I´m right there with you. Even though i could import from another EU country but if anything happens with it and i need service/any kind of warranty then i can´t turn to Google for assistance. Would love to try out a Pixel with CalyxOS as my daily.
Difficult to say. Watching Craig F. almost have a seizure when trying to explain (make up?) the algorithm process in his interview with Joanna Stern was hilarious but also pathetic.
A scanning algo will be running on your device and scan photos as they are readied to be uploaded to the cloud.
According to Apple, if you have iCloud Photos turned off, there will be no scanning done on your phone.
Scanning happens on-device. The database of the hashes is coded directly in iOS15.
I have no issues with using iCloud. I have nothing to hide. My main concern is if they are scanning my photos on my device as that seems very invasive. iCloud is fine because I’m trading privacy for convenience but on mi device I’m not happy about as it seems like spyware to me.
Apple's justification for scanning on your device is because your data is encrypted once it leaves your phone to iCloud (data is encrypted on your phone but can be viewed on your phone because you have the key to your encrypted data on your phone). So scanning on the device allows the "CP" scanner to check your photos for CP without having to compromise the encryption of your data on iCloud servers (for Photos). It's comparing hashes of known CP photos and has to positively identify 30 before sounding the alarm back at Apple before it is reviewed and possibly handed to Law Enforcement.
I’m sure even if apple have the best intentions in the world this could be hacked by others for nefarious purposes considering that it’s something which is built into the OS and this present on the device.
I think most people are more worried about Apple conceding to other countries demands in order to do business in that country. Using this as a tool to identify political dissidents, or people of a sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc... in order for Apple to sell iPhones in XYZ country (and even abused in USA someday depending on Govt in power).
As echoed above, I see Apple turning the blind eye to foul play with their own system as more likely than any other "intrusive" modification. If someone was able to change the codebase pushed for ios updates, they would have problems order of magnitudes larger than this.
Probably. And Apple is not some kind of church, Apple is a publicly traded company where increasing their shareholders' value is their upmost motivation. Apple will not sacrifice huge markets like China, and will compromise.
In the grand scheme of things, and I'm playing devil's advocate. They have more urgent problems when it comes to privacy and computational censorship than CSAM hash scanning. I'd be very skeptical of routing information in to the cloud without any sort of E2E encryption or complex routing. But again that is what will come bundled with the new icloud+ package so this (hashscans) is the minimum compliance needed for further anonymity (at least when provided by a consumer company ).
Wait, it scans for missing persons pictures, too? A lot of people on FB that I used to know when I was on it, save and share missing persons photos for prayer groups or just to increase public awareness and help look for these people. Is that going to trip the tripwire? It seems like an odd thing to scan for as it’s not a crime to save photos of people, missing or otherwise.
We won't have the specifics of the ML model they are using, but rationality tends to suggest that they have made accomodations for those false positives inside of their modelling.
From what I gather, there was also a piece for child safety that uses on-device AI/ML to try to determine if images received on (or being sent from) a minor's phone are of an explicit nature, and either block the image from viewing and/or notify the parent. Is that part also dependent on iCloud?
Right now, whatever hashes Apple would be matching with are the CSAM hashes provided by the NCMEC. The CSAM database is coded in iOS15, so your iPhone won't just "expand" what it is scanning on its own. Whatever addition to the database would have to be added through iOS update.
This reminds me the first couple of quotes here:
What I don’t get, what criminal would have iCloud photos on after hearing this?
I recommend Brave as an alternative to Chrome instead of Firefox. Firefox has this weird location crap built into it now. Creeped me out, that browser is a big mess. Brave is much more privacy focused.