what. Greed. Immense untaxed cash reserves held offshore. Why not be a hardware company and stop trying to compete with "tech" (middleman) company surveillance. Why keep dumbing down and locking down what a former CEO once called a "bicycle for the mind".
1. "Cloud" is a synonym for "someone else's computer." "Cloud storage" is another way of saying "storing files on someone else's computer". Perhaps "Apple" is also a synonym for "someone elses's computer". If Aple can exercise control over a computer after they sell it, how it is not still theirs. Purchasers are just "users", not owners.
Let's say the user wants to encrypt a file on her "smartphone" (portable computer bundled with a cellular phone)
Using her own choice of open source encryption program and her own key(s)
Are there even any "apps" that do this; theres an app for that; not this time
AFAICT its easier to encrypt the file using a different computer running an UNIX-like OS then transfer the file (back) to the phone
From there it might be copied to someone else's computer, i.e., a "tech" (middleman) company's data center; this could happen, e.g., when sending "private messages" or when "syncing" with "cloud storage"
When the user encrypts herself with no tech (middleman) company assistance, only the user has the keys and only the user can decrypt
"But users will lose their keys!" - Big Tech industry enthusiast
Tech companies never, ever lose keys, right
The Photos application can’t be removed, but this behavior can be turned off.
I'm no apple apologist but apple must follow the laws of the countries they operate in. They can't advocate for us because we are not the ones setting the rules.
I could do worse, but Godwin called.
But the previous comment was more fun.
At no point are you forced to use either.
You can use Photos without using iCloud.
Fixed it for you. I hope you are not implying that Google, whose bread and butter has been selling personal information, has resisted the temptation for all these years?
I use Apple and it's an informed choice. I am pretty realistic about their practices. And realistically we don't have a choice. Either you use a smartphone and it's a Swiss cheese of security vulnerabilities -- worst of which are embedded in the device on purpose! -- or you don't use a smartphone at all. This is the era we're living in.
I hope that custom ROM Android communities can win and give us back some freedom but I am skeptical. Still, I am open to try some of the de-bloated Xiaomi ROMs at one point. Or maybe put LineageOS / PostmarketOS on them.
The fact that you only mentioned Apple makes it a safe assumption that you only meant Apple. I chimed in to specify that I believe everyone is doing it, and let's stop at that. There's no prize to fight over here.
Speculating it is slippery slope arg. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
"The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect."
> It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html
To pretend it's inherently unknowable right up to the point until it's "too late" is kinda getting old.
> Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.
What if the Chinese government could search every device for images of yellow umbrellas, as part of the HK revolution?
I just don’t see the intrusion.
Firstly, you are syncing your photos to iCloud. It’s equivalent to developing your photos at an old timey film shop.
iCloud happens to have lots of security guarantees, much like the film shop.
But the moment you develop CP, all bets are off. I think most of us lead pampered, selfish lives. Perhaps this is a “think of the children” cry, and perhaps this has been used for many evils over time.
If Apple were to get their lists of hashes from China (a situation they’ve opened themselves up to in the future), then sure, that’s awful. Or if they were doing these checks and alerting law enforcement without iCloud sync, then that’s awful too.
But this doesn’t seem to be a slippery slope, yet. They are targeting a specific case: you uploading your photos, and your photos being of known child sexual abuse.
Yes, there are false positive photos in the database. Maybe there’s even a flower in there. But if you got flagged as a false positive, the moment law enforcement looks at your photos (which, remember, you’ve surrendered to iCloud), you sexually abusing a flower won’t cause any problems.
Or will it? Please, my mind is open. I’d love to change it.
I've been briefed about it. Apple says explicitly that this is not the case. They mention that cropping, transforming, or even desaturating an image won't result in a hash that's so different from the matching one. The similarity will be high enough to detect the photo anyway. They don't seem eager to explain in detail how that actually works, though.
If you want to learn about the algorithm/hashes, you have to, among other things, sign an NDA about it, so it's likely that Apple, legally, cannot go into detail about how it actually works.
Microsoft has a page on it here if you're interested: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna
For obvious reasons, they don't go into a whole lot of detail.
I've learned a lot about how the process works from this blog post: https://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Ba...
He gets a few facts about Apple's approach wrong, but it's an incredibly interesting read.
Thank you for pointing that out though. I had no idea.
If so, then I’ll immediately change my mind and join the protest. Device local scanning is equivalent to someone checking your personal possessions at your home.
From the overview:
> Apple’s method of detecting known CSAM is designed with user privacy in mind. Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC and other child-safety organizations. Apple further transforms this database into an unreadable set of hashes, which is securely stored on users’ devices.
If iCloud is off, do they still do this? Your quote actually doesn’t contradict that, which is my main hangup. If you turn on iCloud, you forfeit certain expectations.
I’ll read through it carefully now.
EDIT: It was the very first sentence of the intro:
> CSAM Detection enables Apple to accurately identify and report iCloud users who store known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in their iCloud Photos accounts.
I don’t get it. It’s their platform. Other image platforms do this matching. Old film shops used to do this matching. Why is this evil?
There’s also the fact that the “only scans local photos marked for upload to iCloud” is a technically thin barrier. A switch that could very easily and quietly be flipped in the future.
Do you have an objection even though it means that the content (in a form readable by anyone else) never leaves your device? Would it be preferable if Apple scanned files that were synced to iCloud, but no longer encrypted them in transit/at rest, or encrypted them in a way that they are able to decrypt?
From the article:
Apple’s choices in this case, though, go in the opposite direction: instead of adding CSAM-scanning to iCloud Photos in the cloud that they own-and-operate, Apple is compromising the phone that you and I own-and-operate, without any of us having a say in the matter. Yes, you can turn off iCloud Photos to disable Apple’s scanning, but that is a policy decision; the capability to reach into a user’s phone now exists, and there is nothing an iPhone user can do to get rid of it.
A far better solution to the “Flickr problem” I started with is to recognize that the proper point of comparison is not the iPhone and Facebook, but rather Facebook and iCloud. One’s device ought be one’s property, with all of the expectations of ownership and privacy that entails; cloud services, meanwhile, are the property of their owners as well, with all of the expectations of societal responsibility and law-abiding which that entails. It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours.