[HN Gopher] "People have asked if we'll adopt this system for Wh...
___________________________________________________________________
"People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsApp. The
answer is no."
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 119 points
Date : 2021-08-06 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| JimB7 wrote:
| Apple is in dire need of some good ol antitrust enforcement
| stefan_ wrote:
| "We will never share data with WhatsApp, we put it into the
| contract"
|
| That's the problem with all E2E. The cryptography is sound, but
| we can't trust any of the software to not change from under us.
| d--b wrote:
| We're in a middle of a false privacy marketing schoolyard battle.
| This is pathetic
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| Over the last few years I have moved my entire Digital life to
| the Apple eco-system with a deep belief that Apple would care
| about "my" privacy for the long-term. And with this move to
| create a backdoor on the iPhone is making me very worried about
| relying on the Apple ecosystem.
| arthur_sav wrote:
| As long as the US government is pushing laws that makes it
| easier to spy on people, it's not going to get any better.
|
| The only hope is for other countries to (legally) force global
| companies to abide by local laws, just like EU did with GDPR.
| So user experience will vary by country of residence.
| leephillips wrote:
| I don't want to be mean, but why would you entertain such a
| "deep belief" about a corporation? I've heard similar things
| from many Apple users. What leads people to have this kind of
| faith in particular corporations? It's really alien to me.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Cynically, I would say I also had a deep belief that Apple
| would respect user privacy because Apple and Google are in a
| fight over control over the internet and your whole life.
| Google goes at it by giving away free shit then making
| billions off your data, Apple goes at this by making billions
| off hardware and software. From that point of view respecting
| user privacy is Apple's most powerful weapon in their fight
| against Google since its a place that Google simply cannot
| go.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Generating the impression that they respect your privacy
| works exactly equally as well, and is much cheaper.
| post_break wrote:
| When you have two options it's pretty easy to have faith in
| the one that tries to drum up it's privacy first stance.
| danuker wrote:
| My guess is the advertising worked.
|
| https://medium.com/seedx-digital-marketing-guru/why-apple-
| sp...
| D13Fd wrote:
| I wouldn't say I have a "deep belief" in Apple, but I trust
| Apple more than the other available options, because Apple's
| financial incentives are basically the opposite of Google or
| Facebook's.
|
| Instead of being motivated to use and/or sell user data, it's
| in Apple's best interest to keep that data secure and play to
| its competitive advantage as the company who is not trying to
| pry into its users' lives.
|
| That said, I really don't understand why Apple would do this,
| and it is very disconcerting. Obviously child pornography is
| absolutely horrible, but this move seems to throw out
| everyone's privacy in exchange for catching what I have to
| imagine is a tiny minority of users who are involved with
| that.
| handrous wrote:
| > I wouldn't say I have a "deep belief" in Apple, but I
| trust Apple more than the other available options
|
| That, for me too. From my perspective they basically don't
| have competition. The only viable alternative to Apple is
| "do everything yourself with open software, and just accept
| everything being buggier, jankier, and less helpful, while
| eating way more of your time". Obviously I'm not in love
| with that option, but what else? MS? Google? Ha.
|
| If Apple stops being Apple it'll be the elimination of a
| whole category of products and services, essentially. Just
| won't exist anymore.
|
| This is all less a product of Apple being wonderful than of
| user-facing computing everywhere else being an embarrassing
| shit-show.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I don't know how Apple has managed to get the image of a
| "privacy friendly" company while painting Google as "privacy
| unfriendly" at the same time. Apple is better than Google,
| but mostly because they can't gather as much data about you
| as Google does (this is not related to iOS vs Android; it's
| about how pervasive Google is on the WWW), and that's about
| all the practical differences between the two. And on iOS,
| Apple is also just one silent App Store update away from
| being able to exploit your data, not very different from
| Android.
