A lot of pro-CSAM scanning arguments take the following form: “phones already have lots of opportunities (real and potential) for privacy abuse, so you’re stupid for minding when we try to introduce a new and highly-scalable one.”
And to some extent this argument is correct! It’s hard to believe this, but the iPhone (and mass-market smartphones) only launched in 2007. In 14 short years these devices have done more to erode user privacy than 114 years of all other electronic technologies combined.
From my perspective the only reasonable reaction for any technologist observing this incredible privacy collapse is: to wake up in the morning trying to fix it, and collapse into bed at night having spent the entire day trying to undo the damage.
But there is another perspective, obviously. There are people who look at what smartphones have done to our society and say: well, the damage is done. By using modern technology you’ve implicit signed your privacy away. So you have no right to be upset when we accelerate this.
I think this attitude displays contempt towards users, and citizens of your own society. It’s offensive.
Our devices have many technologies in them that are abused, and that can be abused. The main technical challenge for technologists is to find ways to *fix* these flaws. We can’t use them as justification for adding new ones.
Think of these privacy-sacrificing technologies like new CO2 emissions. We all know it’s vastly easier to prevent new CO2 emissions than to clean up old ones: we can’t use the damage we’ve already done as an excuse for doing more of it.
And yet this is the explicit argument of people who back these privacy-risking scanning technologies. That since other tech is risky, why not add their much more powerful and purpose-built privacy risks. I think it’s dumb.
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