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Comment by franga2000 | Hacker News Reader

franga2000

From the article:

> "He was trying to get around getting caught, he was trying to keep it inside his email," said Detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce reports the station. "I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can."

"email" here is presumably Gmail, which Google owns and is responsible for. The dude was storing illegal data on Google servers in plain form. His personal devices were only checked by LEOs after a warrant was issued. Definitely not the same as Apple scanning the images on your device (not their servers).

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IIRC, Apple will only scans if iCloud photo is enabled:

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...

> This feature only impacts users who have chosen to use iCloud Photos to store their photos.

This is a red herring. It wouldn't need to happen on device then, because iCloud Photos are not end to end encrypted and Apple can scan them on the server side today and achieve the same result.

The only reason to scan clientside for a cloud service is to scan files that are not uploaded, or are end to end encrypted.

Apple already maintains an e2e backdoor (in the form of non e2e iCloud Backup) for the FBI and US intelligence agencies. It is extremely unlikely that they will e2e encrypt iCloud Photos.

I think you just hit on exactly what the plan probably was. I suspect this was the first step in making iCloud photos (not backup) E2E encrypted.

I suppose had they not gone down this road, the headlines would have been "Apple makes it easier to share child porn online".

I said unlikely: they maintain an e2e backdoor in iCloud Backup. Technically, e2e encrypting iCloud Photos at this point would be a no-op as Apple is already escrowing the device e2e keys in the backup (eg for iMessage).

I doubt they'd bother doing e2e for iCloud Photos if they're intentionally not doing it for iCloud Backup.

> Apple is already escrowing the device e2e keys in the backup

Citation? I don't believe this is correct, or at least it's an incomplete assertion.

Assuming they do get with the iCloud backup, these keys would be inside the device's Keychain file which is encrypted at rest by the Secure Enclave. Thus even with access to a full, unencrypted backup of your iPhone, the keychain itself cannot be decrypted by Apple

(It can't be decrypted by you either, if it's restored to different hardware. This is why iCloud Keychain exists. And that is end-to-end encrypted.)

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