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Comment by watt | Hacker News Reader

I don't feel like carrying a little police man in my pocket. Unless CSAM is dead and buried, Apple is dead to me.

Even if they end up canning the idea, they have been gaslighting their user base in the past week or so. Their CSAM implementation betrays their earlier statements on privacy, so they are dead to me already.

Since a few days, I have finished switching over from a Mac Mini (M1), iPhone and Watch to a desktop (with a proper graphics card, unlike the M1), a phone with LineageOS (and microG, so no/little Google) and an Amazfit GTR 2e watch. Apple is missing out on 3-4k in purchases from me in this year alone.

Glad I’m not the only one. By the end of this week I’ll have:

- synology nas to replace iCloud

- XPS 13 (hopefully running Linux, or at worst a heavily locked down Windows 10)

- Pixel 4 with grapheneOS

I’ll be selling my 12 Mini, M1 Mac Mini, Watch 6, and iPad; Apple services subscriptions have already been canceled. Signal seems to be a capable replacement for iMessage so far.

I was really looking forward to the fall hardware announcements, but I’m glad I found out Apple is an untrustworthy actor before I gave them any more $$$

> synology nas to replace iCloud

As a data point, make sure you have some kind of backup for that NAS too. Preferably not stored in the same location as the NAS itself (just in case). :)

New customers too, I was thinking about going to pretty extreme lengths just to use an iphone (I'm not willing to give up on usb-c + headphone jack, but loved the privacy aspect, so was considering a usb-c charging case with a small DAC strapped to the back of it), but with the privacy aspect gone, that seems a bit pointless.

I'm not gonna sell my iPad or anything, but I have no plans on vaulting into the walled garden now

Same here I was going to buy an iPhone and waiting for Mac update, but now I am going buy Xperia and still researching a laptop.

If you're still in doubt about the phone, I recommend OnePlus devices, because they seem to generally work well with the microG variant of LineageOS (https://lineage.microg.org/), which allows you to break free from Google too. Alternatively, Pixel devices also support a wide range of ROMs, including LineageOS. With microG to replace Google Services, you still get push notifications, but without having to log in with a Google account. I've got a OnePlus 8T for 3 days now. The OnePlus 9 sadly isn't yet supported by LineageOS, and the 9 Pro has some downsides that I don't like.

I have a strict rule to not buy anything made in China if I can get an alternative from a different country so my choices are quite limited.

Are there any smartphones definitely made outside of China? I know that Apple has a new factory in India (or similar) but still does some production in China.

Samsung makes most of their premium phones outside of China.

That looks like a great watch! Thanks for the suggestion. I'm in the process of leaving the Apple ecosystem as well and have been looking for a Watch replacement. It's this or the Galaxy Watch 4.

You're welcome! If you want more features, the GTR 2 (regular, not "e") is only ~20 EUR more and gives you WiFi and some storage for music and some other extra features. The GTR 2e supposedly last much longer on a charge though. I've got the "always on display" feature activated and I project to have 7-10 days of battery life.

I guess Apple makes too much revenue and tries to get rid of customers. They have to have counter incentives for customers, or they won’t be able to provide everyone.

I don't either.

But my personal boycotts of mainstream social media, advertising, and weaponised viral clickbait have had absolutely no effect on the general adoption of such practices.

Collective action and regulation are what is required here. Parliaments are the effective mechanism. Possibly class-action suits.

I usually argue for Apple, but in this case I fully agree with CSAM hate.

This isn't Minority Report.

Without arguing the merit of your personal position, "this isn't Minority Report" is a terrible argument. Minority Report is about pre-crime. If someone has CSAM on their phone (and it's not a false positive), they are already actively committing a crime.

Ridiculous. So if I use malware to insert CSAM on your iPhone, you're "actively" committing a crime? CSA is a crime, but a person suspected of that must be properly tried through the judicial process. Private entities can also monitor what passes through their premises, but they have no business planting continuous surveillance functionality on your premises without a court warrant.

Everyone knows that the worst CSA happen in lawless countries and regions. This is mere pretext to build generalised surveillance infrastructure, or more importantly, normalise the concept of being continuously surveilled by faceless entities. That is the big push society is heading generally towards. It started with CCTV and will end with brain implants, unless society decided enough is enough at some point instead of endless hair-splitting.

