Years ago, Apple famously (or infamously, depending on your POV) refused to create a backdoor for the government to get in criminals' phones. Here's the Wikipedia article.
Recently, as you might be aware, Apple announced it plans to scan users' photos in order to fight child abuse.
[Note: I am very much pro-privacy. I do not need and refuse to post a disclaimer saying I am against child abuse because that's insane, and would do little to protect me from idiots who have no issue assuming others are totally okay with child abuse.]
On Thursday, Apple surprised the tech world by announcing that it will actively scan some users’ iPhones for known images of child sexual abuse material. The company also plans to discourage Siri searches for this material and warn children against sending or receiving sexually explicit messages, all starting with the launch of iOS 15 this fall.
The news drew a quick backlash from security experts and civil liberties groups, who believe the company is standing on a slippery slope by adding these content-scanning systems to its devices. The news also seems to have raised some objections inside Apple, as the company has stood behind its system in a memo to employees.
Apple is doubling down. They described opponents of this terrible idea as the "screeching voices of the minority." With that logic, we should mandate that every smartphone record everything and compare the data to what other people decided was bad. It would surely save lives, prevent child abuse and much more! From Pixy at Ace's:
Dismissing the entire security community, which has universally decried this, and the entire privacy community likewise as "screeching voices of the minority" shows exactly where this is coming from.The apparent and increasing inability of the upper echelons in tech to question their own beliefs, to be genuinely open to disagreement, and to do so without assuming bad faith of their opponents is frankly disturbing.
They are fully aware that what they are doing is wrong. They know it will harm people. That's why they kept it secret. They just don't care.
This is the end result of intellectual monoculture. To whatever small extent they spoke to any security or privacy advocates about this, their concerns were overridden because by definition anyone objecting to this was evil.
Cupertino delenda est.
