{"id":193100,"date":"2021-08-30T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=193100"},"modified":"2021-08-26T06:42:48","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T05:42:48","slug":"the-all-seeing-i-apple-just-declared-war-on-your-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/the-all-seeing-i-apple-just-declared-war-on-your-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The All-Seeing “i”: Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cUnder His Eye,\u201d she says. The right farewell. \u201cUnder His Eye,\u201d I reply, and she gives a little nod.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

26 Aug 2021 – <\/em>By now you’ve probably heard that Apple plans to push a new and uniquely intrusive surveillance system<\/a> out to many of the more than one billion <\/em>iPhones it has sold, which all run the behemoth’s proprietary, take-it-or-leave-it software. This new offensive is tentatively slated to begin with the launch of iOS 15\u2060\u2014almost certainly in mid-September\u2060\u2014with the devices of its US user-base designated as the initial targets. We\u2019re told that other countries will be spared, but not for long.<\/p>\n

You might have noticed that I haven\u2019t mentioned which problem it\u00a0is that Apple is purporting to solve. Why? Because it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Having read thousands upon thousands of remarks on this growing scandal,\u00a0it has become clear to me that many understand it doesn’t matter, but few if any have been willing to actually say it. Speaking candidly, if that\u2019s still allowed, that\u2019s the way it always goes when someone of institutional significance launches a campaign to defend an indefensible intrusion into our private spaces. They make a mad dash to the supposed high ground, from which they speak in low, solemn tones about their moral mission before fervently invoking the dread spectre of the Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse<\/a>, warning that only a dubious amulet<\/a>\u2014or suspicious software update\u2014can save us from the most threatening members of our species.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, everybody with a principled objection is forced to preface their concern with apologetic throat-clearing and the establishment of bonafides: I lost a friend when the towers came down, however… As a parent, I understand this is a real problem, but<\/em>…<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As a parent, I\u2019m here to tell you that sometimes it doesn\u2019t matter why <\/em>the man in the handsome suit is doing something. What matters are the consequences.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s new system, regardless of how anyone tries to justify it,\u00a0will permanently redefine what belongs to you, and what belongs to them.<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

The task Apple intends its new surveillance system to perform\u2014preventing their cloud systems from being used to store digital contraband, in this case unlawful images uploaded by their customers\u2014is\u00a0traditionally performed by searching their systems<\/em>. While it\u2019s still problematic for anybody to search through a billion people\u2019s private files, the fact that they can only see the files you gave them is a crucial limitation.<\/p>\n

Now, however, that\u2019s all set to change. Under the new design, your phone<\/em> will now perform these searches on Apple\u2019s behalf before your photos have even reached their iCloud servers, and\u2014yada, yada, yada<\/em>\u2014if enough “forbidden content” is discovered, law-enforcement will be notified.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I intentionally wave away the technical and procedural details of Apple\u2019s system here, some of which are quite clever, because they, like our man in the handsome suit, merely\u00a0distract from the most pressing fact\u2014the fact that, in just a few weeks, Apple plans to erase the boundary dividing which devices work for you, and which devices work for them.<\/p>\n

Why is this so important? Once the precedent has been set that it is fit and proper\u00a0for even a “pro-privacy” company like Apple to make products that betray their users and owners, Apple itself will lose all control over how that precedent is applied.\u00a0\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bAs soon as the public first came to learn\u00a0of the \u201cspyPhone\u201d plan, experts began investigating its technical weaknesses, and the many ways it could be abused, primarily within the parameters of Apple\u2019s design. <\/em>Although these valiant vulnerability-research efforts have produced compelling evidence<\/a> that the system is seriously flawed, they also seriously miss\u00a0the point: Apple gets to decide whether or not their phones will monitor their owners\u2019 infractions for the government, but it’s\u00a0the government<\/em>\u00a0that gets to decide on what constitutes an infraction… and how to handle it.\"\"<\/a>For its part, Apple says their system, in its initial, v1.0 design, has a narrow focus: it only scrutinizes photos intended to be uploaded to iCloud (although for 85% of its customers, that means EVERY <\/strong><\/em>photo), and it does not scrutinize them beyond a simple comparison against a database of specific examples of previously-identified child sexual abuse material (CSAM).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re an enterprising pedophile with a basement full of CSAM-tainted iPhones, Apple welcomes you to entirely exempt yourself from these scans\u00a0by simply flipping the \u201cDisable iCloud Photos\u201d switch, a bypass which reveals that this system was never designed to protect children<\/em>, as they would have you believe, but rather to protect their brand. As long as you keep that material off their servers, and so keep Apple out of the headlines, Apple doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

