radarthekat

CheeseFreeze said:

radarthekat said:

mfryd said:

radarthekat said:

mfryd said:

NYC362 said:

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I fail to see how a foreign government has had to wait for this hash comparison technique to be implemented by Apple before they could demand that Apple start scanning for pictures of their leader or any other subject.  The very nature of a dictator or totalitarian implies they could demand any kind of functionality they wish in return for access to their markets.  They didn’t need to wait for Apple to create a tool that could be applied to their dastardly schemes; they could simply demand that Apple do what they want done regarding spying on their citizenry and hold access to their market hostage until they get it.  So your argument holds exactly zero water.  

Governments can demand all they want.  If Apple does not have the capability to comply, then they cannot comply.  If they have the ability than they do.

This is why Apple has refused to implement a backdoor in iPhone encryption.  As long as they are unable to comply with an order to unlock an iPhone, then they can't comply.   Apple has made it very clear that they understand that once a capability exists, that governments will force them to use it for governmental purposes.

Of course Apple could create a back door. They simply have refused to do so.  And this should tell you something about that dire future you and others seem to want to predict.  It does not matter whether there is already a mechanism that could be deployed or not.  In every imagined situation a mechanism COULD be created.  Governments therefore have not needed to wait until one has been created.  Therefore the argument in context of this mechanism is a red herring.  

You seem to like fish 😀

Apple are hypocrites. Their marketing is all about security, but in several instances they have proven to let go of their mantra for money. 

Think China, Russia or Saudi Arabia; they provide local iCloud instances and they also don’t end-to-end encrypt. 

People’s “dire future predictions” as you put it, are valid concerns.

Heck, they don’t even care about my security in the USA! https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2021/01/apple-scraps-end-to-end-encryption-of-icloud-backups/

If Apple would truly be about security, they would have raised their middle finger and simply ignored these above markets.
Or, if they weren’t about security, they could have straight up admit it instead of hiding it in their hundreds of ToS and Privacy Policy pages and legal wording.

That to me makes them a bunch of hypocrites. Security is about ALL or NOTHING.

aguyinatx said:

mjtomlin said:

Just thought I’d chime in after reading so many misguided complaints about this subject. Are all of you context deaf? Did you read what is actually happening or are you just incapable of comprehending it?

They are not scanning photos for specific images, they’re simply counting the bits and creating a hash… all they see are numbers… this in no way scans photos for offensive images, nor does it in any way violate your privacy.

It amazes me that so many are complaining about trying to restrict/thwart child pornography?!

it’s even more ridiculous when you consider every photo you save to the Photos app is automatically scanned through an image recognition engine to identify the contents of the photo.

Creating a hash requires scanning the image and absolutely requires the file to be opened.  Do this on a Mac and it's pretty easy to demonstrate.  Also DO NOT RUN COMMANDS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND FROM FORUM POSTS.  Ask someone or research the commands.

Now.... In a terminal....

sudo -I and enter your account password. This elevates your privileges to root.  That's a lower case I btw.
echo "foo" > /opt/root-owned-file.txt  This creates a file in /opt called root-owned-file.txt with the word "foo" as the only content.
chmod 0600 /opt/root/owned-file.txt This ensures that only the root user can read and write to the file
exit  and hit return

Now you're running as the user you logged in with. 
sha256sum /opt/root-owned-file.txt   should give you a hash (those number you were talking about) but it doesn't.  You get a permission denied because you can't hash a file that you can't open.  Apple isn't magic, they have to open the image in order to analyze it.  Full stop.  No binary or user on a Unix system can hash a file without opening.  

Okay, clean up the file sudo rm /opt/root-owned-file.txt

Next up... This computer is one that I paid for and I own.  Only parties I consent to should have the right to open files to analyze them.  From the example above,   No one is complaining about stopping CSAM, but these aren't computers that Apple owns, and they aren't asking users if they want to submit to surveillance, and no scanning a photo to see if a dog is in it is not surveillance.  Additionally Apple is clearly adopting a vigilante role that is extra-judicial.  Law enforcement agencies require a warrant to compel someone to surrender access to a computer, and yet Apple presumes powers that the FBI doesn't have.

The article is primarily an ad hominem fallacy without many facts.  "Hey they other guys are doing it too!" is a baseless argument.  I do not have a Facebook account so I don't care what they do.  I'm not given a choice with Apple suddenly, and I am perfectly justified in getting my ire up when they insist that they have the uninvited right to open files that I create.  

lkrupp said:

melgross said:

It’s hard to predict for a number of reasons. These are odd times, to say the least. With revenue being a bit over $59 billion a year ago, estimating anything in the mid $70 billion range is already a huge bump. How much higher to go than that? I don’t think anyone can really get that right.

The law of large numbers doesn’t seem to be in play with Apple.

Law of Large Numbers Debunked

Among the arguments why Apple shares cannot outperform the market or its peers has been the oft repeated law of large numbers; the claim that Apple is too big to meaningfully grow and that its market cap, at over $600 billion, is so big that there aren't enough investment dollars to move the needle.

But the most recent [October 2015] earnings unwittingly provided an irrefutable counter argument by taking the combined market caps of GOOGL and AMZN to $800 billion.  The market seems to have no trouble adding $80 billion to these two companies, whose combined profits are a fraction of Apple's, but won't allow the same for a single company.  It was Microsoft's year 2000 valuation, north of $600 billion at the peak of the dotcom bubble and stagnant for the decade thereafter, that has since been used as the poster child for what happens to the company with the world's highest market cap.  The street is convinced that will be Apple's fate. 

What the market doesn't seem to understand is that vertically integrated Apple, in terms of the profits it generates and markets it addresses, is equivalent to the entire PC industry of the 1990s, including MSFT, Sony, Toshiba, IBM's PC division, Compaq, HP, and all the other PC makers.  Adjusted for inflation, MSFT's year 2000 valuation alone would today be $850 billion, against Apple's current $650 billion.  How much higher when you add in all the PC makers from 2000?

Apple's market cap, given the scope of its business, and adjusted for inflation, is very conservative.  As usual, the market is wrong.

gatorguy said:

theotherphil said:

I’m not sure why this is even a story. Every company has to follow the local laws of the country it is operating in. This doesn’t stop Apple providing the very best privacy and security that those local laws allow.

It's a story only because there is no requirement that Apple do business in China if they find the requirements too onerous. Yes Apple is a for-profit, and on balance the money to be made from business there outweighs any compromise of their stated "core values". Profit is profit is profit, no apologies needed.  

If they took major issue with the privacy of Chinese citizens or thought it important enough to make a statement, take a stand, they would. That's not generally what American corporations do, nor what stockholders expect. China won't change just because Apple doesn't like it. They're big but not THAT big.