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Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

ft.com

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Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#161

Post by mm983 »

cronix wrote: post #124
partiallypro wrote: post #14

I really don't see how this is going to end well, there could be perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children doing perfectly normal things that kids do. Like a kid running butt naked around the house, or a photo of something like a rash that is sent to a nurse friend for advice on what it is etc. I'm all for protecting children from being abused, but how are they going to filter what is normal…

Don't worry, AI is very good at these things and never makes mistakes. It is so advanced it even understands nuance and complex communication mechanisms like sarcasm in text, even if it's only a single sentence to contrast! It will be able to know exactly the context of each image and it will affect only the sickos. We're also working on watching your face through the camera to see your true expression when viewing t…

This is painful to read with the arrogant undertone while you don't actually know how CSAM scanning works.

It's fuzzy hash, not ""AI"", based. Cloudflare uses it too, and last time i checked the web is still functional.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004610611...

How about we turn the tables and have the complainers suggest a solution. Because every single time an approach to targeted child porn takedowns has been suggested, such as datacenter raids which would not affect as many people, someone is screaming about their privacy.

Child abusers evolve and are very happy if law enforcement doesn't.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#162

Post by analyte123 »

Things that would reduce child sexual abuse more than scanning everyone's phones on a daily basis:

- Encourage marriage and remove benefits penalties for two-parent households, as children are substantially more likely to be abused when their biological father is not in the household

- Fund undercover police work and informants, which is how most large busts already happen now. Ideally highly independent from existing courts and law enforcement to deal with Epstein- or Dutroux-type situations. The worst offenders are not swapping child porn on Facebook or Dropbox (or now iMessage and Apple Photos)

- Enforce obscenity laws against incest and other extreme forms of pornography

- Institute the death penalty for child sexual abuse and make sure it is performed swiftly and publicly

Since these aren't under consideration, we can tell this isn't about reducing child abuse. It's about setting up a permanent and ever-expanding digital system for political control.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#163

Post by shuckles »

cm2187 wrote: post #153
partiallypro wrote: post #14

I really don't see how this is going to end well, there could be perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children doing perfectly normal things that kids do. Like a kid running butt naked around the house, or a photo of something like a rash that is sent to a nurse friend for advice on what it is etc. I'm all for protecting children from being abused, but how are they going to filter what is normal…

What I don't understand is how is it even constitutional in the US. Isn't it a warrant-less search? It's not like scanning content on a cloud. The cloud owns the device on which you store your data. But you own your mobile.

The constitution constrains what the Federal government can do, not what private companies can do.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#165

Post by Spivak »

mhh__ wrote: post #92
itake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes. Probably similar to PhotoDNA[0]. There can be false positives, but AFAIK the algorithms are not trying to identify naked children, but comparing 2 similar image hashes. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

I bet(or know...) the people who verify those images don't get paid anywhere near enough.

The conventional wisdom for people integrating PhotoDNA is that false positives are vanishingly rare. If you run it against your data and you get a hit then you should call the FBI.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#166

Post by jmull »

smnrchrds wrote: post #58

When it comes to Apple and privacy, it's important to differentiate two different types of privacy: (1) privacy against snooping by the state, and (2) privacy against snooping by all others. As we had seen with Apple and China, it's only the second type of privacy that Apple cares about. Sharing your information with the state is not out of character for Apple. In fact, had they done the opposite, it would have been…

It doesn’t make sense to expect or hope any company will protect us from the state.

A big, rich company like Apple will have some leverage, but if the state is determined that won’t matter.

Our controls on the state will need to be outside of private companies.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#167

Post by cm2187 »

shuckles wrote: post #159
cm2187 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title says "scan US phones", the article is behind a paywall.

https://archive.is/https://www.ft.com/content/14440f81-d405-...

Thanks. The article confirms the title, this is not about content uploaded to the cloud:

Apple’s system is less invasive in that the screening is done on the phone, and “only if there is a match is notification sent back to those searching”, said Alan Woodward, a computer security professor at the University of Surrey. “This decentralised approach is about the best approach you could adopt if you do go down this route.”

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#168

Post by therealjumbo »

Along with this: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-facebook-tech-g...

Just like the Patriot Act and the no fly list, it's only a very short matter of time until this is expanded to Android and more importantly, non-CP content. The only difference is its the other party doing it this time, in both cases its "to catch bad guys" and "for your own good".

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#169

Post by kingsloi »

I had a very sick 8 month old baby who I obviously had a million photos of. Unfortunately, my lil girl had 9 surgeries and her little body had gone through more than people can think of. She passed in May, and it's really difficult to look back at old pictures because of how much stuff was going on, various levels of critical ICU care, pre/post surgery, etc. But it wasn't until a few months after she was born I had gone to do something in Google and realised my little girl's very severe diaper rash, open sternum, chest tubes, etc, etc, etc photos were backed up and tagged in Photos.

This is sort of the premise to why I've de-Googled/de-Cloud myself because I didn't want my little girls pain and suffering to train some computer's image detection AI.

How would this work for a parent of a sick child who sends their doctor, S/O, possibly graphic in nature and personal photos of their own child? I was in close contact with my daughter's doctor, and would send him all sorts, I can only imagine the same is true for most parents of chronic children.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#170

Post by __blockcipher__ »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #151
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have two primary misunderstandings AFAICT. (1) You're assuming it's a "traditional" hash, as opposed to a perceptual hash. The former is purely based off file contents and thus any transformations applied on an image will lead to a new pseudorandom hash. By contrast, perceptual hashes are made to be able to still return a positive when a photo is resized, accumulated artifacts etc. This proposal is to use phashes…

irrc a cryptosecure hash is computationally infeasible to generate a new sample that has the same hash. that is if you know hash (or reasonably small, ie only a percent of the total bit space), it's improbable bordering on impossible to generate a false positive .

Agreed. From my comment:

> although (to your point) without doing any magic to intentionally cause a collision, effectively you will never get one because of just how many damn buckets there are

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