Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0
4 years ago
Therein lies a problem. Most people would agree that a good predictor what people will do is what they have done in the past. If you read through some of the stories ( those of Snowden come to mind ), some declassified information over the course of the past few decades, a pattern emerges.
There is no evidence, either because it does not exist or because it is hidden. The best we have is inference and whistleblowers.
That said, I genuinely think we are not being tinfoil enough these days. And that is based only on what we know ( or at least avg. citizen should know ) was already done in the past.
The PRISM revelations, to this day, are very ambiguous about their implications for cooperation. When they came out, most involved companies flat out denied cooperation. The types of data the NSA claimed to get were available by tapping into network backbones. Unless you are aware of a theory or evidence I’m not, I think it’s just as likely that the program described in the leaked slides involved unilateral or covert intrusion by the NSA rather than cooperation.
It is reasonable to be conservative about data stored in someone else’s cloud, and there is undeniable value to end to end encryption that gives you control over who can access it. That said, especially if you read Apple’s letter in response to the PRISM allegations, Apple’s behavior seems quite consistent and sincere over time: https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/.
I don’t think it’s likely they designed this feature under pressure from the government or with the intention to expand it to local data on your device.
Ok. If that is not the reason, then the question becomes what is the real reason.
Some analysts seem to think Apple should be getting into advertising business, which would partially explain some of the proposed updates. Naturally, if that were the case, it would render Apple's commitment to privacy about as useful as T-Mobile's. Then again, I might be giving Apple too much crap. Most companies don't even pretend to care.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-could-be-apples-next-...
I think Apple (i) genuinely believes scanning on device is better for privacy because it lets users (theoretically) confirm the behavior of the system and (ii) is learning from others’ mistakes of deploying scanning server side and having that become a blocker to moving to end to end encryption (e.g. Facebook Messenger). My guess is they announce expansions to end to end iCloud behavior soon. Features like this are building blocks to controlling who escrows your iCloud private keys: https://gadgettendency.com/apple-allowed-to-bequeath-and-inh...
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