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[676.08 --> 680.56] I bet you there's a lot of people out there using technology just for the bare minimum,
[680.74 --> 684.54] just to get what they need done and not understanding, like we do, the underlying principles.
[684.54 --> 686.62] Yeah, I guess.
[686.68 --> 688.38] And I suppose it's so easy to turn that stuff on.
[688.46 --> 690.06] You turn on iCloud when you get your phone.
[690.46 --> 692.16] You don't realize every picture you're taking.
[692.36 --> 694.74] I suppose, especially if you're taking the pictures with the phone.
[695.36 --> 702.02] But an important thing to realize is the CSAM detection is only looking for images that are in the database.
[702.02 --> 709.16] It's not doing like some sort of flesh recognition algorithm and detecting 80% nakedness on a 10-year-old.
[709.24 --> 710.38] Like it's not doing that.
[710.68 --> 717.56] It is looking at a hash that has been provided by CSAM, which they then only look for those images.
[717.56 --> 720.38] And so it doesn't really feel that effective.
[720.38 --> 723.80] If you combine the fact that people can just turn off iCloud Photo Library,
[724.16 --> 727.88] and it's only looking for the CSAM photos that exist today,
[728.78 --> 735.96] it seems like a limited reach, a limited return for a massive increase in surveillance on people's devices.
[736.36 --> 741.12] And Alex, I think it sounds like it bothers you that it's actually happening on device.
[741.24 --> 744.30] Like you'd almost be more comfortable if it was happening up in the cloud, it sounds like.
[744.94 --> 745.54] I think I would.
[745.54 --> 753.00] And for me, this feels like a capitulation to wider pressures that are at play.
[753.00 --> 760.00] You know, if you're Apple, you probably get a lot of requests from different governments,
[760.22 --> 764.98] different organizations to put back doors into your end-to-end encryption algorithms.
[765.54 --> 770.12] And for me, I think this is their way of saying, no, we're not going to do that.
[770.12 --> 777.76] But what we are going to do is say we have some protections in place for the stuff that you say is actually bad,
[777.84 --> 782.50] as opposed to terrorists or whatever the next excuse is going to be.
[782.50 --> 788.30] Right. You say you need a backdoor for child porn, so we are going to build a system that automatically detects it,
[788.36 --> 790.82] and then your excuse for a backdoor goes away.
[791.16 --> 792.08] It's nullified.
[792.24 --> 793.58] And then you have to move on to the next one.
[794.00 --> 798.66] But what bothers me most is there was an ad campaign not that long ago that says,
[798.92 --> 803.66] what happens on your iPhone stays on your phone as part of their privacy message.
[803.66 --> 809.28] This feels to me like it crosses a line because the scanning's happening on the local device.
[809.78 --> 817.32] I don't necessarily opt in quite as obviously as I would if, say, my stuff was being uploaded to a remote server.
[817.88 --> 819.08] Like Facebook is a good example.
[819.22 --> 824.40] If I upload something to Facebook, in my mind, I consider that now public domain,
[825.14 --> 828.24] whatever the privacy controls that Facebook say is there.
[828.68 --> 830.08] And it was an implicit action as well.
[830.16 --> 832.14] You're choosing to upload to Facebook.
[832.14 --> 837.12] It's a manual action you're taking where iCloud Photo Library is kind of a built-in default.
[837.26 --> 840.82] You have to be an iCloud user, and you can go in there and turn it on and off.
[840.94 --> 844.48] But, you know, if you sign up for the whole shebang, you're going to get iCloud Photo,
[844.70 --> 846.78] and every photo you take goes in there.
[847.30 --> 850.56] Like you said, it's just a very, very slippery slope.
[850.78 --> 852.90] This year, it's child pornography.
[853.12 --> 854.22] Next year, it's terrorists.
[854.92 --> 861.18] In 20 years' time, it's monitoring a social credit score because you said something bad about the president, you know?
[862.14 --> 862.98] That's what I worry about.
[863.06 --> 866.76] It's also true that these are only the things that they're saying they're scanning for.
[867.52 --> 869.54] We don't know about the things they are not saying.
[869.66 --> 869.92] Right.
