And not only that, but with a little footnote saying "* Features available in the U.S." - in other words, publicly and on the record: this can be switched on and off on per jurisdiction. If another jurisdiction comes and says "here's my list of hashes of illegal images", how can Apple say "sorry, can't do..."?
You are also right that it would take a lot for me to trust Apple again and they are unlikely to do the things required for that since transparency, openness are not typically how they operate.
Agreed. And the same holds for this subversion of user control of devices. It too is beyond abhorrent and morally reprehensible.
One stokes an intimate and personal fear or revulsion, something that any parent or anyone with empathy will feel.
The second allows for quiet enforcement of the subversion of the relationship the state has with it’s citizens.
Both are awful, but in their own incomparable way.
iPhones running current iOS are not rare at all. Much of our society carries and uses them.
They are not equivalent in scale.
Subverting every iPhone in the world (or country) to spy for the pigs is a much worse crime than all of the CSAM in the world (or country).
In fact, it is the more insidious danger of the two, since it can easily strip you from all your freedoms while not evoking as visceral a reaction as the first one.
Prior to this when a government tapped Apple on the shoulder asking to scan for what they (the government) deem illicit material, Apple could have feasibly say "we cannot do this, the technology does not exist".
Now the box is open, the technology does exist, publicly and on the record - Now we are but a national security letter, or a court order with an attached super-injunction, away from our computers and phones ratting us out for thought crime, government critique and embarrassing the establishment. At first it's the photos, but what about messages and browsing history or the legion other things that people use their devices for, when do they follow?
CSAM is beyond abhorrent, morally reprehensible and absolutely should be stopped. This is not in question. And I have no reason to doubt that there is sincerity in their goal to reduce and eliminate it from Apple's perspective.
But they have root; this system and it's implementation is a fundamental betrayal of the implicit trust that their users have placed in them (however foolish it was, in hindsight). It just is not possible to regain that trust now that it is gone, when the level of control is so one sided and the systems involved are so opaque.