|
| Even if I consider Google enemy #1 right now, I also don't
| really see them as privacy unfriendly. They have a shitton of
| data, but what have they exactly done with it that warrants
| the moniker? Microsoft seems to me to be much more privacy
| unfriendly (e.g., LinkedIn)
| handrous wrote:
| > Even if I consider Google enemy #1 right now, I also
| don't really see them as privacy unfriendly. They have a
| shitton of data, but what have they exactly done with it
| that warrants the moniker? Microsoft seems to me to be much
| more privacy unfriendly (e.g., LinkedIn)
|
| Collecting and having that data to begin with is awful &
| dangerous. The behavior of collecting it is creepy and
| gross. The existence of the collected data is threatening.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| The reason I consider Google a public enemy is not
| because they collect data or have a poor privacy policy
| or whatever (because I don't think they are particularly
| bad at that). The reason is because I think they are
| "unavoidable". It's very hard to do anything online
| without it leaving a fingerprint on some Google server.
| Even governments seem to be ready to endorse Google
| services (e.g. recaptcha, Android) for fulfillment of
| basic services.
|
| Apple, Facebook, etc. may have (or not have) worse
| privacy policy, but it is much easier to avoid leaving
| fingerprints on their servers. Amazon & Microsoft are on
| the other hand particularly dangerous, though.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most of the commentators are upset because they don't
| understand cloud and what it means. As an individual, once
| you provide data to a third party, you've lost exclusive
| control, period. How you feel about a company is just a
| feeling.
|
| With respect to this Apple thing, it's pretty clear that
| Apple thinks this is more respectful of privacy than what
| the other providers do. IMO, this is what allows E2E
| messaging to actually remain E2E.
|
| The EFF and some HN commenters are blending together the
| parental control aspect from the detection of illegal
| images aspect. They are two very different things.
|
| And when you talk about the reality of privacy, you _can_ ,
| trivially, turn off the the third party features that
| trigger the use of cloud services.
| gpanders wrote:
| It's not just marketing fluff though, Apple actually is
| better from a privacy perspective on many fronts:
|
| - iMessage is E2EE (with a big asterisk here of course)
|
| - Maps data stays on device unless you explicitly enable
| anonymous aggregated crowd sharing data. "Significant
| locations" never leaves your device
|
| - Apple Photos machine learning recognition all happens on
| device, not on Apple servers. This is one of my favorite
| features of my iPhone
|
| - As of the next iOS update, Siri voice command processing
| happens on device
|
| - The new Apple Private Relay (or whatever it's called)
|
| No they're not perfect and they could (and should) do a lot
| more, but there are objective things that they do better
| from a privacy standpoint than most other tech companies.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| But it IS marketing fluff, because you literally have to
| trust them on their word. They provide no means to verify
| what they are claiming and even if you could verify they
| could still silently update the client apps the next day
| (since they _exclusively_ control all platforms, all
| clients and all servers) and you would be none the wiser.
|
| Technically Google also "promises" practically the same
| (E2EE in Chats, only sharing map data if you enable it,
| local photo recognition, local voice assistant on the new
| Pixel whatever, etc.). But since you have to trust them
| on this, all of it is not really much better than just
| having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is
| meaningless.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Working for Apple, I can say that privacy pervades every
| discussion of every feature. It's not just fluff.
| dcow wrote:
| Do you have any insight on how other employees feel about
| this system? I'm sure it's all over the place but
| anything that stands out?
| ncmncm wrote:
| What you mean is that privacy policy is above your pay
| grade. Everything below can be compromised by one choice
| at the top.
| [deleted]
| dcow wrote:
| This one is annoying to me. I'm pretty sure Apple literally
| paid for that reputation. They just started marketing
| themselves as privacy focused a few years ago and everyone
| slurped it up. What's annoying about it? Well beyond them
| milking the privacy wave, I do believe that at a hardware
| and system software level Apple did outplay the competition
| for a very long time. Keychain, Secure enclave, biometric
| auth, secure boot, signed binaries, pointer auth, etc.
| They've pushed the state of the art in regards to those
| technologies making it into consumer hands and did it
| better than anybody else. So it's somewhat justified. But
| then they milked it and because the left hand doesn't know
| what the right is doing, are now taking a complete 180 "for
| the kids".
