In other words, extracting the code and analysing it to determine that it does do what you expect is, although not easy, still legal. But the source, the CSAM itself, is illegal to possess, so you can't do that verification much less publish the results. It is this effective legal moat around those questioning the ultimate targets of this system which people are worried about.

So in a world where Apple pushes you to set up icloud photos by default, and can do whatever they want there, and other platforms have been doing this sort of of thing for years, it's a bit startling that "on device before you upload" vs "on uploaded content" triggers far more discontent?

Maybe it's that Apple announced it at all, vs doing it relatively silently like the others? Apple has always had access to every photo on your device, after all.

There's certainly a slippery-slope argument, where some future update might change that scanning behavior. But the system-as-currently-presented seems similarly trustable.

And that's assuming they weren't actively hiding anything by e.g. splitting them up into chunks that could be slipped into legitimate traffic with Apple's servers.

The most-optimistic take on this I can see is that this program could be the prelude to needing to trust less people. If Apple can turn on e2e encryption for photos, using this program as the PR shield from law enforcement to be able to do it, that'd leave us having to only trust the OS vendor.

What I find interesting is that so many people find it worse to do it on device, because of the risk that they do it to photos you don't intend to upload. This is clearly where Apple got caught off-guard, because to them, on-device = private.

It seems like the issue is really the mixing of on-device and off. People seem to be fine with on-device data that stays on-device, and relatively fine with the idea that Apple gets your content if you upload it to them. But when they analyze the data on-device, and then upload the results to the cloud, that really gets people.

But that ship has long sailed, right?

Every packet that leaves a device potentially incriminates its owner. Every access point and router is a potential capture point.

It's not scanning; it's creating a cryptographic safety voucher for each photo you upload to iCloud Photos. And unless you reach a threshold of 30 CSAM images, Apple knows nothing about any of your photos.

I don't think anyone's necessarily being too upset or paranoid about THIS, but maybe everyone should also be a little less trusting of every closed OS - macOS, Windows, Android as provided by Google - that has root access too.

Where does that fit in your set intersection?

...except you can't? Not sure where these assumptions come from.

Well they could not do it.

I gave a pretty obvious and clear answer to that, and apparently you didn't care about the question in the first place, and have now misdirected to something else.

I am also not sure what possible definition of "privacy" that you could be using, that would not include things such as on device photo scanning, for the purpose of reporting people to the police.

Like, lets say it wasn't Apple doing this. Lets say it was the government. As in, the government required every computer that you own, to be monitored for certain photos, at which point the info would be sent to them, and they would arrest you.

Without a warrant.

Surely, you'd agree that this violates people's privacy? The only difference in this case, is that the government now gets to side step 4th amendment protections, by having a company do it instead.

And the answer is that they shouldn't implement things that violate people's privacy, such as things that would be illegal for the government to do without a warrant.

That is the answer. If it is something that the government would need a warrant for, then they shouldn't do it, and doing it would violate people's privacy.