swat671

Just because Apple, Google, whoever buy up a bunch of smaller companies doesn’t mean anything torrid or ill-gotten is going on. Just because you and I can’t figure out why Apple bought a company doesn’t mean anything. It took years to realize why they bought Prime Sense- FaceID. Just because it took what, 5 years or so, doesn’t mean anything “bad” is going on. The only issue would be if they were trying to eliminate other direct competitors, like if they tried to buy out Samsung, or Dell, or Microsoft. Or if 15 years ago, Facebook tried to take out MySpace. 

I'm not one to victim blame, but I think I'll make an exception in this case. Come on, folks! This is the oldest tick in the book. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR PASSWORD TO AN UNSOLICITED EMAIL!!!! In this case, the morons got what they deserved. Seesh. 

"This sort of tool can be a boon for finding child pornography in people's phones," he said. "But imagine what it could do in the hands of an authoritarian government?”

I’m mean, I’m sorry, but I don’t care WHAT type of government it is. CSM (child sex material) is CSM. Repressive governments definitely don’t have issues “taking out the trash”. 

As far as finding the pics or videos, there is “hashing” or “fingerprinting”. Governments or organizations like ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force use these fingerprints to search the web (and I assume the dark web) for images like this. I assume that Apple would just use these hashes. 

apple_evo said:

This is a very slippery slope. 

Imagine the day when you chose to put your drivers license on your phone, and you get pulled over. You'll need to unlock your phone and swipe over to your wallet-app and bring up the ID to show the officer. What's that officer going to do next? Go back to his squad car and scroll through your entire unlocked phone looking for anything and at everything. You'll say that's an invasion of privacy and they will say "hey you unlocked it and gave it to me!!" 

If anyone at Apple cares about the right to privacy (at least in the United States), there should be a way to open the wallet, load the ID of choice and display it until a password is entered or the phone runs out of battery.

You've heard of the 4th Amendment, right? Ok. Good. 

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

If Apple switched to RCS, how would a government be able to to silently spy on you by sending it an iMessage?

Did your cat walk across the keyboard to type that? Or did you have a stroke or something?