Re:Apple defends anti-child abuse imagery tech after claims ...
by daxuak on Thursday August 19, 2021 @01:27PM
(#28236713)
Words in interviews mean little to me. If it's impossible to hold a cooperation accountable when the verbal promise is broken, that promise, not word-by-word but in its spirit, is void from the beginning.
This is just my biased view but there _could_ be countless ways to slip the slope without violating the current framing. For example:
Q: What happens when other governments ask Apple to use this for other purposes.
A: We will inform them that we did not build the thing they’re thinking of.[1]
Note that the question could be interpreted as "use this exact implementation" (rather than use the algorithm in general), and the answer does not rule out the possibility of "but we can build the thing for them then" (rather than "we don't have it and we will never have it"). The reader is free to interprete the conversation as they see it.
This is just my biased view but there _could_ be countless ways to slip the slope without violating the current framing. For example:
Q: What happens when other governments ask Apple to use this for other purposes.
A: We will inform them that we did not build the thing they’re thinking of.[1]
Note that the question could be interpreted as "use this exact implementation" (rather than use the algorithm in general), and the answer does not rule out the possibility of "but we can build the thing for them then" (rather than "we don't have it and we will never have it"). The reader is free to interprete the conversation as they see it.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... citing [2]
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/technology/apple-iphones-...