Sticking to the apt analogy from the article,
>To reiterate: scanning your device is not a privacy risk, but copying files from your device without any notice is definitely a privacy issue.
> Think of it this way: Your landlord owns your property, but in the United States, he cannot enter any time he wants. In order to enter, the landlord must have permission, give prior notice, or have cause. Any other reason is trespassing. Moreover, if the landlord takes anything, then it's theft. Apple's license agreement says that they own the operating system, but that doesn't give them permission to search whenever they want or to take content.
This viewpoint is like thanking your landlord for warning you that they are going to enter your home and root through your private items, all in the name of some greater good. Let's not spin it as if the landlord is doing us a favor in this scenario.
That first line of the quote is misrepresenting what Apple is doing. They are not copying files from your device. You are sending them the files. As it stands the only images that will be scanned are the ones you are uploading to iCloud. And I'd be shocked if they weren't already analyzing those images on the server side.
When it comes to governments being able to pressure them into being more invasive, nothing has changed with this update. If a government wanted to poison the CSAM database, they could have already. You'd end up reported when the server does the scanning. If the government wanted to expand scanning to include things that you're not uploading, they already could have asked Apple to do that. It would have been possible to silently add a much simpler scanning mechanism or data exfiltration into an update.
This isn't a spin to say anyone is doing us a favor. iCloud should be end-to-end encrypted and there shouldn't be any scanning at all. But why should that opinion on how we should treat privacy be taken as the only valid opinion? The people who do want the scanning are not simply asking for it because they are stupid or uninformed. Instead they put different weights into what they value.
> Think of it this way: Your landlord owns your property, but in the United States, he cannot enter any time he wants. In order to enter, the landlord must have permission, give prior notice, or have cause. Any other reason is trespassing. Moreover, if the landlord takes anything, then it's theft. Apple's license agreement says that they own the operating system, but that doesn't give them permission to search whenever they want or to take content.
This viewpoint is like thanking your landlord for warning you that they are going to enter your home and root through your private items, all in the name of some greater good. Let's not spin it as if the landlord is doing us a favor in this scenario.