So what happens when, in a few years at the latest, a politician points that out, and\u2014in order to protect the children<\/em>\u2014bills are passed in the legislature to prohibit this “Disable”\u00a0bypass, effectively compelling Apple to scan photos that aren\u2019t<\/em> backed up to iCloud? What happens when a party in India demands they start scanning for memes associated with a separatist movement? What happens when the UK demands they scan for a library of terrorist imagery? How long do we have left before the iPhone in your pocket begins quietly filing reports about encountering \u201cextremist\u201d political material, or about your presence at a “civil disturbance”?\u00a0Or simply about your iPhone’s possession of a video clip that contains, or maybe-or-maybe-not contains, a blurry image of a passer-by who resembles, according to an algorithm, “a person of interest”?<\/p>\n

If Apple demonstrates the capability and willingness to continuously, remotely search every phone for evidence of one particular type of crime,\u00a0these are questions for which they will have no answer. <\/strong>And yet an answer will come\u2014and it will come from the worst lawmakers of the worst governments.<\/p>\n

This is not a slippery slope. It\u2019s a cliff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One particular frustration\u00a0for me is that I know some people at Apple, and I even like some people at Apple\u2014bright, principled people who should know better. Actually, who do<\/em> know better. Every security expert in the world is screaming themselves hoarse now, imploring Apple to stop, even those experts who in more normal circumstances\u00a0reliably argue in favor<\/em> of censorship. Even some survivors of child exploitation are against it<\/a>. And yet, as the OG designer Galileo once said<\/a>, it moves.<\/p>\n

Faced with a blistering torrent of global condemnation, Apple has responded not by addressing any concerns or making any changes, or, more sensibly, by just scrapping the plan altogether, but by deploying their man-in-the-handsome-suit software chief, who resembles the well-moisturized villain from a movie about Wall Street, to give quotes to, yes, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>\u00a0about how sorry the company is for the “confusion” it has caused, but how the public shouldn’t worry: Apple\u00a0\u201cfeel[s] very good about what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
I would say I\u2019m being unfair to him, but I\u2019m not the one who dismissed universal public opposition to a new and intensely personal form of mass surveillance as \u201cconfusion.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Neither the message nor the messenger was a mistake. Apple dispatched its SVP-for-Software Ken doll to speak with the Journal\u00a0<\/em>not to protect the company’s users, but to reassure the company’s investors. His role was to create the false impression that this is not something that you, or anyone, should be upset about.\u00a0And, collaterally,\u00a0his role was to ensure this new “policy” would be associated with the face of an Apple executive other than\u00a0CEO Tim Cook, just in case the roll-out, or the fall-out, results in a corporate beheading.<\/p>\n

Why? Why is Apple risking so much for a CSAM-detection system that has been denounced as \u201cdangerous\u201d and “easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship” by the very computer scientists who’ve already put it to the test<\/a>? What could be worth the decisive shattering of the foundational Apple idea that an iPhone belongs to the person who carries it, rather than to the company that made it?<\/p>\n

Apple: “Designed in California, Assembled in China, Purchased by You, Owned by Us.”<\/p>\n

The one answer to these questions that the optimists keep coming back to\u00a0is the likelihood that Apple is doing this as a prelude to finally switching over to \u201cend-to-end\u201d encryption<\/a> for everything its customers store on iCloud\u2014something Apple had previously intended to do before backtracking, in a dismaying\u00a0display of cowardice<\/a>, after the FBI secretly complained.<\/p>\n