[869.98 --> 876.02] And if you go by the docs that Apple has released, they don't even have input in that CSAM database.
[876.20 --> 878.66] They're basically just being handed a list of hashes.
[879.12 --> 880.40] Here, put this in your database.
[880.40 --> 884.96] Now, I have to say, I am actually more comfortable with this being on-device.
[885.92 --> 890.00] I think because it limits the scale and scope of something when it's on-device,
[890.10 --> 893.82] a big database update or a feature like this is going to have to come through a software update,
[893.96 --> 898.22] where if it was a cloud service, they would just push the update, and one day I would be subject to it.
[898.76 --> 903.72] So I kind of prefer those aspects, and I think it also does help with the privacy aspect.
[904.12 --> 906.86] They're not having to unencrypt everything on iCloud to do this.
[906.86 --> 912.04] They're doing it on your device that already has access, and then they're pinging Apple with a,
[912.18 --> 913.76] hey, we think we found a match here.
[914.44 --> 918.18] Apple then has to have some sort of human interact with that alert.
[918.38 --> 922.70] There's various descriptions of what kind of alert they get, and then Apple flags the authorities.
[923.26 --> 925.36] And it does seem like they've taken a lot of steps here.
[925.84 --> 927.66] They've limited the way they check this.
[927.74 --> 931.82] They're looking for specific fingerprints, and then they have this cryptographic signature
[931.82 --> 935.00] that they assign to it when they think they have found one, and that's what they send up to Apple.
[935.00 --> 936.84] Then it's reviewed by a human.
[937.06 --> 942.70] It's happening on your device instead of at cloud, and you can turn it off by turning off iCloud Photo Library.
[943.30 --> 948.52] Is this a reasonable compromise if the platform, let's just say for the sake of argument,
[949.02 --> 954.76] is really being used for child abuse at some massive scale because of the popularity of the platform?
[955.22 --> 957.06] Is this a reasonable thing for them to do?
[957.28 --> 962.28] Do they have some responsibility as a platform owner with a billion devices out there
[962.28 --> 966.06] to take some action to try to maybe stop something like this?
[966.58 --> 969.88] Well, I look at that 20 million figure that you came out with for Facebook,
[970.68 --> 975.72] divide that by 365, and that's 55,000 flags a day.
[975.86 --> 978.98] Who is reviewing 55,000 flags a day?
[979.82 --> 983.64] That's just a crazy amount of signal-to-noise ratio, isn't it?
[984.00 --> 984.52] No kidding.
[985.02 --> 986.88] Well, and can you imagine when they turn this on,
[986.88 --> 991.54] the initial, if this is going to be a thing and it's a real big problem,
[991.64 --> 996.10] you would think they're going to have just this massive deluge of alerts,
[996.34 --> 998.22] and I just wouldn't want that job.
[998.70 --> 1004.22] Well, I've certainly been on the other end of logging overload or alert overload.
[1004.38 --> 1006.20] You just stop looking after a while.
[1006.68 --> 1009.54] And you know, the other reality is several cloud providers,
[1009.54 --> 1012.62] I think many, I don't want to name them off the top of my head,
[1012.62 --> 1016.40] but I know Facebook and Microsoft are already doing this scanning.
[1016.74 --> 1017.82] They're already doing this.
[1018.50 --> 1020.24] Apple was one of sort of the holdouts here.
[1020.86 --> 1023.62] So it really comes back to, if you're not comfortable with this,
[1024.12 --> 1026.64] you really have to self-host.
[1026.88 --> 1028.72] And you have to advocate self-hosting,
[1028.78 --> 1031.14] because that's the only way you can avoid this kind of content scanning.
[1031.46 --> 1034.24] And if you're worried about the slippery slope of what could be added to this database,
[1034.90 --> 1037.58] then I think people should really be, I don't know,
[1037.58 --> 1042.38] like when you can self-host, like invest in self-hosting, use it,
[1042.54 --> 1044.06] make an audience for it out there.
[1044.56 --> 1044.64] Absolutely.
[1044.92 --> 1046.70] And on that note, actually,
[1046.94 --> 1050.20] I thought we might try doing a new challenge in the show.