They also block apps that involve politically controversial content, or content that they disagree with (e.g. pornography).
Announced but not (yet) implemented.
> analyze your locally-stored photographs for child photography
Nope. Only the ones on iCloud.
> and upload questionable photos to the cloud for human review
Also a misrepresentation.
> or content that they disagree with (e.g. pornography).
True. And yes, I should have a wank to whatever I please. Legality permitting.
It is so easy to criticise Apple. So many angles to attack them on. So don't misconstrue facts. There's really no need.
> Nope. Only the ones on iCloud.
Nope. Only the ones your device intends to send to iCloud.
They’re already scanned on iCloud, this was on device scanning before upload. Likely it was a requirement for them to add encryption on the files they store and not have the unsealing keys.
Sort of a pre-emotive avoidance of certain political conversations.
From a practical perspective, for most everyone, "intending to send" and "on iCloud" is probably a 300ms delta in time.
They are not. Other file and photo hosting platforms do not encrypt the data, so they are able to scan server-side. The content is encrypted for iCloud, and the encryption keys are not known by the hosting infrastructure.
This means as an example that shared iCloud albums could be used as a distribution mechanism for child pornography, operating silently until one of the members' accounts gets subpoenaed or they confess and share the list.
Do you have kids? Daughters? Would you like better control over what they're exposed to? Being given the tools to track screen time, purchases and control where possible exposure to objectionable content for immature minds isn't a bad thing.. provided it is opt-in. Which the feature always was before the news cycle chose their own narrative.
In addition to Google scanning everything in your Google account looking for child pornography for the last decade?
>a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account
https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le...
In addition to Google scanning your online account looking for copyright violations?
And on the 2nd point, they like any company, have to obey the laws of the countries they operate in. Whether they should operate in countries that call for them to censor political content, that's a different question. I'm sure you would say that companies have to follow the local laws.
I think there are compelling arguments for making Apple open up which apps can access their SDKs natively, but I think most instances of its implementation will be driven by adversarial governments and bad for user freedoms.
