If this doesn't make people stop using Iphones... then what?

Given all others follow what Apple does, and always have done that is rather a silly thing to say.

Apple: We care about your privacy that's why we made Facebook and all those people whose revenue depends on tracking you angry.

Also

Apple: We will scan your photos, but is to look for banned content like people that abuse children. Do not worry, there is absolutely no way your photos that do not have anything that's banned content will be leaked and used against you.

There are two methods this could take:

1. A model is created from the photos on Apple's end and the phone uploads its pictures to a server at Apple to do the comparison. This involves a mandatory leak of data which a user can't disable and, as Apple doesn't own the devices themselves, is currently illegal.

2. A model is created by Apple and sent to user devices, which scans the pictures onboard and sends the result to Apple. This is more likely to be legally viable, but it is going to cause a lot of problems as the processors in a mobile device are a lot weaker than a server and most models for picture comparison are likely to be large. There will at a minimum be complaints about the network bandwidth and CPU time needed to run this check, especially as I assume the model will get run every time a user takes new pictures and whenever new source material is added causing a model update. In addition, they are either going to have a lot of false positives or false negatives, meaning they'll need some method of determining whether an image is a false positive. Automatic uploads are still legally questionable, so this might result in a lot of suspicious reports which can't be verified. With the alternative that it is mostly useless though, I don't know whether they will accept a high false negative rate.

They are just going to change the license where somewhere in small print you'll consent to that.

If you decline, then your phone will stop working.

They are getting away with not allowing other app stores to run on iPhone, I can't see why they wouldn't be able to do this.

They'll give a wink wink to three letter agencies about them being able to scan phones to their heart contents and it will be more legal than scrambled eggs on Sunday morning.

Subtle, but present, humor. Sly, even.

Apple won't talk to El Reg, "so asking it to comment on this is a fruitless exercise"

I have a copy (of uncertain provenance) of that iconic 1977s session by the Five-aside-archers with Beetle Wulvis on Bass Guitar. Sony Music just happen to have signed a hoover-up contract with somebody who claims to have some derived title to the tracks. In England they might sue me under copyright law but if it wasn't currently for sale they can't show a loss so that's two-fingers to them. (They have to demonstrate a loss.) But with other (c) enforcement regimes there are other consequences. Furthermore, having and playing (in England) is neither a crime or a civil tort unless they can prove I'm not entitled. (For example my copy came from Big Joey Frobisher himself.) But in this new world YOU HAVE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL ON YOUR DEVICE! GO TO JAIL. DO NOT PASS GO. is the default position these mega corporations expect us to accept.

That'll be handing it over to all the people who sue them for this. If the police in most civilised countries need a warrant to search your possessions for unlawful material, what authority do Apple claim for this gross abuse of civil liberties? What theory of law do they have that they think they have carte blanche to start searching through people's phones?

What do their marketing department think about all that money that they've wasted touting Apple's privacy credentials now that another part of Apple has just completely trashed those credentials overnight.

Really Apple? With all your shouting about privacy I really expected better from you.

Anyone who says "Think of the kiddies" and there's no doubt going to be some here: It's always used as the excuse for inserting the thin end of the wedge, and then at the first excuse whacking the other end with a bloody great mallet. A recitation of the evils that follow bending the rules of civil hygiene for some "special case" ought not to be necessary. But for those thinking "Well, it's only going to affect paedophiles" anyone with one jot of sense knows that if this is permitted then there will be another "good and worthy" case permitted, then another less worthy until it trickles down to the point where your phone's camera will feed the onboard AI, which will note the double yellow line you just parked on and immediately debit your bank account the parking fine and put points on your digital driving license.

It's nearly always the go to excuse for something that eventually ends up taking away people's rights.

"We're only using it to scan for images of kiddie porn. Are you on the side of the kiddie fiddlers?"

"We're only using it to scan for images glorifying terrorism. Are you a terrorist?"

"We're only using it to scan for images of serious crimes. Why do you sympathize with murderers?"

"We're only using it to scan for images of banned ideologies. What, are you a neo-Nazi?"

"We're only using it to scan for images of racist or TERF nature. Such thought is wrong and is banned."

"We're only using it to scan for images showing support for Antifa."

"We're only using it here in China to scan for images showing you support the Hong Kong democracy movement."

"We're only using it here in Spain to scan for Catalan separatist imagery..."

I won't stoop to repeating the old Pastor Martin Niemöller quote cliché, but there's a definite slippery slope argument to be made here.

