If the matter ended there, it would be of little consequence, good or bad. All but the least technologically savvy predators would simply deactivate iCloud and avoid getting caught, sharply reducing the public benefit of this change. As for future costs, however, Apple’s proposed approach embraced at least three worrisome premises: that we don’t fully own the devices that store so much private information about us; that tech giants that sell us those devices can ethically load them with spyware; and that the evil deeds of a tiny fraction of users justify the mass surveillance of data that millions of totally innocent users put on their phone.
If Apple accepts those premises, and most of its customers go along without objecting, then future iPhones will almost inevitably scan for more than child porn. The logic of catching a few evil actors by denying the cloak of privacy to everyone will inexorably expand to more and more areas that powerful societal factions want to target. Some of those factions will themselves be evil. Many are likely to be illiberal or repressive.
As Edward Snowden, who famously revealed the NSA’s mass surveillance of innocent people, asked on Substack,
“What happens when a party in India demands they start scanning for memes associated with a separatist movement? What happens when the UK demands they scan for a library of terrorist imagery? How long do we have left before the iPhone in your pocket begins quietly filing reports about encountering ‘extremist’ political material, or about your presence at a ‘civil disturbance’?”
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