| bodo11 wrote:
| While also seeing deep belief in corporations sceptically
| myself, I don't think it should be the root cause of
| scepticism toward apple. The maximisation of proprietariness
| paired with this "deep belief" breads a really hard
| possibility to switch vendor (of whatever product), locking
| people in so much that the perceived cost of privacy-
| breaching software is lower than the cost of switching.
| [deleted]
| dm1011 wrote:
| >What leads people to have this kind of faith in particular
| corporations?
|
| Marketing and groupthink makes them join and buyers remorse
| makes them stay
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I think Apple sees the writing on the wall in terms of
| governments soon forcing this kind of oversight into platforms.
| They have tried to create a system that will not create false
| positives and will still protect the 99.99999% of their users
| that simply want privacy. Its a messy business and fraught with
| downstream implications, but I think Apple is trying to avoid a
| future where end-to-end encryption of communications is made
| illegal by a tech-ignorant congress.
|
| I also think they are simply pissed off that their platforms
| are being used to shield these activities.
|
| Is being preemptive to avoid imposed regs that might be much
| worse for their users the right approach? I don't know. Based
| on the tech papers linked at the end of their announcement,
| they are trying hard to thread a needle here.
| dcow wrote:
| But, we've fought this type of bull crap entering via our
| government in the past. We rule ourselves we can literally
| say, "no, government, you can't do that". Why is it different
| now? Are people getting tired of the recurring battles? Is
| human trafficking on the rise?
| dm1011 wrote:
| either way there marketing is truly amazing if people are
| still willing to write something like this after PRISM
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Apple has long set itself in opposition to user control and
| autonomy. That approach runs bone-deep in their DNA; it's
| practically their brand! To me, that DNA makes a move like this
| entirely unsurprising. To be clear, this isn't exclusively a
| bad thing: a paternalistic, limiting approach to one's userbase
| allows for everything from better hardware/software integration
| to lower risk of malware to Steve Jobs' famous "freedom from
| porn".
|
| By contrast, their privacy messaging runs much more shallow,
| and those who uncritically swallowed it always struck me as
| rather naive. Apple's ostensible pro-privacy stance has nothing
| to do with their ethos as a company, but was just convenient
| positioning relative to Google given their respective lines of
| business. It's fair game to highlight this advantage, but it's
| a lot like Facebook saying they "prioritize" avoiding abusive
| manufacturing practices more than Apple...while technically
| true, it's a function of their market position, and is not very
| useful for understanding the org's future behavior.
| enriquto wrote:
| > a deep belief that Apple
|
| In the context of software, beliefs are meaningless, religious
| issues. You do not need trust when you can have proof (i.e.
| source code that you can compile and modify yourself).
| Kenji wrote:
| Over the last few years I have moved my entire digital life to
| local disks and GNU/Linux machines. Best decision of my life. I
| sleep well knowing that I own my data because I own the disks
| it resides on, and I own the computers they store it, and the
| entire stack from top to bottom, including software, is
| tailored to my and only my needs. The machine serves me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| "I don't think you'll ever see a mandating of vaccine"
|
| Anthony Fauci, 18-AUG-2020
| esotericimpl wrote:
| I don't think facebook has earned the benefit of the doubt in any
| way, shape or form.
|
| One would assume facebook already does all these things across,
| FB, Messenger and Whatsapp, its just amusing that anyone would
| believe anything out of the whatsapp team.
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| "You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the
| [Oculus] Rift. I promise."
|
| -- Palmer Luckey, 2014 (https://time.com/38366/here-
| are-7-promises-oculus-has-made-a...)
| hncurious wrote:
| That's what he was told during the acquisition and he believed
| it. Many entrepreneurs learn that lesson the hard way.
| enumjorge wrote:
| "Person who is about to become very wealthy promises that no
| one needs to feel wary about the event that will make them
| wealthy".
