> The government can mandate that Apple monitor content uploaded to its services.
In the US, if the Government were to mandate Apple search the users content, then Apple would be acting as an agent of the government and the searches would require a warrant per the fourth amendment. This is the unambiguous case law.
If Apple is being forced they should say so explicitly rather than secretly participating in an unlawful conspiracy to violate their customer's fourth amendment rights.
Other providers, such as google, have been unambiguous in their testimony in court that they are not being coerced, for example quoting US v. Miller (6th Cir. 2020):
> Companies like Google have business reasons to make these efforts to remove child pornography from their systems. As a Google representative noted, “[i]f our product is associated with being a haven for abusive content and conduct, users will stop using our services.” McGoff Decl., R.33-1, PageID#161.
> Did Google act under compulsion? Even if a private party does not perform a public function, the party’s action might qualify as a government act if the government “has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the” government. [...] Miller has not shown that Google’s hash-value matching falls on the “compulsion” side of this line. He cites no law that compels or encourages Google to operate its “product abuse detection system” to scan for hash-value matches. Federal law disclaims such a mandate. It says that providers need not “monitor the content of any [customer] communication” or “affirmatively search, screen, or scan” files. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(f). Nor does Miller identify anything like the government “encouragement” that the Court found sufficient to turn a railroad’s drug and alcohol testing into “government” testing. See Skinner, 489 U.S. at 615. [...] Federal law requires “electronic communication service providers” like Google to notify NCMEC when they become aware of child pornography. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a). But this mandate compels providers only to report child pornography that they know of; it does not compel them to search for child pornography of which they are unaware.
I think you’re missing the point. If the only thing stopping the government is a warrant (which the government itself can authorize) then there’s nothing stopping the government from just issuing those warrants. It may take slightly longer to do so but they will get it and all they need is reasonable suspicion to make that happen. This system makes it impossible for Apple to provide anything to the government outside of anything that is already criminal. If the government entity gets a warrant, they can simply get access to the whole device. This, in theory, prevents that situation because everything is encrypted and only things that are confirmed as being CSAM are provided. They literally can’t provide something they don’t have.
To be equivalent, they'd have to get courts to issue warrants for hundreds of millions of US Apple product users, people who have no reason to suspect they've engaged in any wrong doing. I suspect the courts would take issues with that.
Besides, if they could get the warrants they could get access to all the data in any case (e.g. by getting access to the users backups to steal the users credentials and then accessing the icloud accounts).
Yes but, effectively, the end result is the same without violating users' privacy. If none of what's on their device matches the hashes, then nothing will have been done and Apple would be able to encrypt those backups also which would invalidate the whole 2nd part of your complaint.
They're not invading the users' privacy. They have to comply with a lawful government order. This is allowing them to do that without violating users' privacy.
Apple has not been ordered by the government to scan user's images.
Because the scanning is happening without a warrant, if the government compelled apple to perform the search the search would be illegal. It is only legal for Apple to perform this search because it is in no way compelled by the government.
The government cannot obtain a blanket warrant against everyone. This kind of dragnet scanning has to be voluntarily performed by a private party for it to be lawful.
By all means! please prove to us that the government secretly has ordered Apple and other companies to scan users private data: If you do so it will result in overturning tons of convictions due to the unlawful searches which were concealed due perjury by the government and tech companies who have consistently claimed that the scanning by the tech companies is completely voluntary in in their own self interest.
They could make themselves unable to access any data and still comply with lawful orders. There's no rule that you have to preemptively design systems to make data extraction easier.
This planned system means less violation of privacy in cases where a warrant exists, and more violation of privacy where there is no warrant. That's not exactly an amazing tradeoff.
I don’t follow. This system is exactly what you’re describing. Apple is not able to access any of your data. The most they get access to is the signature of the file (which would already be matched with known CSAM content) and a potential thumbnail of the CSAM content.
In the US, if the Government were to mandate Apple search the users content, then Apple would be acting as an agent of the government and the searches would require a warrant per the fourth amendment. This is the unambiguous case law.
If Apple is being forced they should say so explicitly rather than secretly participating in an unlawful conspiracy to violate their customer's fourth amendment rights.
Other providers, such as google, have been unambiguous in their testimony in court that they are not being coerced, for example quoting US v. Miller (6th Cir. 2020):
> Companies like Google have business reasons to make these efforts to remove child pornography from their systems. As a Google representative noted, “[i]f our product is associated with being a haven for abusive content and conduct, users will stop using our services.” McGoff Decl., R.33-1, PageID#161.
> Did Google act under compulsion? Even if a private party does not perform a public function, the party’s action might qualify as a government act if the government “has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the” government. [...] Miller has not shown that Google’s hash-value matching falls on the “compulsion” side of this line. He cites no law that compels or encourages Google to operate its “product abuse detection system” to scan for hash-value matches. Federal law disclaims such a mandate. It says that providers need not “monitor the content of any [customer] communication” or “affirmatively search, screen, or scan” files. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(f). Nor does Miller identify anything like the government “encouragement” that the Court found sufficient to turn a railroad’s drug and alcohol testing into “government” testing. See Skinner, 489 U.S. at 615. [...] Federal law requires “electronic communication service providers” like Google to notify NCMEC when they become aware of child pornography. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a). But this mandate compels providers only to report child pornography that they know of; it does not compel them to search for child pornography of which they are unaware.