According to an exclusive report from Reuters, Apple's move to scan U.S. customer phones and computers for child sex abuse images has resulted in employees speaking out internally, "a notable turn in a company famed for its secretive culture." From the report: Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread. Past security changes at Apple have also prompted concern among employees, but the volume and duration of the new debate is surprising, the workers said. Some posters worried that Apple is damaging its leading reputation for protecting privacy.

In the Slack thread devoted to the photo-scanning feature, some employees have pushed back against criticism, while others said Slack wasn't the proper forum for such discussions. Core security employees did not appear to be major complainants in the posts, and some of them said that they thought Apple's solution was a reasonable response to pressure to crack down on illegal material. Other employees said they hoped that the scanning is a step toward fully encrypting iCloud for customers who want it, which would reverse Apple's direction on the issue a second time. Apple has said it will refuse requests from governments to use the system to check phones for anything other than illegal child sexual abuse material.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: A large homeless encampment is growing on the site Apple earmarked for its North San Jose campus, two years after Apple made waves with a $2.5 billion pledge to combat the Bay Area's affordable housing and homelessness crisis. What started as a few RVs parked on the side of Component Drive has grown over the past year into a sprawling camp of dozens of people, a maze of broken-down vehicles and a massive amount of trash scattered across the vacant, Apple-owned property. People with nowhere else to go live there in tents, RVs and wooden structures they built themselves. At least two children call the camp home.

Apple is trying to figure out what to do, but it's a tough situation. Clearing the camp likely will be difficult both logistically -- it's more challenging to remove structures and vehicles that don't run than tents -- and ethically -- there are few places for the displaced residents to go. Apple is "in talks with the city on a solution," company spokeswoman Chloe Sanchez Sweet wrote in an email, without providing additional details.

The vacant land off Component Drive figured into Apple's $2.5 billion commitment. Apple originally bought the land in a push to acquire real estate in North San Jose for a new tech campus, but so far, the company hasn't done much to develop it. In 2019, the tech company promised to make $300 million of land it owns in San Jose available for new affordable housing -- including a portion of the Component Drive property. But it's unclear when anything might be built.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A bipartisan trio of senators introduced a bill that would rein in app stores of companies they said exert too much market control, including Apple and Alphabet's Google. Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar teamed up with Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn to sponsor the bill, which would bar big app stores from requiring app providers to use their payment system. It would also prohibit them from punishing apps that offer different prices or conditions through another app store or payment system.

"I found this predatory abuse of Apple and Google so deeply offensive on so many levels," Blumenthal said in an interview Wednesday. "Their power has reached a point where they are impacting the whole economy in stifling and strangling innovation." Blumenthal said he expected companion legislation in the House of Representatives "very soon."

Apple's next iPhone lineup will get at least three major new camera and video-recording features, which the company is betting will be key enticements to upgrade from earlier models. From a report: The new handsets will include a video version of the phone's Portrait mode feature, the ability to record video in a higher-quality format called ProRes, and a new filters-like system that improves the look and colors of photos, according to people familiar with the matter.

Beyond the camera enhancements, the new iPhones will get relatively modest upgrades. Last year, Apple revamped the iPhone design, added 5G wireless networking and updated the camera hardware. For this year, the company will retain the same 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch regular sizes and 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch Pro screen dimensions, as well as their designs. The new phones will include a faster A15 chip and a smaller notch, also known as the display cutout, in addition to new screen technology that could enable a faster refresh rate for smoother scrolling.

Apple defended its new system to scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on Monday during an ongoing controversy over whether the system reduces Apple user privacy and could be used by governments to surveil citizens. From a report: Last week, Apple announced it has started testing a system that uses sophisticated cryptography to identify when users upload collections of known child pornography to its cloud storage service. It says it can do this without learning about the contents of a user's photos stored on its servers. Apple reiterated on Monday that its system is more private than those used by companies like Google and Microsoft because its system uses both its servers and software running on iPhones.

Privacy advocates and technology commentators are worried Apple's new system, which includes software that will be installed on people's iPhones through an iOS update, could be expanded in some countries through new laws to check for other types of images, like photos with political content, instead of just child pornography. Apple said in a document posted to its website on Sunday governments cannot force it to add non-CSAM images to a hash list, or the file of numbers that correspond to known child abuse images Apple will distribute to iPhones to enable the system.

"Apple Watch has been credited with saving yet another life after alerting emergency services to what could have been a fatal fall," reports Apple Insider: On July 12, 25-year-old Brandon Schneider of Long Island visited the emergency room after suffering abdominal pain and a misdiagnosed kidney stone, reports People. Schneider asked to use the bathroom, where he lost consciousness and fell to the ground...

