There’s a significant leap from implementing something server side to on the consumer handheld devices themselves. Even if it’s just similar software it is regardless much more serious.

I personally thought the unencrypted backups was enough of a death-knell as it provides everything on your phone but anything with real-time on device access is always a gold mine for surveillance hawks.

It's serious to you, but CSAM scanning is irrelevant to 99.99999% of Apple's customers, and Jobs would never have allowed an announcement about migrating CSAM scanning from uploads to the cloud to the device uploading to the cloud. That's an implementation detail that wouldn't be relevant to discuss with outsiders. Instead, I expect he would have presented it in a closed session to the FBI and/or Congress. Never to the press, not like this.

> CSAM scanning is irrelevant to 99.99999% of Apple's customers

How long until an group of governments tells Apple to add Tank Man to the list?

Why would they bother? That's a terrible way to approach it.

Just pass legislation requiring in-country datacenters that can be decrypted by thoughtcrime enforcers, like Russia and China are doing. Trying to get this done via a CSAM list that's absurdly closely audited would be a huge waste of time and not provide any significant benefit, and if such a request were ever made public, would likely result in severe political and economic sanctions.

That's what everyone's missing in this argument. There's no need to be all underhanded and secretive when you can just pass laws and conduct military-backed demands upon companies using those laws. Trying to exploit the CSAM process would be a horrifically bad idea, and would result in public exposure and humiliation, rather than the much more useful outcome that simply passing a law would provide.

Without the technology deployed, Apple can (and did) say they don't have the ability to break into users' phones.

If Apple deploys on-phone scanning, governments can just tell Apple to support a new list. It won't be the NCMEC CSAM list. It will be a "public safety and security" list. I wouldn't rule out underhandedness either. [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/technology/china-uighurs-...

Apple already has technology deployed to perform binary file scans of every file on macOS and iOS, and the ability to at any time release signatures for those scans, that are very difficult for normal users to prevent updates for. They've had that for years, maybe even a decade by now, and so far to date we have seen no abuse of that list.

How is Apple's new CSAM list somehow increasing the chances of Apple going rogue, given that we've all been living with that risk for the past X years?

What technology are you referring to as already deployed?

For macOS, I'm talking about XProtect and MRT. I don't know the exact subsystem names on iOS, apologies.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/protecting-against-...

Each system is closed source, provides a mechanism for checking content signatures against files on disk, and is thought to report telemetry to Apple when signatures are found.

How is CSAM scanning new and different from those existing closed-source systems?

I'd say the primary differences are that the CSAM scan is a perceptual hash rather than a regular file hash, and that the technical infrastructure of the CSAM system is designed from the ground up to be used against (rather than for) the user and report them individually to authorities for violation.

Do you have an alternate design in mind that is both "used for the user", and is also effective at reporting CSAM content being uploaded from the device, without allowing CSAM abusers to opt-out of that reporting? I haven't been able to come up with anything myself, but maybe you've had better luck.

I can only point to other people who know more than me.

https://stratechery.com/2021/apples-mistake/ is a smart tech commentator

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/apple-iphones-pri... are two security/encryption experts

Exactly this. I see lots of people saying that Apple are forced to implement something via legislation as if it’s an excuse for it.

If they want to do business in China they will be forced by their legislation.

My entire argument is don’t build the mechanism.

China forced Apple by legislation to implement new iCloud algorithms for assigning China-region user data into China-hosted datacenters. Most countries, unlike the US, are not constrained by a requirement to only exercise previously-built mechanisms and not create new ones, in response to government demands. If China decides to require Apple to censor non-CSAM content on-device, they will do so whether or not CSAM content fingerprinting exists. That China has not done so is because they benefit greatly from Apple's manufacturing and sales and do not wish to create a diplomatic incident with Apple.

> China-hosted China-decryptable datacenters.

China hosted, yes, but Apple denies China-decryptable, so that’s speculation unless you have a good source.

Nope, that's just me remembering wrong. Deleted those two words, thanks for the correction :)

until ios source code is closed all privacy claims is only backed by trust. They easily can do whatever they want if you're not compiling from source. There's no way to ensure your data is not leaving your iphone/mac with some "system" network requests.

Security researchers and hackers routinely look at the code on the device, though.

Well Steve Jobs was the one that resisted PRISM and gave the middle finger to NSA.

NSA PRISM was and illegal and warrantless text analysis and search system for most communications on the Internet, collected all communications without bothering to filter at all, and had no protections in place to prevent people from randomly searching and reading content out of human curiosity.

Apple's CSAM implementation protects the user against algorithm defects, does not expose the user to legal trouble until they have at least 30 human-verified visual matches of CSAM content, and occurs on-device using a small set of confirmed and audited signatures to ensure that CSAM scanning requires a central system only for verifying the unverified, blurred, positive matches.

I would hesitate to compare Steve Jobs' views on PRISM to his likely views on something that is so clearly opposed to it in so many ways. So I do not yet understand your viewpoint that Apple CSAM scanning and PRISM would have been treated equally by Steve. Help me understand?