Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by __blockcipher__ » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #192

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Facebook and Google Photos should be the goal for privacy standards? You and I are practically in different universes then, philosophically. You're also being naive by swallowing the "it's only iCloud" justification. There is a clear intent to progress to scanning all local photos. After all, if photos must be match those of a government child abuse database, and any matches trigger manual review, what woul…

What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business? I don’t appreciate you calling me naive. There isn’t clear intent to scanning all local photos. In fact, it seems like the system was deliberately designed to only work with photos that are being uploaded to iCloud.

> What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business?

When someone is trying to rob you, generally the best thing to do is to hand over your wallet. If a law passes you should obey it for your own sake. That's an entirely orthogonal question to whether we as the users should be outraged or not.

Also while obeying an injust law, a company has a responsibility to legally challenge it in court with their resources, if for no other reason than to avoid the profit loss of having to comply with invasive regulations

Furthermore, it's not clear that this is the direct result of some federal law. It reads more like pro-actively appeasing their federal overlords.

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

#202

Post by bckygldstn » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #138

1-6 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually do want a feature where I will get a notification on my phone if someone nearby has snagged a picture of me or my kids. A creepy shopper at Costco once took a pic of my 2-year-old. They pretended to be working up a conversation with my little kid meanwhile they had their phone at hip-level to snag a shot. I even confronted them about it. The Costco employees couldn't do a thing. Phones with cameras are use…

That's silly. You're in public. Your photo (and your kids') are being taken all the time.

It may not be illegal in the US, but I wouldn't call it silly to not want strangers to take photos of you and your kid in public.

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

#203

Post by trasz » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

marderfarker2 wrote: post #160

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > 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. This is dystopian and needs to be opposed, not applauded.

> will initially roll out only in the US. Ok so they’re planning to eventually roll out this spyware worldwide. I do not know how Americans can think China is bad in this while allowing this to happen.

Never ceases to amaze how people believe that China is somehow more oppressive than the the country with world highest incarceration rate.

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

#204

Post by shuckles » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #190

shuckles wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how every single cloud service has worked for a decade. You’ll need to elaborate on how, exactly, you believe it’s dystopian. The article is clearly wrong, because Apple cannot know which jurisdiction to forward a report to. That is NCMEC’s responsibility.

It's dystopian because a private company, who in the past has been committed to maintaining user privacy even when it inconveniences the government, is now regressing and going to scan the "private" contents of peoples' phones to see if they have any matches for images that have been added to a government-supplied blacklist. This blacklist is completely opaque to us as citizens; there is no way to audit or review the…

1. Apple has only stated a commitment to protecting user privacy to the extent it is legal. They make a lot of suspicious operational changes to how they operate in China, for example. Their opposition to the FBI case was because they believed the request placed on them was illegal.

2. This article only provides evidence to say Apple will scan photos you upload into iCloud. Scanning local photos is your speculation.

3. The operation of NCMEC and the blacklist is defined by the Federal government. American (citizens) have some mechanism to oppose this design. Apple could perhaps lobby against it, but their lobbying operations are famously minimal.

4. In principle, Apple could do anything. That doesn’t really inform what they’re likely to do. Just like in principle, anyone could slip a malicious content scanning patch into the Linux kernel (and this already has a POC!).

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

#205

Post by tracedddd » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

xdennis wrote: post #181

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

It's still bad. I used to scrape pictures from many legal pornography sites. I still have hundreds of thousands of pictures. Since many are user uploaded, I imagine a small number could be real CP. Thank God, I don't use Apple. (I should probably delete them, since I've basically never used them... although they could be useful for one of those end-of-world Raspberry Pi builds: https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-quic…

Yeah, might want to consider deleting them. That could turn into a nightmare.

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

#206

Post by wmeredith » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #134

dylan604 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all of the discussion, my brain has only keyed in on the child porn aspect. It just now clicked that if a missing kid is in a photo (even if not porn), it could help ID the missing kid. Some runaway at the age of 13 gets photographed in a group of other kids just doing teenager things. So even if not running hashes against known porn, it could still be doing facial recognition. Wonder what kind of implications tha…

Think of the children will erode everything. It is magic.

Appeal to emotion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

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

#207

Post by 1-6 » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

coldacid wrote: post #71

Today kiddy porn, tomorrow wrongthink.

Like having pictures of Tim Cook eating ice cream?

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

#208

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

mm983 wrote: post #161

cronix wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by shuckles » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #195

cm2187 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rout…

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14231090022805135... and https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14231094582936289... kind of sums it up. Clearly there is an intent to progress to more than just what's been shared with iCloud. Otherwise there'd be no need for software on the devices themselves at all.

That is not the only explanation. Involving the device could be considered better because it doesn’t require Apple to build infrastructure to scan all your photos in the cloud, which could be more easily repurposed without user consent.

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

#210

Post by shuckles » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #176

shuckles wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not that I am qualified to hold a legal debate, but as far as I know, if Apple implements this under the pressure from the state, and that it reports what it findings to the state, it is effectively an agent of the state and it should apply.

As far as I’m aware, the laws which require cloud service operators to scan for CSAM have been on the books for a long time, and none of the usual orgs have raised a constitutional challenge to them. I’m not a legal expert either, though.