Luckily, Schneider was wearing an Apple Watch. The device's fall detection feature recognized the event and alerted emergency services, as well as his father who was with him at the time. "My Apple Watch detected a hard fall, and I did not respond to the like haptic message that requires a response and 45 seconds," Schneider said in an interview with a local ABC affiliate. Subsequent CT scans revealed a fractured skull and multiple hematomas that were growing in size. He underwent brain surgery and woke up four days later.

Though he doesn't remember much about the incident or surrounding days, he is on the mend and credits his survival to Apple Watch and an active lifestyle.

"Developers are once again publicly highlighting instances in which Apple has failed to keep scam apps off of the app store," reports Ars Technica: The apps in question charge users unusual fees and siphon revenue from legitimate or higher-quality apps. While Apple has previously come under fire for failing to block apps like these from being published, developers complained this week that Apple was actually actively promoting some of these apps...

Apple continues to play whack-a-mole with these apps, but various developers have both publicly and privately complained that the company takes too long. One developer we exchanged emails with claimed that, when they discovered a scam app that stole assets from their own legitimate app and which was clearly designed to siphon users from the real app, Apple took 10 days to remove the app, while Google only took "1-2 days" on the Android side. The app was allowed back on Apple's App Store once the stolen assets were removed. During the long waiting period, the developer of the legitimate app lost a significant amount of users and revenue, while the developer of the illegitimate app profited.

As Apple fights legal battles to prevent third-party app stores from making their way to iOS on the basis that those alternative app stores may be less secure than Apple's own, claims from developers that scam apps are slipping through may undermine Apple's defense.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from iMore: Apple announced new on-device CSAM detection techniques yesterday and there has been a lot of confusion over what the feature can and cannot do. Contrary to what some people believe, Apple cannot check images when users have iCloud Photos disabled. Apple's confirmation of the new CSAM change did attempt to make this clear, but perhaps didn't make as good a job of it as it could. With millions upon millions of iPhone users around the world, it's to be expected that some could be confused.

"Using another technology called threshold secret sharing, the system ensures the contents of the safety vouchers cannot be interpreted by Apple unless the iCloud Photos account crosses a threshold of known CSAM content," says Apple. "The threshold is set to provide an extremely high level of accuracy and ensures less than a one in one trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account." The key part there is the iCloud Photos bit because CSAM checks will only be carried out on devices that have that feature enabled. Any device with it disabled will not have its images checked. That's also a fact that MacRumors had confirmed, too. Something else that's been confirmed -- Apple can't delve into iCloud backups and check the images that are stored there, either. That means the only time Apple will run CSAM checks on photos is when it's getting ready to upload them to iCloud Photos.

Apple's plans to scan users' iCloud Photos library against a database of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to look for matches and childrens' messages for explicit content has come under fire from privacy whistleblower Edward Snowden and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). MacRumors reports: In a series of tweets, the prominent privacy campaigner and whistleblower Edward Snowden highlighted concerns that Apple is rolling out a form of "mass surveillance to the entire world" and setting a precedent that could allow the company to scan for any other arbitrary content in the future. Snowden also noted that Apple has historically been an industry-leader in terms of digital privacy, and even refused to unlock an iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino, California, despite being ordered to do so by the FBI and a federal judge. Apple opposed the order, noting that it would set a "dangerous precedent."

The EFF, an eminent international non-profit digital rights group, has issued an extensive condemnation of Apple's move to scan users' iCloud libraries and messages, saying that it is extremely "disappointed" that a "champion of end-to-end encryption" is undertaking a "shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company's leadership in privacy and security." The EFF highlighted how various governments around the world have passed laws that demand surveillance and censorship of content on various platforms, including messaging apps, and that Apple's move to scan messages and "iCloud Photos" could be legally required to encompass additional materials or easily be widened. "Make no mistake: this is a decrease in privacy for all "iCloud Photos" users, not an improvement," the EFF cautioned.

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging unit blasted Apple's plan to monitor sexually exploitative images of children on iPhones as bad for privacy, opening a new front in the battle between two of the world's biggest tech companies. From a report: "This approach introduces something very concerning into the world," Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said Friday. "We will not adopt it at WhatsApp." Apple a day earlier said it planned to release an update for U.S. users later this year designed to identify and report collections of sexually exploitative images of children, as part of a series of changes it is preparing for the iPhone to protect children from sexual predators.

WhatsApp's position deepens the battle between Facebook and Apple about data. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has long bemoaned what he sees as too much power Apple has over the social-media giant's business. Apple has made the protection of user information on the iPhones and some other devices a key part of its pitch to consumers and taken shots at Facebook for its data-collection practices. Tensions have intensified in recent months as Apple rolled out a new privacy feature for the iPhone that restricts Facebook's ability to collect data. Mr. Zuckerberg said Apple was using its platform to interfere with how Facebook apps work. At the heart of the latest dispute is the question of whether tech companies can insert software that identifies inappropriate or illegal content without compromising privacy. Apple claims to have found a way to do this. WhatsApp, and Apple's critics, liken this software to a surveillance system.

Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a software VP at Apple, talks about the company's upcoming controversial photo scanning features in an internal memo to employees: Today marks the official public unveiling of Expanded Protections for Children, and I wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for all of your hard work over the last few years. We would not have reached this milestone without your tireless dedication and resiliency.

Keeping children safe is such an important mission. In true Apple fashion, pursuing this goal has required deep cross-functional commitment, spanning Engineering, GA, HI, Legal, Product Marketing and PR. What we announced today is the product of this incredible collaboration, one that delivers tools to protect children, but also maintain Apple's deep commitment to user privacy.

We've seen many positive responses today. We know some people have misunderstandings, and more than a few are worried about the implications, but we will continue to explain and detail the features so people understand what we've built. And while a lot of hard work lays ahead to deliver the features in the next few months. [...]

Apple will roll out a technology that will allow the company to detect and report known child sexual abuse material to law enforcement in a way it says will preserve user privacy. From a report: Apple told TechCrunch that the detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is one of several new features aimed at better protecting the children who use its services from online harm, including filters to block potentially sexually explicit photos sent and received through a child's iMessage account. Another feature will intervene when a user tries to search for CSAM-related terms through Siri and Search.

Most cloud services -- Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft to name a few -- already scan user files for content that might violate their terms of service or be potentially illegal, like CSAM. But Apple has long resisted scanning users' files in the cloud by giving users the option to encrypt their data before it ever reaches Apple's iCloud servers. Apple said its new CSAM detection technology -- NeuralHash -- instead works on a user's device, and can identify if a user uploads known child abuse imagery to iCloud without decrypting the images until a threshold is met and a sequence of checks to verify the content are cleared. News of Apple's effort leaked Wednesday when Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, revealed the existence of the new technology in a series of tweets. The news was met with some resistance from some security experts and privacy advocates, but also users who are accustomed to Apple's approach to security and privacy that most other companies don't have.

Apple intends to install software on American iPhones to scan for child abuse imagery, Financial Times is reporting citing people briefed on the plans, raising alarm among security researchers who warn that it could open the door to surveillance of millions of people's personal devices. From the report: Apple detailed its proposed system -- known as "neuralMatch" -- to some US academics earlier this week, according to two security researchers briefed on the virtual meeting. The plans could be publicised more widely as soon as this week, they said. The automated system would proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected, who would then contact law enforcement if the material can be verified. The scheme will initially roll out only in the US.

The proposals are Apple's attempt to find a compromise between its own promise to protect customers' privacy and ongoing demands from governments, law enforcement agencies and child safety campaigners for more assistance in criminal investigations, including terrorism and child pornography. [...] "This will break the dam -- governments will demand it from everyone," said Matthew Green, a security professor at Johns Hopkins University, who is believed to be the first researcher to post a tweet about the issue. Alec Muffett, a security researcher and privacy campaigner who formerly worked at Facebook and Deliveroo, said Apple's move was "tectonic" and a "huge and regressive step for individual privacy. Apple are walking back privacy to enable 1984," he said.

Apple Wallet is expanding access to its contactless student IDs, a feature it first debuted in 2018. A number of U.S. universities are adopting the new format for the first time. Apple Wallet student IDs will also arrive in Canada later this fall. The Verge reports: The University of New Brunswick and Sheridan College will be the first two Canadian schools to use Apple Wallet IDs. The new US roster includes Auburn, Northern Arizona University, University of Maine, and New Mexico State University, in addition to "many more colleges across the country." The University of Alabama, one of the program's early adopters, will also be the first school to issue exclusively mobile student IDs (to students with eligible devices) this fall. (Those with Android phones can use the digital cards through Google Pay.) Apple claims that "tens of thousands of college students" will have access to the feature during this upcoming school year.

In theory, the virtual student ID should offer all the functionality of a regular student ID -- holders can access restricted areas of campus or pay for amenities like food and laundry by placing their iPhone or Apple Watch near a physical reader. Transaction history isn't shared with Apple or stored on Apple's servers.

Three-and-half months after launching the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Apple is finally breaking it out from its iMac bundle. The accessory is now available as a standalone through Apple Stores and the company's site. From a report: There are two versions: the standard and a longer model with a numeric keypad (pretty much what the company offers with all of its Magic Keyboards), running $149 and $179, respectively. There's also a $99 version that keeps the new rounded, compact design, but drops the Touch ID in favor of a key that locks the system. But where's the fun in that? All of the models have keys devoted to Spotlight, Dictation, Do Not Disturb and Emoji.

