> The automated system would proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected, who would then contact law enforcement if the material can be verified. The scheme will initially roll out only in the US.
This is dystopian and needs to be opposed, not applauded.
As others mentioned, privacy erosion only goes one way. This is a frontier being breached, i.e. searching your physical device without a warrant, and as usual in the name of CP (the alternative typical pretext being terrorism). It won't take very long before this gets extended to any illegal activity. Gay dating was an illegal activity until not so long ago. This sort of chinese-style monitoring is not desirable in any way, and I find it appalling that Apple seems to want to be the sponsor.
Apple’s system is less invasive in that the screening is done on the phone, and “only if there is a match is notification sent back to those searching”, said Alan Woodward, a computer security professor at the University of Surrey. “This decentralised approach is about the best approach you could adopt if you do go down this route.”
Don’t need to MITM when you put an M at an end.
If they get a subpoena and then maybe send some kind of file list/checksums they've been required to hand over to some 3rd party / government? That's possible, but an entirely different situation.
Furthermore in principle there's no reason this has to be, or will be, just CP. First it'll expand to blatant terroristic images, say ISIS beheading type videos. Then it will progress to subversive material: COVID "misinformation", "domestic terrorism" (read: anyone the feds don't like), the list goes on. This tool and its successors will be used to completely abolish the concept of device privacy and will be used to ruin the lives of anyone who sufficiently pisses off the feds. And that's just in America, god knows what they're going to do with this system in China.
2. This article only provides evidence to say Apple will scan photos you upload into iCloud. Scanning local photos is your speculation.
3. The operation of NCMEC and the blacklist is defined by the Federal government. American (citizens) have some mechanism to oppose this design. Apple could perhaps lobby against it, but their lobbying operations are famously minimal.
4. In principle, Apple could do anything. That doesn’t really inform what they’re likely to do. Just like in principle, anyone could slip a malicious content scanning patch into the Linux kernel (and this already has a POC!).
Ok so they’re planning to eventually roll out this spyware worldwide. I do not know how Americans can think China is bad in this while allowing this to happen.
Also, while there's a lot to be said about court systems, public defenders etc in US I wouldn't compare the two.
Also China doesn't count Uyghurs as incarcerated despite the fact that the PRC is committing genocide against them.[1] The PRC imprisons almost 2 million of Uyghurs a year. Of those, around a quarter million die. Oh and there's the forced sterilizations, destruction of mosques, brainwashing, banning of muslim-sounding names[2], forced labor, organ harvesting, and mandatory quartering of government agents.[3]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_laws_in_China
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Servant-Family_Pair_Up
China doesn’t count Uyghur extremists as incarcerated for the same reason the US doesn’t count their brethren it kills en masse in Middle East as death sentences. It’s just a different thing.
As for the rest of the list - most of it is just US state propaganda calling resocialization programs “brainwashing”, or leveling commercial buildings built without building permit “destruction of churches”. Some of that works exactly the same in US (forced labor), or is just entirely made up (“quarter million die”).
Now, some of the stuff is a real problem of course - death sentences and organ harvesting - but throwing it together with the usual US propaganda doesn’t help the cause.
That's not true. If you released everyone convicted of a drug crime (including manufacturing, selling, or distributing), you'd decrease the US prison population by 20%.[1] I'm all in favor of ending the drug war, but that won't do much to the incarceration rate. Also, the drugs that are illegal in the US are just as illegal in other developed countries (if not moreso). To use one example: in the UK, you can get up to 7 years in prison for simply possessing LSD or shrooms, and life in prison for for supplying or producing them.[2] No european country has legalized recreational marijuana[3], while the state I live in legalized it a decade ago. Now look at China's drug laws. While in China I've been solicited for all kinds of illegal goods and services, but never drugs. Stolen or fake merchandise? Sure. Prostitution? Of course. But drugs? Not a chance. The reason for this is that China executes people for drug possession. They randomly test foreigners entering the country and prosecute them even if they have no drugs on them.[4] The government raids nightclubs and residences, then forces everyone to take drug tests and prosecutes them if they test positive.
But please go on about how oppressive the US is.
I've seen you comment on China several times before and it's always in favor of the PRC. This confuses the hell out of me. Consider this: We could not have this discussion in China. To contradict the official narrative there is to risk your career and your freedom. Yes, the US and other countries have big problems, and it's good to try and fix them. But the level of surveillance and oppression in China is unlike anything in the west.
1. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#firstmyth
2. https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing
3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-of-world-cannabi...
4. https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china/local-laws-an...
Regarding other countries - what would happen (and happened) to countries that refused to join War on Drugs?
Regarding possession - in UK essentially nobody cares, unless you’re distributing industrial quantities and/or are really obnoxious about it, eg walk into Constabulary smoking a joint, or by putting up advertisements. There are regular news about eg police finding a suspect car parked for six hours with engine on, filled with smoke (actual example I remembered because it’s funny) and they don’t result in charges. I suppose the law could be used if you also committed other offenses.
As for not being able to talk politics in China: where all the policy and law changes come from then? And if you can freely talk in the US, why so many people have many throwaway accounts here on HN?
Anyway: yes, China is oppressive in a number of ways. It’s about one generation behind the US, except for racism, where it’s ahead. US itself is perhaps a generation behind Western Europe. But everyone knows what’s bad about China, and everyone knows what’s good in the US. Anti-Chinese propaganda is everywhere, and I find it quite annoying. Particularly so because it detracts attention from real problems - if American propaganda is lying about genocides and missile silos, why assume other parts are true? Secondary: all the bad stuff in China stays in China. They don’t routinely exterminate hundreds of thousands people in other countries for financial or racial reasons. They don’t intentionally ruin other nations’ economy. The US does. And I feel like this perspective is entirely lost among western population.