Not having an iPhone, and not having illegal content don’t fix the problem, which is not Apple searching your phone, but rather Apple being allowed to search your phone without cause or consent.
The former is only temporary avoidance of a singular threat – how pressured will Android makers be to follow the same path? Moreover, for those who just paid $1500 for a new iPhone, can most of them afford to simply toss it?
The latter strikes me as an example of “if you have nothing to hide, you won’t mind if they search your car, your home… your phone… whenever and however often they wish to.”
And by the way, who remembers the San Bernardino shooting, and how vehemently Apple fought against giving the FBI access to Syed Farook’s iPhone when there was legitimate cause for search?
Phones aside, how long before Apple institutes a mandatory update to your Mac for the same ostensible purpose? How long before Microsoft follows with Windows?
Yes, but how long before Google follows with Android? How long before it scans not just for images but anything on your phone. To say “don’t have a mobile phone” is not a realistic alternative in a world that is quickly removing any other communication options. I mean, who the heck has landlines anymore except for old farts? 🤷
Use of encryption, VPNs, and other security measures helps but we already see our government doing all they can yo make life miserable for companies that offer encrypted comm services that make it difficult for the government to eavesdrop. For me, saying “I have nothing to hide, therefore why worry” is not the point. You think arrests on faulty intel is bad now? Wait until they’re actively looking through everyone’s phone relying on AI to determine if they should come arrest us. And do you think the “powers that be” will subject themselves to the same scrutiny? I, for one, think not.
Except when the phone makers control the operating system, they can prohibit or remove anything that encrypts data. And even if they don’t do that, they can capture your keystrokes.
Google and Android phones are likely already doing things like this without announcing it. And just how will these algorithms work both now and in the future? I have lots of pictures of my son on my phone. He loves to run around the house partially clad or less and spend long periods of time in the bubble bath. I sometimes share these special moments with the grandparents especially since they can’t visit as often in these virusy times. I try to make sure nothing “provocative” shows in these photos in case there is a pervert hacker or NSA agent getting his hands on the photos. But what if the algorithm declares it to be criminal? Now I am a suspect simply because my 4th amendment rights were violated. People have a right to privacy. This policy assumes potential guilt without due process.
Yes. Exactly. Yet all of us support these abuses by supporting these companies with our business and by buying into the marketing narrative that we can’t survive without a phone, an internet connection or social media. We get what we deserve.
I have never subscribed to such reasoning. But I do remember after 9/11 how anxious people were to support the Patriot Act, which was a watershed moment in loss of American civil liberties.
Like I said, if people don’t like these things, they can vote with their pocketbooks and can vote in lawmakers who are not tools of the Big 7 global enterprises…
Few people are willing to make such “sacrifices” though.
The main reason I switched to an iPhone was Apple’s privacy policies and practices that were far superior to that of all the other companies I looked at. I would switch again if a company that respected my privacy more existed.
Unfortunately my work requires a smart phone and internet connection. Hard to think of many career options that don’t these days. For better or worse technology is a fact of life, at least until the sun burps in our direction or someone lobs a missile into our upper atmosphere. Big corporations are also a fact of life. But we need to do all we can to keep them and the government from violating our rights. I just canceled my extra Apple subscriptions and will be looking for an alternative to their iCloud backup service.
Ours required one, too. So we had our employer furnish the phone and the connection under the agreement that they will only be “for official use only.” If the government wants to pry into the work I do for the government, then so be it.
Little things by a lot of little people add up to big things that can’t be ignored, even by the wealthiest entities. It takes two to tango in business or commerce, or in our case, 350 million.
Keep chipping away and the wall will eventually come down.
That is an interesting side of this Apple fought everyway they could to keep the FBI out of the San Bernardino shooters phone, even though he killed people, and here they just want to throw open the door way to your privacy, wonder why the change in thought?
You see? There in lies one of the problems. 4 days ago mattm “Deleted my post. Carry on!”. But it is still here mattm! At least I can still read it. Once you put something online, it is there. Makes me wonder if the content of my phone is the same. I regularly delete photos, notes, review contacts for old and unnecessary info and delete the info for the sake of saving memory space and processing time. Who is to say that the information I deleted isn’t kept by the scans already done on my phone?? I’m betting they are.
I don’t know of anything that I’ve done, said or photographed that would be red flag.
I was just reading about the Rare Breed trigger that overnight became a machine gun. One day owners were law abiding citizens, the next day they were felons.
are you reading the original content, rather lengthy, or simply the “deleted my post…” comment? If the latter, perhaps I should have written “changed the content”. Of course, a screenshot can be saved for eternity. I find I can’t delete a post on this site. In other news, after dropping facebook in 2016, I occasionally get an email from some third party entity who fb sold(?) my pictures to, and they let me know which pix have the most comments, likes etc…these pix were all for friends and family only iirc, though perhaps they’d been shared in a whitewater paddling group.
My original post above was a bit cryptic, some info relayed to me by a former cyber based alphabet boy, seemed it was getting ignored, so I deleted it. Nothing too crazy, just a heads up…actually, potentially wildly crazy. We rely way too much on technology. I’ll leave it at that. On the plus side, all this invasion of privacy stuff we deal with will either be destroyed or magnified a million times over, depending which way the offense leans. I’ve been informed our defense is not prepared.
This probably started off with Apple being terrified of what evil pictures users have might have put on their iCloud servers. They probably scanned the servers and found enough junk to justify changing the user software to scan for evil images before doing uploads.
My real concern is the mental and spiritual health of the employees who will be paid to look at filth to make sure they are not reporting false positives.
OF course, if they aren’t going to pay people to review junk for false positives that is another concern.
First off, things NEVER stop where they’re originally supposed to stop. I remember when I was in high school, they’d search your computer for songs they suspected you’d downloaded illegally. I don’t download things illegally, but in the last few months several of my songs have disappeared from my collection.
Now they say it’s pornography, and it will probably be just pornography they’re looking for for a couple of years. Then it will be pornography and signs of abuse. Then they’ll add drugs, then guns
Already is guns. Hickock45 posted a pair of Colt “Snake Eyes,” IIRC, really beautiful pieces. I was lucky to have seen the post before Instagram took them down for violating community guidelines… “coordinating harm or promoting crime.”