You might accidentally take a picture of a couple getting married, but end up with a few baby angels in the background which Apple's AI might class as naked children and get you prosecuted.

I think churches will be whitelisted... ;-)

The Vatican will move against this tech

Only the brainwashed go to churches by choice.

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a " think of the children " panic in Canada, and crusaders went on the tear to get the police and government to "do something" to stop it.

In the middle of this climate, I know of three cases where people ended up getting visited by police investigating them for alleged child pornography.

One case was a Japanese anime, as in, a cartoon, with no actual humans being filmed, let alone children.

The other two were the result of photo development. Those old enough to remember actual film cameras know that unless you had a darkroom, chemicals, and skill, you needed to go to a photo developer to convert your raw film into actual snapshots. Camera stores did it, of course, as well as specialty outlets like Fotomat, but one of the most common photo development places was, oddly enough, the pharmacy. And it was pharmacies that called the cops on two people getting their photos developed.

The first case showed the shocking picture of a nude 5 year old boy with his pants on the sidewalk with a scantily clad 3 year old girl next to him. In other words, a 3 year old girl snuck up on her big brother and pants his swimsuit on him. Mom happened to be taking pictures of her kids in the pool, and couldn't resist getting a snap of her kids pranking each other.

The second case was similar, with a grown woman in a bathtub with a 2 year old boy, who decided to make an obscene gesture to shock his mommy just as Daddy walked in. In other words, a typical " Jim, get in here and see what your son is doing " family moment.

Fortunately, in both cases, the police officers were parents themselves and not idiots, and when they visited the families and saw that the kids photographed were the children of the photographers, they realized that the photo developers had completely over reacted. But as you can imagine, those families stopped sending their film out to be developed, and went to digital photography.

Now, you don't even have to drop your film off to have busybodies report you to the cops, your camera vendor will do it as soon as you take your picture.

There's no way that this won't be abused, both by companies, and governments.

Not forgetting Julia Somerville and her ordeal. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Somerville#Allegations

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Somerville#Allegations

Apple has a history of kowtowing to various country's demands for suppression of or access to data.

This seems like an attempt to avoid a US mandated backdoor with a "limited" front door.

I wonder if the initial research was done to help China monitor their iPhone users.

In great need of another OS that can run on Apple hardware or great hardware with another OS. No, that simply isn’t Android.

They stood, rightly, firm before.

What's changed for them?

:"Apple has a history of kowtowing to various country's demands for suppression of or access to data.:" As do most. Your point being?

It is basically Apple's clone of Microsoft Defender at this point. It only scans for DRM cracks etc. Doesn't give a damn about viruses.

It is called Microsoft Defender because it defends Microsoft's stakeholders. Not you. Apple is merely copying.

"Apple will hold the unencrypted database of photos"

That sound dodgy to anyone else? Are they getting some sort of special protection from law enforcement agencies who would otherwise be all over someone holding those images?

:"That sound dodgy to anyone else?" Only to the usual Apple haters and the terminally paranoid.

I don't own any Apple devices (surprisingly, I'm OK with the walled garden, but can't afford them and since I run Linux, which has poor support for getting images out...), and it now looks like I never will.

My current cell-phone is an 8-year old Samsung S4, and my data plan is tiny by most standards. Any attempt by Google to do this sort of thing will result in me going back to a "feature phone", for purely financial reasons.

Right Think is about to be Enforced

It always beings with the "best intentions". Do it for the kiddies and such. Obviously, if you are against this, then you must be a kiddie fiddler - or something like that goes the usual argument. It's the thin end of the wedge.

Take 50 photos of family kids playing. Find that they're all blurry and delete them. Get arrested by FBI because AI found illegal content and you deleted both their evidence and your defense.

After fighting off Ring and Alexa, my hardware has risen against me. Will there be any place to migrate too? Off course not, the dominoes will fall in rapid succession. Bill Barr must jumping for joy. Imagine the zeal the next regime will use, although I’m sure the current regime is supportive as well. I’m so pissed at the betrayal of these weasels I can barely see straight.

Just like what Signal Private Messenger did with "aesthetic" messages for Israeli-Cellebrite (this chapter isn't finished, expect more news), the solution here is also simple.

Phone-Devs can embed hundreds of digitally-created-naked-children-fake-photos (not real ones) into files not viewed by the user, including fake geotags like for example FBI offices, Apple offices, or even the Pentagon.

I do not endorse adult games with children, but this tech must go.