So #Apple is scanning your local files on #macOS without consent according to Jeffrey Paul ( @sneak ) sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-sc

Again folks, #Linux is the only way to go to be truly private and piece of mind.

@joeo10 @sneak Do you have Siri Suggestions disabled? Because mediaanalysisd is part of Visual Lookup. But this should be off with suggestions disabled.

@reactorcontrol @joeo10 siri suggestions is disabled (and has been for months), yes. some have speculated this is because of live text. i'd speculate that the ML models would be on an apple CDN and not accessed via api.smoot.

we still don't know wtf it's sending or receiving without some RE.

@sneak @joeo10 My first intuition would be that it’s a bug (Hanlon’s razor and all) around lookup. But very interesting (and concerning) discovery. Thanks for publishing.

@reactorcontrol @sneak @joeo10 this article says it is a Live Text connection happening in QuickLook for images with text:

> The image containing text took longer, 881 ms, and returned text of length 65 ‘DD’ (as given in the log) after a considerably more elaborate series of processes, including one outgoing secure TCP or Quic connection by mediaanalysisd lasting 58 ms, before the completion of Visual Search Gating.

eclecticlight.co/2023/01/18/is

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mastodon.social/@rdela/1097226

@rdela @sneak @joeo10 Possible. But then again, if I disable visual lookup, what business does macOS have connecting to a server. Live text should be on-device.

@reactorcontrol @rdela @joeo10 how do you disable visual lookup? i never enabled it, and don't know of any setting for it.

PS: i have blocked all traffic from mediaanalysisd to/from apple, and yet live text still works fine.

@sneak @reactorcontrol @joeo10 I think what the article is trying to say is that if you have Siri Suggestions disabled Visual Look Up is also.

I agree with Michael that if Live Text works on device I'd like to know why mediaanalysisd is connecting to api.smoot.apple.com "before the completion of Visual Search Gating."

@rdela @sneak @joeo10 Howard Oakley believes the network connection during Live Text recognition is the system updating its local language models. This appears plausible to me.
eclecticlight.co/2023/01/27/ho

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@reactorcontrol @rdela @joeo10

1) other people claim differently

2) those would be on a cdn that apple uses to distribute files, not on api.smoot.apple.com. hoakley has suggested on eclecticlight that it's part of visual lookup.

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