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| Yes. And?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| A statement like this is meaningless. Changing business,
| regulatory, and social pressures can cause WhatsApp to change
| direction tomorrow. Remember how at one time Mark Zuckerberg
| promised that Instagram and WhatsApp data would remain separate
| from Facebook[1]?
|
| [1] https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-
| whats...
| toiletaccount wrote:
| They could prove it by publishing the code and making the
| builds reproducible so they have the same checksum as the
| binaries in the app store.
|
| I consider whatever they say lip service until proven
| otherwise. How anyone can call their app privacy oriented
| without at least showing the code is insane. Use Signal, etc.,
| etc.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Exactly. Or when Facebook promised you'd never need a Facebook
| account to use an Oculus. They've shown over and over again
| they'll do whatever increases their market power and revenues.
|
| That's what I find so disappointing about Apple. They were the
| one large tech player that had begun to build their brand on
| taking privacy seriously.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Apple have built their brand on more than privacy -> they are
| doing privacy / trust / security etc.
|
| I think you may find that folks don't take as dim a view on
| preventing exploitation of children as HN crowd. Apple has
| arguably the #3 to #1 brand globally currently.
|
| Let's give this some time to shake out and see how the
| android brands and others do (if they become the home of
| child exploitation and porn) brand wise.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _I think you may find that folks don 't take as dim a view
| on preventing exploitation of children as HN crowd. ... (if
| they become the home of child exploitation and porn)_
|
| Don't do that. It's bull and you know it.
| bogwog wrote:
| > They were the one large tech player that had begun to build
| their brand on taking privacy seriously.
|
| "Brand" is right, because it always was, and always will be
| marketing and nothing more (unless maybe laws are changed
| and/or regulators get off their lazy asses).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Changing business, regulatory, and social pressures can cause
| WhatsApp to change direction tomorrow.
|
| Yeah, WhatsApp might decide to spy on you in the future, so you
| might as well use iMessage which already spies on you?
| crackercrews wrote:
| iMessage isn't spying on you. There are two aspects to the
| scanning. One is if you use iCloud. The other is if you send
| photos to a minor via iMessage.
|
| If you get flagged by the iCloud scanning, you could be
| reported to the authorities. But you can opt out of iCloud
| scanning by not using iCloud.
|
| If you get flagged by the iMessage system, you are not
| reported to the authorities. The parents of that person may
| receive a notification. But if you are sending photos to a
| kid on a device set up by their parents, you should pretty
| well expect that photos you send may be seen by their
| parents.
|
| I understand the privacy concerns raised by Apple's about-
| face here. But we should be clear about what is and isn't
| happening.
|
| WhatsApp comes off looking like a defender of privacy by
| saying "we won't do what Apple has done" but in reality the
| most objectionable thing Apple is doing relates to cloud-
| based photo storage, not messaging. The messaging piece is a
| new type of parental controls and does not involve the
| authorities in any event.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > you can opt out of iCloud scanning by not using iCloud.
|
| You can opt out of any privacy concerns by not using the
| concerning product. That's a complete non sequitur in a
| conversation about the concern.
| crackercrews wrote:
| If you read GP's comment, it conflated these two issues
| as if they both applied to iMessage. The point is that
| you don't have to opt out of iMessage to avoid being
| reported to the authorities. You just have to not use
| iCloud, a system that has many excellent competitors. You
| can also roll your own. This is not as big a deal as if
| one of the major messaging systems were snooping through
| all your messages and photos. That is what GP made it
| sound like.
| gzer0 wrote:
| The single biggest issue is the future implications this
| kind of scanning tool has.
|
| China accounts for 20% of revenue for Apple, how likely
| are they to bow down to China's demands? How about other
| regulators?
|
| The fact that this is now put into place sets a very
| harrowing precedent.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > iMessage isn't spying on you.
|
| How do you know? Apple makes a lot of claims about their
| security but these claims probably don't preclude Apple
| spying on you somehow. Especially if a warrant compels
| them.
| arthur_sav wrote:
| > But we should be clear about what is and isn't happening.
|
| The situation is anything but clear.
| altacc wrote:
| That's not what they said. They're just pointing out that
| statements do not always hold true over time and history
| tells us that a Facebook division might not be the best at
| holding promises.
|
| They also did not mention iMessage. There are several other
| popular messaging applications out there to choose from.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Good lord - these are the same folks who had to get rid of the
| whatsapp founder because he wouldn't go along with their ad
| targeting plans / their integration plans (all of which they
| had promised not to do).
