> once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos
The system seems designed to make it hard to use it for anything else. How will a hash driven by a visual perception based neural net be used on ZIP files? How can you add ZIP files to your iCloud Photo Library?
Sure, Apple could possibly do any number of bad and worse things. It’s a matter of trust that every time we update our iPhones that the update doesn’t include a ZIP file scanner or a blasphemy-scanner. This has always been the case, even before the introduction of the CSAM voucher mechanism.
I would probably take a 10 year version of that bet.
I would probably also take a more broad version of that bet, if we agreed upon a good definition of "abuse".
10 years is tricky though, because this topic has a political angle about it.
I look at this stuff as a political move by Apple as much as anything else. There's a lot of political pressure around encryption, and the "think of the children" angle is very compelling for a lot of people. This CSAM voucher system is cleverly designed to handle that concern without compromising privacy or security for anyone who isn't uploading multiple previously-known CSAM images to their iCloud Photo Library.
How this political situation will unfold over the next 10 years is hard to say. I hope for the best. But it's important for threats to privacy and security to be challenged.
I have wished for more legitimate and valid criticism of this system. Almost every criticism that I've seen is based on plain misunderstandings of how the system works, which isn't helpful.
> once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos
There is a system in place to make a 'backup' of the entire device to a remote server in place and has been in place on every iphone since October 12, 2011. The entire device is covered; logs, calls, messages, files, photos etc. Pandoras box has been open for 10 years.
It is called iCloud backup. If they want to repurpose an existing function against the expressed permission of the user to exfiltrate their data and use it against them, why not just use that instead?
The system seems designed to make it hard to use it for anything else. How will a hash driven by a visual perception based neural net be used on ZIP files? How can you add ZIP files to your iCloud Photo Library?
Sure, Apple could possibly do any number of bad and worse things. It’s a matter of trust that every time we update our iPhones that the update doesn’t include a ZIP file scanner or a blasphemy-scanner. This has always been the case, even before the introduction of the CSAM voucher mechanism.