OutdoorAppDeveloper

Always remember: This is all about restricting what YOU can do with the computer devices YOU own. It is not about security. It is not about safety. It is about Apple's power over what users are allowed to do with the devices they sell. You should be angry. You should demand that Apple butt out of your business. Instead most of you will continue fawning over Apple never realizing how much more awesome your iOS devices could be if you had the power instead of Apple. Downloaded any good third party watch faces recently? No? Me neither. Now why is that?

The new thing everyone should be afraid of: CSLAMing
Like SWATTing, CSLAMing can get you in trouble with the law by taking advantage of Apple's boneheaded plan to scan everyone's photos continuously. All someone needs to do to CSLAM someone is to copy a lot of illegal photos onto your iCloud synced iOS device when you are not looking. "Hey, can I borrow your phone? I need to make a quick call." Perhaps copy a zip file to their shared folder that ends up getting backed up to iCloud. It's quite possible that Apple's ubergenious scanning technology won't be tricked by a simple zip file!
I have no idea how it will happen but I guarantee you that there will be more innocent people triggering Apple's image scanning technology than real criminals. The criminals already got the word and deleted their iCloud photos.

Matching songs is a lot easier problem to solve than matching photos. Just a note in case thought that Apple could implement a system to scan every photo you upload to see if it was illegal without screwing it up finding unintended consequences (the least of these being strangers looking at your photos without your permission).

This is what is really going on:
Apple sold itself on being the data privacy company.
This angered governments who feel they should be able to snoop on anyones data.
The governments argued that not allowing access to private data enables people to harm children by sharing explicit images of them.
Apple knew they would lose the political argument and would be legally forced to introduce back doors to their encryption.
Apple came up with a plan to scan iCloud data themselves for illegal photos using a government pattern matching database.
If the plan works, Apple could then implement strong encryption on iCloud with the pattern matching working with the encrypted data.
Unfortunately it appears that Apple has opened a big can of worms and is now on a slippery sloping razor blade into a pool of lemon juice (how's that for hyperbole?)

Mike Wuerthele said:

Delightful ad hominem and continued slippery slope. You asked about my kids yesterday in a poorly thought-out example that didn't apply, and I care more about them, than I do a hypothetical Apple contractor who hypothetically has PTSD and is hypothetically being treated poorly by Apple. And there's a lot of could, maybe, and in the future here.

Did you even read this article to its conclusion, or did you just start commenting? I feel like if you had read the article, that last paragraph would be a little different.

You've been complaining about Apple hardware and software for a long time here. Some of it is warranted and some of it is not. If this is so unacceptable to you, take the final steps and go. That simple.

There is no extreme danger from this system as it stands. As with literally everything else in this world, there is good and bad, and we've talked about it here. Every decision we all make weighs the good and the bad.

You're welcome to believe that there extreme danger based on hypotheticals. When and if it develops, we'll write about it.

I will just cut to the chase. The article you wrote above mostly apologist in nature. Your strongest argument is that it is OK if Apple does this because other companies have been doing it for years.

You didn't address the elephant in the room: Apple has been selling itself and its products on the idea that they will keep our private data private. They stated or strongly implied that all of our data would be strongly encrypted and that governments and hackers would not be able to access it and that even Apple could not access it due to the strength of the encryption. All of those statements and implied promises were false if encrypted data from our phones is unencrypted when it is stored in iCloud. The promise of privacy is turned into a farce when Apple itself violates it and scans our data without our permission. Yes other companies have been doing things like this with our data for years but that's why we were buying Apple products, right?

I could pick apart your article a point at a time but it would be tedious. Example: Our ISPs can scan our data for IP content. Yes but we can and do use VPNs to work around that issue. Heck most employers require the use of a VPN to keep their company secrets secret (I bet Apple does too).

BTW I hope you appreciate that I incorporated your arguments into my own. I did read what you wrote. I just happen to completely disagree with it.