Thread by @_saagarjha

My “We aren’t going to look at your non-CSAM pictures and messages” T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

https://twitter.com/verge/status/1425211129106739210

Jokes aside, though, as engineers we regularly deal with complex systems that can be difficult for our users to understand. Having a hard time explaining how they work is one thing, but regardless of your position on this technology @Apple’s messaging has been unacceptable.

Their reluctance to clearly describe how the software works, their seeming inability to be straightforwards with the fact that it fundamentally detects CSAM using filters that they control and uploads it to them, is very concerning. This isn’t how you inspire trust.

“Encrypted” and “on device” and “hashed” are not magic words that magically grant privacy. You can’t say “nothing is learned about the content on the device” if you can take the vouchers it sends you and decrypt them–even if you are “sure” they are CSAM. That’s just incorrect.

Being better “compared to the industry standard way” does not mean the technology is automatically “private”. And when you say you’re better than the industry standard from the perspective of being auditable, don’t be in a place where you can’t verify you are doing any better.

If you’re going to engage with criticism, the least you can do it is to interpret it in good faith. Just because people usually bring up tank man doesn’t mean “it seems to be the case that people agree U.S. law doesn’t offer these kinds of capabilities to our government”.

Privacy is a set of tradeoffs. Detecting crime is a set of tradeoffs. There’s certainly a lot that technology can do to improve the balance! But disregarding criticism while misrepresenting your solution is a bad way to gather legitimate credibility.