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Actually it's not. Zuckerberg said they'll move into a privacy
| focused company.
|
| Zuckerberg is the master of pivoting any size of company. This
| will be a turningpoint, yet again, of Facebook.
| [deleted]
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > Zuckerberg is the master of
|
| I'm sure he's an intelligent executive but can we stop
| congratulating people solely for being at the top of the org
| chart? What has Zuckerberg, personally and without aid or
| advice, done to prove himself a "master of pivoting".
| hncurious wrote:
| I don't think it's meaningless. The head of WhatsApp publicly
| opposing it affects the conversation and social pressures. This
| matters because politics is downstream from culture. Certainly
| it's better than saying nothing or being in favor of it.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these:
|
| Richard Stallman was right again.
| fsflover wrote:
| Yes: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/apple
|
| https://stallman.org/apple.html
| [deleted]
| shawnz wrote:
| WhatsApp is quickly earning back my trust as the most privacy-
| respecting chat system for laypeople right now.
|
| Obviously, actions matter more than words, but the actions they
| have been taking as of late are promising. I certainly won't be
| putting all my eggs in one basket after being burned this many
| times, but for now I am happy to recommend WhatsApp.
|
| See also the recent news about them rolling out encrypted
| backups, which essentially would solve the biggest weak point
| with WhatsApp right now:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/16/22580800/icloud-google-dr...
| peakaboo wrote:
| You know WhatsApp is Facebook right? I don't think there is a
| worse company to trust except maybe Google. :)
| shawnz wrote:
| Didn't Apple just show us how brand names are basically
| meaningless? I am only concerned with their actions, not
| their owners.
| Talanes wrote:
| Opposite directions. If you put a clean shirt and a dirty
| shirt in a bag together, the dirty shirt can rub off it'd
| dirtiness on the clean one, but the cleanness can't rub off
| and make the dirty shirt clean.
| ranguna wrote:
| WhatsApp's action are pretty bad, did you forget that terms
| of service change a few months ago?
|
| They literally said that WhatsApp will start to share
| metadata, including your availability, status and the
| people you talk with, with Facebook companies.
|
| Who are you trying to convince? Did Facebook pay you to say
| this or something?
| shawnz wrote:
| I remember the terms of service change and I almost left
| the platform because of it. But you are also greatly
| mischaracterizing the change. It actually only allows
| those things in some pretty specific circumstances which
| are under the user's control (although that's still not
| ideal, of course).
|
| I am only trying to convince WhatsApp that the stance
| they are taking here is the right one. Unless we give
| credit where it's actually due, what will be the
| incentive for any bigcorp to take any privacy-protecting
| actions?
| [deleted]
| D13Fd wrote:
| I don't think I'm ever going to be able to trust an entity--or
| a free app--that is ultimately controlled by Facebook.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| Right, they guard the sanctity of your content fiercely. And
| make enormous bags of money off of your contact list, frequency
| and timing of contacts, awake timing, location, etc etc.
|
| And even if you're in a country (only really Germany AFAIK)
| where the worst use of metadata for advertising is legally
| tricky... WhatsApp is the very definition of the fox guarding
| the henhouse. Do you really trust one of the largest data
| harvesters andy advertising marketplaces in the world to guard
| your data? Their business model literally depends on violating
| that trust. Do you honestly think that's a safe long term bet?
| whyoh wrote:
| Unencrypted backups are bad, but this is arguably even worse:
| https://jorislacance.fr/blog/2021/04/16/whatsapp-tracking-2
|
| (Discussion on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26889139)
| asadlionpk wrote:
| ...for now
| yalogin wrote:
| > Apple has long needed to do something about CSAM
|
| This statement gives away the true motive behind those tweets.
| They just wanted to get back at Apple. They could have at least
| left that tweet out.
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(page generated 2021-08-06 23:01 UTC)