>There's no problem. It's just a drawn out power grab with a weak pretext.
In 2018 tech companies reported over 45 million images of CSAM, which was double the amount that was reported the year before.[0] The next year the number of reports went up to 60 million.[1] I wouldn't expect everyone to agree on the proper response to the rapid growth of child-abuse imagery online, but I don't think the problem itself should be dismissed.
There is literally no logic to what they are doing. the CP criminals will just work around it and the other billion or so of us are stuck with Apple acting like they're the police, and waiting for the government to send them the next "CSAM" database of political dissent hashes or pretty soon just scanning for anything that governments don't like on the device that YOU OWN. This is a joke, a very dangerous one. This will do nothing but put a slight dent in CP arrests and another huge body blow to democracy.
I couldn't find anywhere in the NY article that described that these efforts these companies are doing is leading to less child porn being created. Is that true? Everything I read and searched for wanted to make it sound like child porn and sexual abuse of children was skyrocketing - nothing concrete about the number of victims per capita per year in the USA or what not. And - of course - it made it sound like this effort is deeply underfunded and needs tons more money behind it because it's exploding as an issue and your next door neighbor is clearly raping children... It felt a bit sensationalist.
> Police funding has shot up in America. It's everything else thats been cut.
What else in America has been cut? I'd be interested in that very long list (since you're saying that everything else is seeing cuts; the understood meaning being that a very large number of major items are seeing their budgets slashed). The spending data I see year in year out, or across decades, is showing the opposite.
Healthcare spending has skyrocketed over the last 20-30 years, including healthcare spending by the government (eg Medicaid, Medicare). They're not slashing Medicaid or Medicare, those programs have far outrun inflation and are drowning the US budget.
Social Security hasn't been slashed. Even the leading Republicans no longer dare talk seriously about cutting Social Security (30-40 years ago they commonly did). Trump could hardly run away faster from that conversation, it's the third rail of US politics, absolutely nobody dares.
Education spending has not been slashed. US teachers are among the best paid in the world and Americans spend more per capita on education at all levels than just about any other nation (while getting mediocre results for their epic investment, as with healthcare spending).
Defense spending of course continues to rise.
The US welfare state has continued to perpetually expand. US social welfare spending is larger as a share of GDP than it is in Canada; and it's closing in on Britain (the US will catch Britain on social welfare spending as a % of GDP this decade). The US social safety net has gotten larger, not smaller, over the decades. Programs like housing first didn't even exist 30 years ago; food security programs like SNAP continue to get bigger over the decades, they're not vanishing.
US Government spending has continued to soar year by year. Typically 5-8% annual spending increases are normal (just look at the radical spending increases during the Bush and Obama years, or any of the recent budgets). Total government spending (Federal + State + Local) has continued to climb, it has not been slashed or reduced. Total US government spending is taking more out of the US economy than it ever has outside of WW2 - you have to go back to WW2 level spending to find something comparable.
Total US government spending has increased by roughly 225% over the past two decades (more than triple the rate of inflation over that time). The soaring spending shows no sign of letting up.
The major US Government agencies - such as NASA, NSA, FBI, DHS, VA, DoJ, etc - have not had their budgets slashed over the last few decades, they keep climbing year after year.
The only big one I can think of is infrastructure spending, which has not kept up with inflation because both sides have refused to raise gasoline taxes.
What kind of results do we have to show for the massive increase in government spending? Are our streets now lined with gold? Things are better than they have ever been, is that right? Is our quality of life equivalent to Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden? Because we now have their per capita government spending levels. The government systems of the US are spending the equivalent of 45% of the economy each year.
>Healthcare spending has skyrocketed over the last 20-30 years
Aging populations with for profit healthcare will do that.
>US teachers are among the best paid in the world
It's still a comparatively low paying, thankless profession and consistently fails to attract talent because of low pay. Most Engineers, for example, have starting pay similar to a teacher's pay with 15 years of experience. Both jobs require the same level of training and degree (Bachelor's).
>total US government spending is taking more out of the US economy than it ever has,
Government spending is still economic activity. It doesn't 'take money out' of the economy, it contributes to it. It pays workers like any other employer that can then spend that money in the local economies. If your argument is 'government spending is bad' then that's a terrible argument.
Police funding has shot up in America. It's everything else thats been cut.
>what’s the problem.
There's no problem. It's just a drawn out power grab with a weak pretext.