Comment by shuckles

> Apple’s decision to condition scanning on a toggle switch is a policy decision and not a technical restriction as it was in the past with server-side scanning.

This is not a meaningful distinction. There are many security and privacy protections of iOS that are equivalently "policy" decisions: letting iCloud Backups be turned off; not sending a copy of your device passcode to Apple servers; not MITMing iMessage which has no key transparency; not using existing Photos intelligence to detect terrorist content etc. In technical terms, there are many paths to full device scanning, and some of those paths were well trodden even a month ago (iCloud Backup and Spotlight, for starters, and Photos Intelligence as a direct comparison).

Making this claim also requires showing that the likelihood of Apple making one of many undesirable policy decisions has changed.

> Regarding which content governments want Apple to scan for, we already have some idea of that.

I asked about what Apple will scan for, not what governments want them to scan for. Again, I see a pattern in your argument where you state what government wants and then don't state how that desideratum translates into what Apple builds. The latter is entirely the source of ambiguity for me.

> Apple’s deployment responds to that request in a way that their existing detection systems (and industry standard systems) did not.

I could see that. If that's what Apple had built, would you have a different take on the system? It seems like no -- most of the risks you care about are unchanged since you are operating in a world of "policy decision" equivalence classes.

> I’m not sure how to respond to your requests for certainty and proof around future actions that might be taken by a secretive company.

You seem to misunderstand what I said. I'm asking for an estimate of your certainty, not absolute certainty. Furthermore, I'm asking you to provide examples of what information would change your mind for the same reason you keep repeatedly calling me stubborn and accusing me of bad faith: without it, I have no idea whether we are engaged in discussion or a shouting match.