What are the ramifications that I "do not understand"?
I will repeat: It is a very tame change. Were you frantic and delirious when a neural network first identified a dog in your photos? Isn't that the slippery slope to it reporting you to the authorities for something bong shaped?
Speaking of which, every bit of fear mongering relies upon a slippery slope fallacy. What is clearly a PR move is somehow actually the machinations of a massive surveillance network. Why? Why would Apple do that?
Because it gets required to by the laws of countries responsible for most of their market? And because authoritarian regimes intentionally blur the lines between criminal and political surveillance over time, making it harder for companies to draw hard policy lines? Concern about this doesn't require any bond villains, it just requires well-intentioned pragmatists on one side and idealogical politicos on the other.
FWIW, I think you have a point about the doom-saying. Countries with good judicial protections around privacy already use it as a backstop against dirty tricks where folks use one type of surveillance to require another. But it makes sense to wonder how those barriers will erode over time, and to worry about places where they don't exist.
In which case how is this a slippery slope? They didn’t do something and there was no legal mandate. Now they are required to do something to be able to operate in said company. Is the slippery slope that they can be in compliance faster?
That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.
Apple’s changes would enable such screening, takedown, and reporting in its end-to-end messaging. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require the classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand the classifier be able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers.
We can carry every single element back to its inception and make identical arguments. That's the problem with slippery slopes.
Apple - creates messaging platform.
Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them all messages.
Apple - creates encrypted messaging platform.
Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them the keys and all messages
Apple - Adds camera to device (GPS, microphone, accelerometer, step detection, etc)
Slippery slope - governments can force them to record whenever the government demands and send a live stream to the government. Or send locations, or walking patterns, or conversations.
Apple - makes operating system
Slippery slope - Basically anything. There are so many ways I could go with this. Government can force them to make a messaging and photo system, add cameras to their devices, entice users to take and accumulate pictures, and do image hashing and report suspect photos.
That's the problem with slippery slope arguments. They become meaningless rhetoric.
Image perceptual hashing is literally a single person's work for two hours. If you really think the barrier between an oppressive government stomping on groups or not is whether Apple did a (poorly communicated) Child Safety PR move and implemented this trivial mechanism...the world is a lot more perilous and scary than you think.
Do keep in mind that atleast one govt has successfully preassured apple to give up on its privacy
Also the difference here compared to the scenarios you've mentioned above is that Apple has walked pretty far. All it would take is to make the verification happen on all local files irrespective of its being uploaded to iCloud or not. Then any government can provide their own hashes to apple to keep track of. Apple won't have any idea what those hashes actually mean
"Do keep in mind that at least one govt has successfully pressured apple to give up on its privacy"
No company can defend you from your government.
"All it would take"...
That is the slippery slope. If a government is going to say "that's a nice looking hashing system you have there, now we need you to..." they could as easily -- more easily -- have said "that's a nice filesystem you have there, we need you to...".
Hashing files and comparing them against a list is literally a college grad afternoon project. There is absolutely nothing in Apple's announcement that empowers any government anywhere in any meaningful way at all. It is only fear-mongering (or simply raw factual errors as seen throughout this discussion) that makes it seem like it does.
Sure no company can completely defend me from my govt but atleast they can not build tools that make it easier. Also while it could be easy for a college graduate to build such a system, only Apple has the capability of rolling out this system to all of their phones. Otherwise we would have already seen such a system implemented in other countries
"only Apple has the capability of rolling out this system"
Right. Exactly. Any country in the world can mandate that Apple do anything they want (any of the slippery slope mandates), and Apple can comply or withdraw from the market. If any country wanted to demand that Apple compare all files against a ban list, they could have done that in 2007, or any year since. There is zero technical barrier and it would be a trivial task.
The point is that this development moves the bar infinitesimally. I would argue not at all. Fearmongering that depends upon "Well what if..." didn't actually think it through very well.
> "only Apple has the capability of rolling out this system"
I guess this is where I differ with you. No government was able to preassure apple to implement a complete client side verification till now but who knows how things will be now that they have a system in place that can be easily modified.
Anyways I hope your prediction turns out right. I live in a place where privacy laws don't really exist. The last thing I want is any system that can be easily exploited by authorities to crush dissent.
That is because you are incorrectly using the the charge of the Slippery slope fallacy to hand wave away legitimate concerns by reducing them to an absurdity which is itself a logical fallacy
The legitimate concerns here are not a slippery slop, they are real and self evidence born from countless examples through out history of these types of survelence systems being abused. EFF points to a coulple, other artiles point to other examples
It takes a person an extremely dense person (or intellectually dishonest) to simply hand wave all of these concerns away as "well that is just a slippery slope so I can ignore you"
I see Apple implement a trivial (laughably trivial) system -- a tiny little pimple on a massive platform of hardware and software -- and I don't think "this is it! This is what puts the surveillance state over the top!", I think "Hey look, trivial, constrained system".
But if you believe that this was what was between a surveillance state or not...well you must be much more intellectually capable than I and I am honored to be in your presence.
It is the very definition of a slippery slope. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but usually you're just walking to the bathroom.
I don't know what I think about the move, but I know this: intentions don't matter. Capabilities matter. If the current intention is benign, that means little.
I will repeat: It is a very tame change. Were you frantic and delirious when a neural network first identified a dog in your photos? Isn't that the slippery slope to it reporting you to the authorities for something bong shaped?
Speaking of which, every bit of fear mongering relies upon a slippery slope fallacy. What is clearly a PR move is somehow actually the machinations of a massive surveillance network. Why? Why would Apple do that?