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Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

You think Facebook and Google Photos should be the goal for privacy standards? You and I are practically in different universes then, philosophically.

You're also being naive by swallowing the "it's only iCloud" justification. There is a clear intent to progress to scanning all local photos. After all, if photos must be match those of a government child abuse database, and any matches trigger manual review, what would an innocent person possibly have to hide? By that logic it'd be absurd to not scan just because it's only locally. After all, you're only catching bad guys! This is about protecting the children after all! /s

I oppose government-supplied blacklists. Doubly so when we can't even see what's in the database, but I would oppose them either way.

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What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business?

I don’t appreciate you calling me naive. There isn’t clear intent to scanning all local photos. In fact, it seems like the system was deliberately designed to only work with photos that are being uploaded to iCloud.

> What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business?

When someone is trying to rob you, generally the best thing to do is to hand over your wallet. If a law passes you should obey it for your own sake. That's an entirely orthogonal question to whether we as the users should be outraged or not.

Also while obeying an injust law, a company has a responsibility to legally challenge it in court with their resources, if for no other reason than to avoid the profit loss of having to comply with invasive regulations

Furthermore, it's not clear that this is the direct result of some federal law. It reads more like pro-actively appeasing their federal overlords.

> What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business?

It is good advice not to carry around huge amounts of money on your wallet. Someone might want it and have the power to get it.

Same with megacorps constructing and bragging about tools for oppression:

Better not do it.

Otherwise just be prepared that China will demand that you also upload their hashes of extremely bad photos - and one or two guys they want to get hold of.

It is kind of a Manhattan project for digital privacy - it is meant to bring a quick end to a actual real problem we have - but it has the potential to become a shadow over society for decades if not centuries to come.

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