For the unfamiliar, what I\u2019m describing here as end-to-end encryption is a somewhat complex concept, but briefly, it means that only the two endpoints sharing a file\u2014say, two phones on opposite sides of the internet\u2014are able to decrypt it. Even if the file were being stored and served from an iCloud server in Cupertino, as far as Apple (or any other middleman-in-a-handsome-suit) is concerned, that file is just an indecipherable blob of random garbage: the file only becomes a text message, a video, a photo, or whatever it is, when it is paired with a key that\u2019s possessed only by you and by those with whom you choose to share it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the goal of end-to-end encryption: drawing a new and ineradicable line in the digital sand dividing your<\/em> data and their<\/em> data.<\/em> It allows you to trust a service provider to store<\/em> your data without granting them any ability to understand<\/em> it. This would mean that even Apple itself could no longer be expected to rummage through your iCloud account with its grabby little raccoon hands\u2014and therefore could not be expected to hand it over to any government that can stamp a sheet of paper, which is precisely why the FBI (again: secretly) complained.<\/p>\n

For Apple to realize this original vision would have represented a huge<\/em> improvement in the privacy of our devices, effectively delivering the\u00a0final word in a thirty year-long debate over\u00a0establishing a new industry standard\u2014and, by extension, the new global expectation that parties seeking access to data from a device must obtain it<\/em> from that device, rather than turning the internet and its ecosystem into a spy machine.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I am here to report that once again, the optimists are\u00a0wrong: Apple\u2019s proposal to make their phones inform on and betray their owners marks the dawn of a dark future, one to be written in the blood of the political opposition of a hundred countries that will exploit this system to the hilt. See, the day after this system goes live, it will no longer matter whether or not Apple ever enables end-to-end encryption, because our iPhones will be reporting their contents before our keys are even used<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t think of any other company that has so proudly, and so publicly, distributed spyware to its own devices\u2014and I can\u2019t think of a threat more dangerous to a product\u2019s security than the mischief of its own maker. There is no fundamental technological limit to how far the precedent Apple is establishing can be pushed, meaning the only restraint is Apple\u2019s all-too-flexible company policy, something governments understand all too well.<\/p>\n

I would say there should be a law, but I fear it would only make things worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We are bearing witness to the construction of an all-seeing-i<\/strong>\u2014an Eye of <\/a>Im<\/a><\/em>providence<\/a>\u2014under whose aegis every iPhone will search itself<\/em> for whatever Apple wants, or for whatever Apple is directed to want. They are inventing a world in which every product you purchase owes its highest loyalty to someone other than its owner.<\/p>\n

To put it bluntly, this is not an innovation but a tragedy, a disaster-in-the-making.<\/p>\n

Or maybe I’m\u00a0confused\u2014or maybe I just think different<\/em>.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Born in North Carolina in 1983 Edward Snowden, <\/em>former CIA officer and whistleblower, worked for the National Security Agency through subcontractor Booz Allen in the NSA’s Oahu (Honolulu) office, where he began collecting top-secret documents regarding NSA surveillance practices that he found disturbing. After he fled to Hong Kong\u00a0 newspapers began printing documents that he leaked to them, many detailing invasive spying practices against American citizens, world leaders, corporations and foreign governments through metadata collection of phone calls, email messages, social media activities, plus dissemination of malicious software and viruses throughout computers worldwide. The U.S. has charged Snowden under the Espionage Act but he is hailed around the world as a hero. He remains in exile in Russia, with the U.S. government working on extradition. <\/em>Snowden is the author of \u201c<\/em>Permanent Record\u201d and is the president of <\/em>Freedom of the Press Foundation<\/em><\/a>, a nonprofit that defends public-interest journalism in the 21st century. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – edwardsnowden.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Aug 2021 – By now you’ve probably heard that Apple plans to push a new and uniquely intrusive surveillance system out to many of the more than one billion iPhones it has sold, which all run the behemoth’s proprietary, take-it-or-leave-it software. This new offensive is tentatively slated to begin with the launch of iOS 15\u2060\u2014almost certainly in mid-September\u2060\u2014with the devices of its US user-base designated as the initial targets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":193104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[2632,910,1009,1082,1277,1109,911,461],"class_list":["post-193100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-big-brother","tag-big-tech","tag-cellphones","tag-privacy-rights","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}