The law still views willful possession as a crime, otherwise we wouldn't be here. I agree that does open up the possibility that you could frame somebody by planting CSAM on their device. Building mass surveillance features into the device only makes that easier to accomplish than before.

But everybody agrees that outlawing the possession of CSAM in general is the right thing to do. This was the case even in a time when the Internet was still in its infancy.

In what scenario would somebody target you for CSAM framing, and not tip off the police that there was CP on your phone themselves?

The apple technology only adds passive detection. In the event of a framing, passive detection is not necessary.

This technology doesn't enable any new attacks.

On the contrary, with passive detection you don't have to risk tipping the person off to the police yourself, so it becomes even easier to frame people.

By crossing your fingers and hoping that the Apple reviewers mistake the grey blobs for porn, the NCMEC reviewers mistake the grey blobs for porn, and the police, DA, and judges all mistake the grey blobs for porn, and that the person being targeted doesn't notice the mysteriously appearing grey blobs on their phone in time for that entire process to happen?

Or you could find pornographic pictures with a person that looks quite young in them, and slighly modify the picture until you get a collision.

And why would anybody be more interested in framing somebody with an image that looks so similar to child porn that it convinces dozens of professional child-porn investigators and yet technically isn't, instead of just sending the actual child porn?

They neeed to already have the original image to make the hash collision. In your scenario, what does the attacker gain from sending a visually-indistinguishable collider instead of the original?

They gain that the image won't be detected by CSAM detecting systems on their devices.

Yes, it would, because they need to have the original CSAM image in order to forge the hash collision. This method doesn't work unless you have the original photo to look at, meaning that your device will be raising alerts just as much as the targets, except you will be the only one incriminated since the target doesn't actually have any CSAM, only the hash-collided fake that you've made.

You don't need to, you only need the hash itself to create a collision. Which means that you only need a malicious actor to steal and/or sell the hashes.

And how then are they going to make an image that is visually indistinguishable from the original?

Remember: the hash collision is only the first step in the process. You also need to convince the Apple reviewers that the image is pornographic, and convince the NCMEC reviewers that the image is in fact the same as the one that it met a hash match with (apparently by magic, since you're imagining that the original image that you have to make a visually-indistinguishable match to isn't available).

I ask again: how is this process any more potent than any regular old fashioned pornography framing?

We will have to try brain implants at least once to know it’s a bad choice

The merit of my personal opinion is reflected on the Apple hardware that I will be willing to still spend money on.

If enough people do the same, Apple will realise how much merit our opinions collectively achieve.

I already sold my apple stocks and try to leave the lock-in they have on me and my devices.

The tragic but most likely outcome of this debate will be: most people just won't care, they will continue to buy and use Apple hardware as if nothing happened. The average consumer does only hear about the idea of protecting kids and approves this noble goal. Most consumers just do not care about the consequences this can have on their privacy.

If people would really care about their privacy, Facebook and Instagram wouldn't be as big as they are, nobody would use facebook messenger for communication and a lot fewer people would use Windows and Android. Despite the warning of privacy advocates, experienced users, etc, people don't seem to care and I doubt this will change with the CSAM debate.

I could argue that this actually might be different since Facebook and Instagram is opt-in. I think regular users understand that if they willingly upload a picture to a social media site, even if it is in a DM, it _might_ be "hacked", so you can choose not to upload that how-the-fuck-do-i-look-naked-from-behind mirror selfie and be completely confident that no-one will see this (cloud sync off). But now, if the general public will find out that every photo you take, period, is "analyzed", maybe people will start choosing otherwise. I think we will have to see.

On could argue that this is scanning is also opt in, it requires you to purchase an iPhone. Also, at least according to Apple's provided material, the scanning only affects images which are uploaded to the iCloud, so not every image on the device. However, how long that restriction actually holds once the system is in place is questionable. Also, the risk of abuse by authorities as well the fact that there is no way to monitor the system as a user is a huge part of the problem.

Agreed.

I bought a pine phone when they announced it. Looking forward to leaning into it when it arrives.

I know there will be some pain, but I'm getting off the ride here.

I agree with this sentiment fully. Apple's CSAM is laying the foundation for a surveillance network to spy on its users - (Apple is Preparing to Comply with Indian Govt's New IT Rules - iPhones (and other Apple devices) will soon start deploying built-in surveillance to spy on its users. https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/oyqjq0... ).

The real problem is that their are no real alternatives

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