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An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

appleprivacyletter.com

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Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#161

Post by techdragon »

Spivak wrote: post #139
dannyw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the role of infrastructure providers to reach into private, on device content. That is like the USPS opening every letter and scanning what is inside. Even if it's done with machine learning, that is absolutely not okay, no matter what it is for.

But the USPS does scan every letter (and package for that matter) for things like weapons and anthrax. Don't think the US is taking a hard-line stance here. If it were possible to non-destructively scan mail for CP they absolutely would.

The scanning for those things doesn’t allow them to scan the written or printed content of letters sent through the post.

If i recall correctly isn’t there a legal distinction involved in mail privacy, I recall an explanation involving the difference between postcards and letters with respect to lawful interception…

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#162

Post by ipodopt »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #105

I know the privacy approach Apple has been pushing was just marketing, but I didn't care too much because I enjoyed my iPhone and M1 macbook. Because of this decision (and the fact that my iPhone more-or-less facilitates poor habits throughout my life), I'm considering moving completely out of the Apple ecosystem. Does anyone have any recommendations for replacements? * On laptops: I have an X1 carbon extreme running…

Laptop | Desktop: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

Router: https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/

Media Center: https://osmc.tv/vero/

Cloud (Use TrueNAS Scale): https://www.truenas.com/systems-overview/

Phone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Watch: https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-smartwatch-sealed/

Smart Thermostat: https://hestiapi.com/product/hestiapi-touch-one-free-shippin...

If you go this route all devices will be running Linux. The one OS route is kindof nice, hence the pinephone over open android alternatives (like Graphene OS).

I sorted from least to most technical. I also tried to pick the least technical challenging in each category. The Dell stuff should just work. The Phone will require some tinkering for the moment.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#163

Post by trainsplanes »

trashtester wrote: post #106
XorNot wrote: post #50

Fixed: Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for some child abuse imagery, please scan this user's phone and tell us if it's found. Apple: Sure we found it. Chinese Government: this user has unpermitted winnie the pooh memes. Send them to an internment camp.

Fixed further: Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for some child abuse imagery, please scan this user's phone and tell us if it's found. Apple: Sure we found it. Chinese Government to some western company/instititution: We have detected unacceptable behavior from your employee/student/client/vendor. Please cancel them, or we will stop funding you.

Replace Chinese with absolutely any government and that's what'll happen.

We're pretty much at a point where any hacker/leaker anywhere on earth is "found" to have committed sex crimes or have 300 gigabytes of child abuse on their computers.

Eventually Disney will be getting their hands in it to detect copyrighted content and then it's all over.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#165

Post by roenxi »

defaultname wrote: post #143
roenxi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go read the announcement, the "CSAM detection" heading [0]. It is exactly what they are doing. Although they're assuring us that they don't make mistakes. The technical term for that is either going to be "blatant deception" or "delusion". Apple are impressive but they haven't developed a tech that can't make mistakes. [0] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

That isn't what they're doing at all. You have significantly misunderstood or conflated different sections. Though I don't blame you at all: Read through the various hysterical posts about this and there are a lot of extraordinary misrepresentations.

Ah, I see what you're getting at. They're currently hashing for specific photos.

I don't care. There is no way on this good earth that law enforcement is going to let them get away with that. They're claiming that they will be scanning things that are obviously child porn and ignoring it. That isn't a long term stable thing to be doing - if they think scanning for anything is ok there is no logical reason to stop here. So they probably aren't going to stop, and they certainly aren't going to announce every step they take to increase the net.

And their 1:1,000,000,000,000 number is still delusional. The system is going to produce false positives. There are more sources of error here than the cryptographic hash algorithm.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#167

Post by noasaservice »

defaultname wrote: post #66
toxik wrote: post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

Anyone who engaged in such a discussion with a non-technical person is going to defacto seem like an advocate for child pornography, similar to how advocating for encryption can easily be twisted to being pro-crime. Having said that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about a pretty tame change. This seems like so much ado about very close to nothing. a) They optionally scan messaged pho…

This on-device scanning is even worse. They cant even tell what was violating, or what hash, or what image. Just that the computer said you are violating.

We have no idea about the hash collisions. When talking about whole world, 2^256 isn't a big enough space.... even if they're using 256 bits.

And how dare anybody criticize this - criticism is tantamount to being for child porn. (Then again, that's why it was chosen. We'll soon see other things 'forbidden'.)

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#168

Post by judge2020 »

sundvor wrote: post #129
toxik wrote: post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

The privacy implications are fucking horrible. As an Android user I'd love to gloat, after all Apple have really had the upper edge on privacy so far, and their users have not been shy about telling us. Again and again. However any pleasure would be as short lived as peeing your pants to keep warm in winter, because if Apple proceeds, Google is bound to follow. A user monitoring system like this is just ripe for abus…

Google Photos runs PhotoDNA on all photos there, so it’s no different from Apple scanning photos destined for iCloud photos with similar tech. I guess the only pushback is that apple has decided to do it on-device (still only to photos going to iCloud Photos) instead of server-side, where they have to disable E2EE to do so?

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#169

Post by marcosdumay »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #135
dannyw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the role of infrastructure providers to reach into private, on device content. That is like the USPS opening every letter and scanning what is inside. Even if it's done with machine learning, that is absolutely not okay, no matter what it is for.

Though we were okay with Gmail doing the same because "hey, it's free!". But I understand your concern here. All our lives are now digitalised and maybe stored forever somewhere and anything you do, even if completely benign, could be considered a crime in some country or even in your own country in a few years from now.

Your gmail messages live on Google's servers. It's not ok for them to scan everything, but it's completely different from Apple scanning your phone's content.

Re: An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology

#170

Post by stephen_g »

sundvor wrote: post #129
toxik wrote: post #3

Please talk to non-tech people around you about this. This overreach simply cannot stand, and from a company that sees success from touting itself as a privacy-centric alternative? These really are some dark times. I imagine that if the world had Stasi fresher in its mind, this would never have happened.

The privacy implications are fucking horrible. As an Android user I'd love to gloat, after all Apple have really had the upper edge on privacy so far, and their users have not been shy about telling us. Again and again. However any pleasure would be as short lived as peeing your pants to keep warm in winter, because if Apple proceeds, Google is bound to follow. A user monitoring system like this is just ripe for abus…

Well, I mean if Gmail has already done this kind of scanning for years (as is reported) then you’d assume Google Photos probably already does too if you sync it to their cloud (as does iCloud on the server side). But yeah, client side is a whole different thing…
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