Live data from Hacker News

Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

ft.com

351–360 of 390 posts

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

#351
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the difference is nudity is natural and sometimes instrumental - for washing, bathroom use, and medical care for example - and denying basic healthcare to your children is not, unless you plan to be instrumental in your child's demise and that comes natural to you.

I've taken all vaccines I've been offered including BioNTech/Pfizer but: carefulness regarding new medical procedures is also completely natural. We aren't robots and we need to cut one another some slack. Different persons being mire or less risk averse is even a strength for society.

I don't disagree there, I'm just pointing out that there is a difference between the two cases.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is misleading. The rumored change only impacts photos your device is uploading to iCloud, and it seems like Apple servers are a necessary part of the protocol.

Doesn't apple upload all your photos to icloud by default?

It’s been a long time since I’ve set up my phone, so I don’t remember the defaults. If I recall correctly, photo stream (last ~100? photos) was on by default but not the entire photo library.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS doesn’t have to because the entity which writes those files is obligated to do this scanning if there is reason to believe the files contain CSAM.

I guess I should clear up: Amazon isn't doing any type of automatic file-scanning for anything being uploaded to S3, or feeding md5/sha1/sha256sums to some 3rd party service automatically for everything that touches S3. If they get a subpoena and then maybe send some kind of file list/checksums they've been required to hand over to some 3rd party / government? That's possible, but an entirely different situation.

Sure, but whoever owns the account which wrote those files in is, in the United States, responsible for doing some version of what Apple has announced they will do with iCloud Photos today.

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

#354

As any of the lawyers here can attest, the legal definitions here open to huge debates. Some material is unambiguous, other images reside extensive grey areas. The legality of material can even change based on context. Something that is perfectly legal in one area can be absolutely illegal in another. Example: If I had to list the most iconic photographs in world history, one of them is of a totally nude child (Vietn…

Who would add “gray area” pictures to the database of CP images that are matched?

Material that is deemed illegal in jurisdiction A but not in B. Material for which someone was once convicted but if found on someone else's device would not be illegal. Material isn't added to these databases after sober legal deliberation. Police agencies can add basically anything they see fit.

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

#355
post #275
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you don't appear to know how this works. Look up fuzzy hash, i even mentioned it in the comment.

I was a kid in the 80s and teenager in the 90s. My favorite thing during that time was pirating video games. A game would come out, and it was cracked, usually within hours and often before the game was even released to be sold. That's when "zero day" had a different meaning. All the "warez" ftp sites had a section for 0 day warez. The cryptologists and math brains would come up with new protection methods to protect…

You're spot on about the 0-day comparison. As always, something will arise to let people with the motivation hide illegal images. The problem is how it will be used against everyday citizens, who don't have sophisticated tools and maybe just share images of Hong Kong freedom protests, or books, or anything anti-totalitarian. The emotional appeals about this being about child abuse are absurd on their face because of how easily those people will hide. It's a good thing that some people are able to see through that as a ploy. We shouldn't have to go there and prove our bonafide hatred of abusers every time we justify our right to secure encryption or freedom from surveillance. Doing so almost validates the government's position. Just like in China you would have to say "of COURSE I hate the democracy protesters! I just think..." No, you shouldn't have to take a deep emotional dive into a history of abuse to justify your human right to privacy.

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

#356
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's the big difference, cloud providers are scanning the data they hold on their device. Your iphone is not Apple's device. Cloud providers have a liability if they knowingly store illegal content, the data is stored on their property, Apple does not, it is your property. It's like if Ford was going to scan what you store in the trunk of your car.

"Your iphone is not Apple's device". Well, is it not ? When you "jailbreak" it, who has the key of the cage ? How many network exchange does your phone with Apple do every day, every hour, every second ?

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

#357
post #172
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…

There is zero AI classification involved, it’s a lookup vs hashes of known child porn images. You would need a hash collision, misidentified photo in the dataset, or legitimate use case to end up with a false positive.

You are wrong. It is not a numerical Hash of the exact image.

It is a perceptual Hash of the images characteristics and perceived continent by the algorithm, that’s the “neural” in neuralmatch.

Apple, for yours has been building-in machine learning dedicated chips into their builds so this shouldn’t affect battery life.

Matthew Green is tweeting about this: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14230711866160005... and mentions that it is "preceptial hasing"

9 to 5 Mac article, in which they restate that it is not a classical bit-by-bit hash:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/05/scanning-for-child-abuse-imag...

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

#358
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that Apple calls this system neuralMatch. I'm not sure why that name gives you confidence that there is zero AI involved?

They are using AI techniques as part of perceptual hashing. In other words it’s trying to match files with specific images rather than abstract concepts.

I’m pretty sure you don’t know what you’re talking about. Perceptual matching is not image matching.

Perceptual matching is used to sort categories of images. A quick DuckDuckGo will turn up many results. No stretch of the imagination will turn this into a bit for a bit comparison. This is a machine learning algorithm used to categorize images. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/learning-implicit...

Matthew Green is tweeting about this: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14230711866160005... and mentions that it is "preceptial hashing”

9 to 5 Mac article, in which they restate that it is not a classical bit-by-bit hash:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/05/scanning-for-child-abuse-imag...

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

#359
post #220
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero AI classification involved, it’s a lookup vs hashes of known child porn images. You would need a hash collision, misidentified photo in the dataset, or legitimate use case to end up with a false positive.

And they aren't going to act on a single hash collision. People who have these images likely aren't going to have one or two. People can argue against this approach for privacy reasons, but I think the false positive argument is a relatively weak one.

There won’t be any collisions. It’s not a bit-for-bit Comparison. The algorithm uses machine learning to categorize images using perceptual match.

There will be many false positives, they will be reviewed by people. When there’s more than a few false positives, you will be investigated by the FBI.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They scan photos in the cloud now. And do you think Apple will announce and let users opt out of client side scanning changes?

As far as is publicly known, only iCloud Mail was being scanned before this announcement. This is consistent with the lack of overall CyberTip reports from Apple historically (orders of magnitudes lower than comparable platforms).
Post reply on HN