On Tuesday, Apple rolled out three new graphics card modules for the Intel-based Mac Pro, all based on AMD's Radeon Pro W6000 series GPU. From a report: (Apple posted a Mac Pro performance white paper [PDF] to celebrate.) The new modules (in Apple's MPX format) come in three variants, with a Radeon Pro W6800X, two W6800X GPUs, and the W6900X. Each module also adds four Thunderbolt 3 ports and an HDMI 2 port to the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro supports two MPX modules, so you could pop in two of the dual-GPU modules to max out performance. They can connect using AMD's Infinity Fabric Link, which can connect up to four GPUs to communicate with one another via a super-fast connection with much more bandwidth than is available via the PCIe bus.

Several readers shared this story: Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly demanded to become Apple's CEO in a 2016 phone call with current Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to an upcoming book about Tesla. The story, shared by the Los Angeles Times, comes from Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by The Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins. As the book tells it, Cook suggested to Musk that Apple acquire Tesla, and Musk said he wanted to be CEO. Cook reportedly agreed, but Musk clarified that he wanted to be the CEO of Apple. "According to a former aide who heard (Musk's) retelling of the exchange," Cook said "Fuck you" before hanging up the phone.

But Musk and Apple have both suggested that the conversation couldn't have happened because Musk and Cook have never spoken. Musk, in a tweet on Friday, flat out said that "Cook & I have never spoken or written to each other ever." He also said that he attempted to meet with Cook about Apple acquiring Tesla, a meeting that Cook refused. When asked for comment about the reported conversation, Apple pointed to remarks Cook made during an interview with The New York Times' Kara Swisher where he denied having ever spoken to Elon. "You know, I've never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he's built," Cook said.

Epic, which sued Apple last year and has expressed concerns about the exorbitant fees the iPhone-maker charges on App Store (30% on each transaction on year 1 for apps that are not games and 15% on year 2 and beyond), has found a new backer in the court of public opinion: Elon Musk. In a tweet Friday, Musk likened Apple's App Store charges to "a de facto global tax on the Internet." He added, "Epic is right."

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney added today: The Apple Tax is far more pernicious than many realize. "It only applies to digital goods accessible on iOS," they say -- but in the future all physical goods will have a digital presence, and Apple will tax and gatekeep world commerce. Apple must be stopped.
Friday's remarks follows Musk sniping at Apple during an earnings call earlier this week. From that story: Apple's walled garden is facing scrutiny from lawmakers and other companies, including in an antitrust trial that took place earlier this year after it was sued by Epic Games over App Store fees and policies. "I think we do want to emphasize that our goal is to support the advent of sustainable energy," Musk said in response to a question about letting competitors use its charger network. "It is not to create a walled garden and use that to bludgeon our competitors which is used by some companies." Musk then faked a cough and said, "Apple."

More than 90 chief executive officers, including those at Apple, Amazon and Facebook on Thursday urged Congress to pass a law offering a citizenship path to young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. From a report: In a letter to President Joe Biden and congressional leaders, the executives said thousands of the immigrants -- known as Dreamers -- are "valued employees at our companies," but a federal judge's recent ruling against a program protecting them "throws into chaos" their ability to live and work legally in the U.S. "Securing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers not only is the right thing to do, but is a huge economic benefit to the United States," the CEOs wrote in the letter. "The latest court ruling makes it all the more urgent that Congress take up and pass a legislative solution right away." The letter seeks to increase pressure on Republicans in Congress who are likely to oppose Democrats' efforts to pass the measure allowing for legal status for as many as 8 million undocumented immigrants.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cult of Mac: Apple is closing down internal Slack channels to stop employees discussing remote working options, reports Zoe Schiffer from The Verge. Many Cupertino employees are currently engaged in a Cold War of sorts with their employer over the remote working arrangement coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. As the arguments flare up among staff, Apple has taken the step of shuttering the Slack channels where these are taking place. "Apple recently began cracking down on Slack channels that aren't directly related to work," Schiffer wrote on Twitter. "The company bans channels 'for activities and hobbies' that aren't directly related to projects or part of official employee groups -- but this wasn't always enforced, employees say."

Two public letters from Apple employees have requested more flexible working conditions. A recent petition this month was shared on Apple's internal Slack channel, with more than 6,000 members discussing remote work. It noted that: "We continue to be concerned that this one-size-fits-all solution is causing many of our colleagues to question their future at Apple. With COVID-19 numbers rising again around the world, vaccines proving less effective against the delta variant, and the long-term effects of infection not well understood, it is too early to force those with concerns to come back to the office." According to Schiffer, "internally, [many] people feel like [Apple] isn't listening to their demands." She continues that: "Since Friday, three Apple employees have resigned specifically because of the remote work policies. One had been at the company for nearly 13 years. I've seen a bunch of these resignation notes and they're pretty heart wrenching."