Children’s safety groups praised Apple’s moves, arguing that they strike a necessary balance which “brings us a step closer to justice for survivors whose most traumatic moments are disseminated online”.
As abominable as these materials can be, do we really believe that opt-in client-side scanning will do something to eradicate those behaviors ? Do we thing criminals will opt in ? Do we really believe that client side scanning of content uploaded to iCloud will eradicate them ? Do we think criminals use iCloud for their trades ?
I am following up again on Apple’s proposed “icloud” scanning- after I stumbled on an excellent write up. Here’s something more from the author:
Having started right away with general client side scanning would likely not have been acceptable by the user and by legal communities. But starting just for iCloud, just for the most abominable of all possible crimes, makes client side scanning more acceptable. And those who oppose it appear to be conniving with criminals. This is the same argument we have heard time and again for the compression of privacy rights in favor of a supposed increase of security. But this equation (less privacy = more security) is only apparently founded. Less privacy equals more data, more data does not equal more information and more information does not equal more security. (remember intel agencies knew the menace of 9.11 attacks ? And many others… (almost all, in Europe)).
These will be used to spin narratives around more device intrusion under the ambit of helping law enforcers – yes noble indeed, but how do we account for systematic tipping of “chilling of speech”? These developments are happening in consonance with the institutional breakdowns and subjugation of regulators through lobbying and other mechanisms. Healthcare is the last bastion that’s both conservative to adopt new technologies, and is the most regulated sector out of them all (financial/legal). Therefore, the creep of consumer technology needs to be curtailed.
RadOncNotes 