Hacker News

https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

Stateless computation and enforceable guarantees

With services that are end-to-end encrypted, such as iMessage, the service operator cannot access the data that transits through the system. One of the key reasons such designs can assure privacy is specifically because they prevent the service from performing computations on user data. Since Private Cloud Compute needs to be able to access the data in the user’s request to allow a large foundation model to fulfill it, complete end-to-end encryption is not an option. Instead, the PCC compute node must have technical enforcement for the privacy of user data during processing, and must be incapable of retaining user data after its duty cycle is complete.

We designed Private Cloud Compute to make several guarantees about the way it handles user data: A user’s device sends data to PCC for the sole, exclusive purpose of fulfilling the user’s inference request. PCC uses that data only to perform the operations requested by the user. User data stays on the PCC nodes that are processing the request only until the response is returned. PCC deletes the user’s data after fulfilling the request, and no user data is retained in any form after the response is returned. User data is never available to Apple — even to staff with administrative access to the production service or hardware.

What fundamentals am I missing?