Will Apple Scan Your iPhone? (here's why that matters)

Perhaps you've seen the news about Apple's plans to scan your phone or the fierce criticisms from the privacy community. Here's what's really happening and why it should matter to you.

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Video Timestamps
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0:00 - Apple Announces They Will Scan Our Phones
0:30 - Quick Recap: Here's What Happened
1:29 - Explaining Why This Might be Illegal
2:04 - Explaining Apple's Defense of the Scanning
2:52 - Problems with Apple's Scan Technology
3:36 - How This Technology Could be Abused
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Apple recently announced how they are taking new measures to protect children with their next iOS update. Learn all about the technology they've developed to scan photos being uploaded to iCloud and how this affects your personal privacy on your Apple device.

#apple #privacy #backdoor

[lisandroCT]

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety and will lose both".
Benjamin Franklin

[dothagedm]

To put it succinctly, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[aaronporter]

"save the children" is always the way they crack open the door to let all of the big brother features in. Just remember they are taking away your privacy and freedoms for your safety. Sounds like "We are from the government (massive company) and we are here to help"

[nbrown]

They will not just look for child photos, the next step is copyrighted material.

[sarasandoval]

I know what I’m doing — I’m ditching my Apple products. This is just another slippery slope. They will be doing it on the computer, too.

[kcgunesq]

What a slippery slope. What will be next? Pictures of your kids without a seat belt? Riding a bike without a helmet? Shooting guns? Will these someday trigger a police call?

Also, if Apple is creating a copy of the image for manual review, how is that not itself a crime? Remember, these laws are generally strict liability.

[HazzyDevil]

It’s probably worth mentioning how the scanning works. It’s not simply them seeing the images from the get-go. A hash of your images are generated. Those hashes are compared to the ones in the database.

However these hash algorithms works in a way so that even changing the image in someway would still result in the same hash. Once a threshold is met, then a manual review will happen. False positives *could* occur, however it’s the threshold that matters.

FYI I’m not defending them, simply shedding more light on the process.

[reimusklinsman]

I don't trust that Apple will be able to keep this just to csam content and if other companies follow Apple on this, we'll see a lot of problems in the coming years

[maddog]

The next stop on this highway to hell may very well be ISP’s adding similar protocols to their TOS, allowing them to do the same thing with your PC or laptop. Apple is setting a dangerous example for others to follow, and I fear it’s only going to get worse.

[arsnova]

Wtf is this apple bullishit? So now we are guilty until we prove otherwise? I don't remember the law working that way!

[MichaelHatcher]

I generally don't comment on videos, but this is an important subject. As bad as CP is and the desire to put all of them in jail for life, this is a slippery slope that should not be crossed. While it is for the protection of children right now, what comes next? What is to stop them from scanning for material they do not like. Remember how Apple de-platformed Parlor until they submitted to Apple's demands. Tim Cook has been a very outspoken critic of those who are conservatives. Cook also told one group to stop investing in Apple if they did not like what they invested in socially. Will Apple begin (without a public announcement as this was) to start scanning for those individuals/companies to do whatever? It begins with something every person should oppose. Where does it stop and how can we trust them and trust them not to use the information they gather for nefarious purposes.

[Alarcahu]

People are saying to just turn off iCloud. That’s missing the point. The back door is embedded in iOS whether it’s used or not. I’ve enjoyed Apple’s ecosystem but this feels like a betrayal of their fundamental principles (or marketing at least).

[chaseism]

It's just not right. Like you said, there should be some presumption of innocence on the end user and instead, this scanning will happen without probable cause. It's like someone saying, "We are going to put a sensor in your house. Don't worry, it can't capture any photos, but it will look for traces of illegal drugs in each room. If substances are found in abundance, we'll flag the house for further investigation." Sure, photos aren't being taken, but I don't think there is a person alive who would be cool with that kind of scanning, even if they don't do drugs. I have no problem with Apple scanning what's on iCloud because it's their servers that I'm renting space on. But I paid for my phone.

Privacy, like all things, come with downsides. Same thing goes with capitalism or literally anything else. They may be mostly great, but have some downsides. I don't want children to be exploited and we've seen ways law enforcement have been able to find those people and prosecute them. But I don't want an invasion like this. The sad thing is...Apple was kind of the last hold out. There is no where to run for privacy.

[Mr_.G]

You can't keep using the protection of Children as an Excuse to do things to people's devices without permission. Yes it's important to track down the ones exploiting children, but this is not the way to go about doing it. Most people don't do things like that so it is a severe invasion of personal privacy for us. Apple needs to rethink this, it's coming off as something that nothing to do with their excuse at all.

[pizzaburgerslime]

The problem is not the why they do it, but rather is how they do it. Like you said, there is no other option about “how can we scan or know if this person have illegal content on the phone but keeping the privacy we are proclaiming to have”. Of course there is no way out of this and it’s random for me that they just basically moved forward of being this company that their privacy is their goal and that they are doing everything to keep privacy on top, but now they come with this. It’s really unacceptable and they have to call the things by their name and stop changing what’s is obvious. It’s clearly a back door and a possibility for the company to know about your life and now we have to “trust” them putting this feature in the next Os update without knowing yet what will happen with this when feature (meaning if the gov will try to sneak around or if other companies will do the same thing etc). Thanks for the video and I really admire the transparency and the time you you give to us to explain the things and how this will affect us.

[ikust]

Always exceptional content . Thank you

[Stoneysilence]

The way Apple gets around the without your permission is their EULA when you upgrade. You just then gave them the permission to do it.

[likebot.]

Their motive is admirable. The execution isn't. If they can match pics on your phone to a database then they should've been able to intercept it on it's way to your phone. Else you have a pic not on their database that they can't flag.

[beardedjebediah]

Question. What is the alternative for someone who isn’t cool w this? Android?

[jessieo]

Nonetheless, the person that has to manually review that stuff has a hard job.