Irreal

That’s the motto of the party in Orwell’s 1984. Apple’s Craig Federighi appears to want to add a fourth item:

Big Brother would approve. Federighi gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he calls Apple’s planned photo scanning an advancement in privacy. That’s pretty ironic considering Apple’s iconic 1984 ad

Apple should have ended the ad with, “1984 will not be like 1984; 2021 will be like 1984.”

If you don’t know about 1984, how about a Vietnam-era-like slogan: “We have to destroy privacy to save it.” If you need something more timeless, how about “Liar liar, pants on fire.” Of course, like Big Brother’s motto, the meaning of Federighi’s statement is more than its obvious contradiction. Loosely translated, the meaning of his words are “It could have been worse.” In the interest of fairness, here’s a more generous translation: “This is the least intrusive way we can surveil you.”

But the thing is, it’s still surveillance, something Apple promised they’d never do. And despite Apple’s demurrals, it won’t end with child pornography. As Kurt Opsahl of the EFF puts it, If You Build It, They Will Come. All governments—all—hate that their citizens have access to cryptography and do everything they can to subvert it. There’s no reason to think they won’t go after the backdoor Apple is introducing. If you think Apple’s CSAM scanning is not a backdoor, you’re about to be rudely disabused of that comfortable notion.

Following up on Thursday’s post, I thought I’d let Apple know directly of my concern about their new CSAM monitoring. I’d already signed the open letter to Apple but I thought it was worthwhile to send a personal message as well.

That turns out to be essentially impossible. There’s no email address that I could find and their support Webpage is restricted to seeking support for specific problems on specific devices. I thought I’d found a way by offering feedback on the Photos app but you’re restricted to 800 characters, which wasn’t quite enough for what I wanted to say.

Here, on the slim chance that someone from Apple will see it and send it on to the appropriate folks, is the letter I tried to send.

I am writing to express my shock and dismay that Apple has abrogated their longstanding promise not to surveil their users. I’m a developer and have a familiarity with crypto so I understand the technical details of your proposed system but even if we suppose that the system works perfectly, those technical details don’t change the fact that you’ll be spying on us.

I appreciate that Apple wants to be seen and see themselves as good citizens by fighting the scourge of child pornography but you’re conscripting your user base to bear the cost of that good citizenship by forfeiting their privacy. The right thing to do would have been to ask your users if that was a price they were willing to pay.

Even if the endgame is iCloud encryption, you’re still betraying your users by not giving them a choice in the matter. A compromise like “agree to the scanning and we’ll give up our keys to your iCloud data, otherwise we’ll retain the keys and your data will be subject to subpeonas from law enforcement” would probably satisfy most people and, most importantly, would give your users something rather than taking something away.

Your users aren’t the only ones who will suffer from this change. Apple had the hard won trust and faith of their users. That’s gone now. The principal of Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus suggests that the wise user will never again trust anything you say.

I’ve been fussing with this post for several days now. I alternate between white hot fury and heartbroken sobbing. I’m speaking, of course, of Apple’s betrayal of the users who believed them when they assured us that they had our backs on privacy and would never spy on us or allow others to do so. The same users who defended them against the naysayers and reminded everyone that the real difference between Android and iPhones was that iPhone owners weren’t being spied on. Here’s the promise:

The promise could not have been more clear. pic.twitter.com/uKlsUvDtY6

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) August 6, 2021

Here’s the reality.

Countless words have already been written on the technical details. There’s good reason to believe that the system’s not as foolproof as Apple claims but, to me, that’s beside the point. Let us assume, arguendo, that Apple’s system is perfect, doesn’t generate false positives, and works just as Apple says. No matter how hard you squint or how eloquent the weasel words, the fact remains that Apple promised over and over that they wouldn’t do something and then they did it anyway.

Sure, fighting child pornography is a worthy goal and no reasonable person could be against it but it’s not a battle I or other iPhone users signed up for. Apple wants to feel virtuous but they want others to pay for their warm feelings with their privacy. Apple doesn’t care if their users want to pay that price; they simply stole our privacy so they could feel good about themselves.

For me, Apple’s betrayal is the important thing in this story but there are also slippery slope concerns. Apple pinky-swears, as Sarah Jamie Lewis puts it, that they absolutely, positively won’t let the system be abused or expanded to detect other behaviors but can we believe them? After all, they’ve already lied to us once. Is there any reason to take them at their word? Here’s four reasons why I don’t think we can:

1. First there’s the principal of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. If they lied to us once, why should we believe anything else they say?
2. Their track record in standing firm against government incursions into privacy are not good even when the stakes are merely economic as their capitulation to the Chinese government has shown.
3. Apple like everyone else in the U.S. has to obey the law. What are they going to do when presented with a court order (or law, for that matter) insisting they scan for other material? Their arguments in the 2016 San Bernadino case obviously don’t apply.
4. The Iron Law of Data Collection.

There’s not much we average iPhone users can do other than write Apple and let them know we’re unhappy. An easy way of doing that is to sign the open letter to Apple protesting their spying. What can Apple do? I don’t need them to apologize or don sackcloth, I just want them to knock it off.