Comment by sillywalk
1 month ago
I don't care if the device checks it, it uses homomorphic encryption and differential privacy. This is turned on by default. This angers me.
1 month ago
I don't care if the device checks it, it uses homomorphic encryption and differential privacy. This is turned on by default. This angers me.
Clearly, in Cupertino, 'enhancing user experiences' without consent is the top priority.
"homomorphic encryption and differential privacy"
It is new. It is fancy. It is not clear where HE/DP is being used, it depends if the code is written using the Swift toolkit, but even that has paths for exfiltration if used incorrectly. They claim they are using DP in Photos as stated in the article here:
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/scenes-differenti...
But the fact remains they are looking at your pictures. I do not trust them for one fleeting fart in the wind on this. Think about it for a hot second: HE/DP allows you to perform operations on the data without knowing the data, but what if someone goofs an operation and it ends up returning the actual data?
Sorry, not buying it. Crypto is hard to get right, and when it is monetized like this for "new features", it is wildly unnecessary and exposes users to more risk.
> what if someone goofs an operation and it ends up returning the actual data
That's kind of like saying "they can take a picture of your face and transmit it, but what if someone goofs an operation and sends your actual head instead".
Any encrypted data the server has cannot 'accidentally' be decrypted, and as someone else explained in this thread they only send encrypted vectors describing features of the image (building, tree, etc) and not the actual image. It's certainly not a fact that "they are looking at your pictures" [1].
[1] "they" being Apple; the other guys could have backdoored the whole OS and Apple employee's computers for all I know