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If you’re Apple, and you’re throwing your weight around in the US bread and butter market to convince the FBI to not scan your servers for CSAM, which is more compelling: we check for it when it gets here, or we keep it off our servers using crypto hash magic?

CSAM on the server means the server is tainted and likely to be searched by governments. Good plan to keep it off eliminates that excuse.

Everyone’s going to get COVID eventually. Natural immunity + 3 rounds of the vaccine are probably enough to make it acceptable level of deadly.

“Zero COVID” was never possible.

> If this is the case there is zero reason to scan locally and you can just scan the uploaded image once it is on the server.

You’re having a house party. Because of the pandemic, you’d rather people who have COVID not attend. You can’t trust everyone to get vaccinated or get tested beforehand. So, you decided to set up a rapid-test system, just to be sure.

Would you rather test in your kitchen or your driveway?

That this article is even necessary proves that our leadership in the west has utterly failed to convey the goal of Coronavirus suppression tactics. Either that, or the sensible message is being morphed, funhouse mirror style, even through the most banal of media outlets.

COVID-19 in some form was always going to be around forever. The goal was never complete eradication. Perhaps the miracle of the mRNA vaccine led us to fantasize, a little too openly, about going back to the pre-pandemic status quo. But that was never going to be the case.

Personally, I’ve already moved on. I’ll wear a mask as the situation dictates. I’ll get the boosters. I’ll keep mailing in my nasal tests twice a week and check the results. I’ll keep an eye on the hospital numbers and modify my risky behavior as needed. I won’t argue with people about the mask, about vaccines, about the origins. I’ll work from home as long as they’ll let me and go into the office when they say I’ve got to — or I’ll find another job.

I’ve already made peace with this thing. I’ve moved on. If I get it, I get it — but there’s no real use in obsessing over it any longer. I’ve adapted, and I’m ok with that.

I already do, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all bound up together and there are no choices I could make that mitigate the deleterious effects the industry has.

You’re free to label that histrionics, but I’m the one who has to face myself in the mirror.

There is no serious threat the US Dollar as the global reserve currency. China is a currency manipulator and is teetering on the edge of collapse because of their monetary management. Bitcoin is far too unstable and represents a relinquishment of government control over monetary policy, which no sane government will give up. To put it bluntly, governments would rather the US control the world’s money supply than to give up control to the blockchain, which is poorly understood and far too risky to use outside of speculative markets and small scale experiments.

No. https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-369404345862

Off topic but your response is spot on, and a key justification for why I want out. I want out of Silicon Valley. I want out of tech, out of screens, out of all of it.

I’m using COVID as an excuse to move away and start drawing down my involvement with all of it. I spent years trying to work my way into one of the few tech companies I considered at least nominally not trying to ruin the world for money but that’s not even enough.

We have built a dystopia, and short of finding a way to dismantle it that still lets me pay the rent and eat and not resign myself to a cat food retirement, I just want to get as far away from it as possible.

Lenovo? After Superfish? Interesting choice.

EFF lost credibility on this issue when their first statement conflated the iMessage safety for kids feature with the CSAM scanning. It’s clear that they are willing to fearmonger to raise money and aren’t committed to the cause of educating users and advocating a nuanced position. I cancelled my recurring donation.

One would hope, but this severely overestimates the common user’s awareness of such features or their implementation on their devices. Check out this survey from 2019, where a majority of iPhone users of all stripes could not identify the phone they use:

https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphone-users-survey-201...

To put it bluntly, this fantasy that any significant portion of people who live east of Tahoe even knows, much less cares, about CSAM scanning is plainly absurd. All the headlines and breathless coverage about the fatal mistake Apple is making has resulted in… Apple’s stock soaring to record highs.

Some creeps will get caught. Some will switch to another way of sharing that material. Apple will get shielded from liability for hosting this content in iCloud.

Yep. This has already bitten one employee of Apple:

https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1428495420917837826?...

It's a damn shame, and a good reason to never, ever mix work and personal devices.

To be clear, the content being scanned in messages is not a hash check against a database. It’s a plain old nudity detection algorithm similar to what Facebook has.

I’m in the same boat. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself continuing to donate to them, given the terrible job they’ve done on this topic. I trusted them to bring nuance and clarity —- really liked what they did in response to the cash bail discussion in California —- but this was too much of a miss for me.

I’m still a fan of the ACLU, even with their spotty record on gay rights, but it might just be a matter of time.

That being the case, why do it client side at all, when presumably every claim they make is verifiable?

There is no consumer grade device that is secure against state actors.

NECMEC isn’t owned by the government and the database of hashes is available from Apple.

Privacy means “you pay for the device so we don’t sell your attention to advertisers.” That’s it. There’s no protection against state level actors (Pegasus, CSAM scanning, etc.).

If your threat model includes being the target of someone who will plant child pornography on your phone, you are already fucked. And no, Apple isn’t suddenly going to scan Chinese iPhones for Winnie the Pooh memes. They don’t have to. China already has the 50 cent party to do that for them, on WeChat.

Basically everything everyone seems to think is just around the corner has already been possible for years.

BigCos, take note: you’re better off doing nefarious shit without telling anyone. Because, if you come clean, you’ll only invite an endless parade of bloggers who will misconstrue your technology to make you look bad.

> PrEP has some nasty side effects. Those who take it need to get their organ function checked every few months (I think just kidneys?).

Please don’t spread this FUD. The side effects are rare and reversible by stopping the medicine. The checks are also required to check for other STIs.

Absolutely. One of the best things about the US is that we have a culture which is adept at integrating immigrants. The US will stave off demographic collapse because of this.

Also the blue light thing is bullshit anyway.

> But with Apple's CSAM proposal is NOT possible to have an iPhone that Apple isn't continuously scanning

This is not accurate. Scanning doesn’t happen without iCloud photos enabled.

>Food shortage is going to cause riots in US, Canada, and EU for sure

The US (along with France) can easily supply all the food they need to its citizens. Along with the alliances with Mexico and Canada, the US is not going to have food shortages, much less riots.

China, on the other hand, is definitely screwed on this front. All of its neighbors are either outright enemies or begrudging allies. As the global order continues to collapse, China will see constraints on its shipping routes that will lead to shortages of key goods.

The food shortages won't hit as bad, though, since the population is declining. Just not fast enough, unfortunately.

>Is there a way to disable that?

It's a feature of Communication safety in Messages. This is opt-in.

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

EFF conflates the CSAM detection and the iMessage safety features in the first paragraph. Disappointing that they can’t make their case with the facts.

I would have settled for an acknowledgement that users are demanding this change. No need to fake believing it’s a good thing for users or Facebook’s business, even. Simply: “Users are becoming increasingly concerned with how their data is processed. To meet this concern, and maintain personalization that benefits them, we…”

But they couldn’t muster that.

> With Apple and Google continuing to make changes via their browsers and operating systems, and with the changing privacy regulatory landscape, it’s important to acknowledge that digital advertising must evolve to become less reliant on individual third-party data.

Nothing in there about the users at all. Just “we’ve been forced to do this by others.” Facebook truly believes privacy is just an obstacle to their revenue, not something good for the people who use their product.

If there were any signal that Facebook is really, truly a net negative for humanity it’s that opening paragraph. Christ.

You can just not use iCloud Photos and the scanning won’t happen.