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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

#201

Post by brasscodemonkey »

sathackr wrote: post #42

US Government: We suspect the person in this photo of committing a crime. Here is your subpoena, Apple. You are directed to scan all iPhone and iCloud storage for any pictures matching this NeuralHash and report to us where you find them. Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for Tienanmen square. Delete all photos you find matching this or we will bar you from China. Apple has at this point already admitted thi…

Hasn’t Google been parsing Google Photos images, email content, and pretty much everything else since forever? Do you just stay off of smartphones and cloud platforms entirely?

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

#202

Post by daemoon »

cwizou wrote: post #121
new299 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were already doing it on the cloud: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/09/apples-scanning-... So now they’re doing it on device too. This feels like it’s putting in place the foundation to scan all offline content.

Thanks for the link, I had assumed that Apple was already doing it on servers (like all other online services providers), which makes the announcement even more terrible. Moving it on device will show 0 improvement to the original goal, while opening a door that quite frankly I never expected Apple to be the one to open (I would have bet on Microsoft).

> Moving it on device will show 0 improvement to the original goal, while opening a door that quite frankly I never expected Apple to be the one to open (I would have bet on Microsoft).

The CSAM scan is only for photos that are to be uploaded to iCloud Photos. Turning off iCloud Photos will disable this.

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

#203

Post by d--b »

dijit wrote: post #130
d--b wrote: post #116

You guys can get outraged all you want. It's pretty clear that Apple debated this internally and decided that the backlash was worth whatever they got from this deal... By today, it's pretty clear than privacy is not the top priority of most people. See how much data people are giving fb/google every second...

This defeatist attitude is not helpful. The louder people are about this, the more it hurts and the more likely the policy is reversed. if the policy is not reversed, then at least the community has been loud enough that people took notice and understood that this is happening, giving them a chance to vote with their wallet; for most people what happens on a computer or a phone is a complete mystery.

What I am saying is that people have been told pretty clearly that FB would sell all your data to anyone, use it to target people with misinformation that clearly influence election outcomes, and lie about it everywhere. The dent that these revelations had on FB’s userbase is peanuts.

Same thing with whatsapp.

Apple’s saying that they’ll use a robot to check that their users arent paedophiles is clearly not going to change anything. Use your energy elsewhere...

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

#204

Post by fh973 »

brasscodemonkey wrote: post #201
sathackr wrote: post #42

US Government: We suspect the person in this photo of committing a crime. Here is your subpoena, Apple. You are directed to scan all iPhone and iCloud storage for any pictures matching this NeuralHash and report to us where you find them. Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for Tienanmen square. Delete all photos you find matching this or we will bar you from China. Apple has at this point already admitted thi…

Hasn’t Google been parsing Google Photos images, email content, and pretty much everything else since forever? Do you just stay off of smartphones and cloud platforms entirely?

Microsoft and Google have been doing that in their online services for ages, but not on your personal devices.

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

#205

Post by hef19898 »

stephen_g wrote: post #170
sundvor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of curiosity, how does Samsung Knox handle privacy?

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

#206

Post by judge2020 »

techdragon wrote: post #161
Spivak wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Shine a bright light through the envelope, you Should be able to make out some letters. Maybe make a neural network for reading these letters and putting them together into sentences.

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

#207

Post by ksaj »

quenix wrote: post #24
toxik wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a very deep and troublesome philosophical issue here. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. A picture of child abuse /is not/ child abuse. Let me ask you a counter-question. If I am able to draw child pornography so realistically that you couldn't easily tell, am I committing a crime by drawing?

A picture of child abuse is child abuse in that the abuse of a child was necessary to take the picture in the first place. If the picture had no grounds to spread, it would likely not have been made—no incentive. As such, the fact that the picture is able to spread indirectly incentivises further physical abuse to children.

PornHub recently changed their policies after an article appeared that pointed out that many underaged boys were uploading videos of themselves masturbating to the site. I forget the numbers, but it was quite substantial. Of course the boys in question claimed they were of age, although they apparently were not.

Were the uploads self-abuse? Was PornHub subsequently spreading child abuse? Did everyone who saw any of those videos abuse the child who uploaded the videos?

The legal answer is, for the most part, yes on all counts. But should an OS report users for clicking on PornHub recommended videos?

It's reasonable to assume this happens on most porn sites that allow user content uploads.

It seems such scanners should be employed by sites prone to this kind of illegal use, and not be part of a global all-devices-on-hand dragnet where there is so much room for error.

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

#209

Post by sumeno »

sathackr wrote: post #42

US Government: We suspect the person in this photo of committing a crime. Here is your subpoena, Apple. You are directed to scan all iPhone and iCloud storage for any pictures matching this NeuralHash and report to us where you find them. Chinese Government: Here is the NeuralHash for Tienanmen square. Delete all photos you find matching this or we will bar you from China. Apple has at this point already admitted thi…

Have they? The whitepaper made it sound like the encrypted security voucher is created from the database of known cp on the device at the time the image is uploaded, and the only way for Apple to decrypt something is if it matched something in that database.

It did not sound like they could retroactively add additional hashes and decrypt something that already was uploaded. They could theoretically add something to the list of hashes and catch future uploads of it but my understanding was they cannot do this for stuff that has already been stored.

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

#210

Post by formerly_proven »

judge2020 wrote: post #168
sundvor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

iCloud Photos are not end-to-end encrypted in the first place.
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