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Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

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Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#231

Post by userbinator »

cblconfederate wrote: post #15

Apple will release this in their desktop pcs. The major consequence of this is that, a year down the line, microsoft will also be compelled/forced to join this "coalition of the good". After all, they already scan all your files for viruses, it would be a shame if they didn't scan for anything that is deemed incriminating and also call the cops on you. Of course, the children are being used as a trojan horse again. W…

Of course, the next step after that is to make "non-authorised" operating systems -- which may include Linux (except for specially signed versions that will also include similar spyware) -- "deprecated" or "discouraged", then "suspicious", and perhaps even eventually illegal.

Stallman predicted a similar outcome, and although he (and many others) thought the end of computing freedom would be due to copyright/DRM, I wouldn't be surprised if "the children" is what eventually pushes things over the edge.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

in a situation like the attach in US capitol this year

...and as much as I'd like to see at least that amount of "watering the liberty tree" directed at Big Tech, it unfortunately would likely lead to even more authoritarian outcomes. Any future fights for freedom will need to happen online and non-violently, but on platforms that are also under their control.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#232

Post by choeger »

It's inevitable that software and hardware will be controlled by law enforcement. It's just too good an opportunity to not use it. Nearly no one will fight it and the apathy of the masses will lead us directly into a system at least as oppressive as china is now.

You can prepare for it, though. Organize some hardware while you still can, teach your children to not trust any device or service, and, more importantly keep your mouth shut. It might be hard for a typical US millennial to grasp the concept, but people that grew up in eastern Europe will be able to understand the concepts.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#233

Post by emptysongglass »

DSingularity wrote: post #192
ctvo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a widely accepted statistic but these numbers should illustrate the point: - A 2016 study by the Center for Court Innovation found that between 8,900 and 10,500 children, ages 13 to 17, are commercially exploited each year in the United States. (Center for Court Innovation, 2016) https://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/document... - The annual number of persons prosecuted for commercial sexua…

Thanks for the statistics. To me, these numbers are significant. Maybe Whole Foods or maybe some popular restaurants are better candidates for working on improving nutrition in public schools? Why don’t we let apple contribute where it thinks it can. Maybe with apple that number goes down from 10,000 to 2,000. Wouldn’t that be a celebrated outcome?

We cannot stop all crime. There will never be a day where we stop all crime. It is not an achievable goal nor is it desirable because what constitutes a crime is written by the governments of the world and we have tens of thousands of years of reigning authorities to tell us that they will abuse the power they are invested with to protect themselves.

Authority and its keeping is the number two law of the jungle. Any power handed over in the name of security, "to stop all crime", is an affirmation, a concretization of its future abuse. You speak of the calculated cost of preventing child abuse as acceptable. What of the abuse of an entire people?

This is not handwavy theoreticals. We already know what happens, in the US, when you push an agenda in the name of protecting the children: it looks like FOSTA/SESTA, which has driven sex workers of America underground and exposed them to more violence, more danger in a profession already one of the most murderous professions in the world. Those murders, in the name of protecting the young, are at the feet of the people who would protect the children with more authority.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#234

Post by aj3 »

DSingularity wrote: post #124
ctvo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-off here is to get pedophiles off of Apple services and on to something else, we give Apple an entry point into examining our private data. I understand it's hashes now, that does nothing to prevent this from expanding. "People just don't understand!!" has never been a convincing argument.

I think HN takes the incorrectly perceived moral high ground and ignore the fact that there is a real duty to act here. There are people who profit from CSAM and in turn this creates a market for abuse. Unless we create structures which disincentivizes these behaviors — right now there are none - they will continue to grow. What Apple is building will basically make any criminal who sells to someone sloppy enough to…

I'm pretty sure child abuse is a criminal offense everywhere. That's quite a disincentive.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#235

Post by noduerme »

jachee wrote: post #217
noduerme wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hash matching part of this is a red herring. The real issue is that if a hash matches, there's now a mechanism to upload the image in question from your phone, unencrypted, without your consent. What assurance is there that the hidden upload mechanism can't be used to upload other files on demand? If a mechanism is built into the OS that can exfiltrate files on demand, what's to say there even has to be a hash ma…

It’s not a “hidden upload mechanism”. It’s a hash-and-flag system on top of the extant “upload to iCloud” function. Apple will already have the data. You’re already consenting to that when you enable iCloud Photo Library (the only place this is being implemented).

But all uploads to iCloud are [edit: will be] encrypted. This system includes another, separate mechanism to upload a file unencrypted, not to iCloud, but to some other system where humans can review it. So it's not using the same functionality as a normal upload. The file doesn't have to have been uploaded to iCloud yet, or ever, to be copied off the phone using some other method. The whole point is that they don't want unencrypted copies being uploaded to iCloud, so they can't review what was uploaded via the iCloud route. Therefore they want some other method of checking your files locally - which means they need a backdoor to copy them without your permission.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#236

Post by aj3 »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #189
cblconfederate wrote: post #15

Apple will release this in their desktop pcs. The major consequence of this is that, a year down the line, microsoft will also be compelled/forced to join this "coalition of the good". After all, they already scan all your files for viruses, it would be a shame if they didn't scan for anything that is deemed incriminating and also call the cops on you. Of course, the children are being used as a trojan horse again. W…

>We don't even mention the giant logical leap from finding someone possessing CP to automatically considering them a child molester, yet someone posessing ~~an action~~ a murder video is not considered a murderer. That is because the consumption of child porn induces people to create it. The consumption of action movies does not induce people to murder anyone.

[citation needed]

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#237

Post by adrianmsmith »

mthoms wrote: post #113
lamontcg wrote: post #60

> But when a backdoor is installed, the backdoor exists and history teaches that it’s only a matter of time before it’s also used by the bad guys and authoritarian regimes. Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a…

> Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a minimum). Not true. Hash matches are to be human reviewed. So no, people won't get "swatted" accidentally as you allege. The other concerns people have been voicing are ce…

> Hash matches are to be human reviewed.

This comment suggests this phrase might be cleverly worded, to make it seem like the images are human reviewed, while that actually not being the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28096059

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#238

Post by aj3 »

mthoms wrote: post #113
lamontcg wrote: post #60

> But when a backdoor is installed, the backdoor exists and history teaches that it’s only a matter of time before it’s also used by the bad guys and authoritarian regimes. Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a…

> Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a minimum). Not true. Hash matches are to be human reviewed. So no, people won't get "swatted" accidentally as you allege. The other concerns people have been voicing are ce…

Reviewing potential matches sounds like an awful job. Retention might be even lower than in those FB abuse centers.

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#239

Post by ostenning »

int_19h wrote: post #180
slg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We don't even mention the giant logical leap from finding someone possessing CP to automatically considering them a child molester, yet someone posessing an action movie is not considered a murderer. This is a wild and in my opinion a wrongheaded analogy. Possessing CP is a crime by itself. It doesn't matter if the person possessing is actually a molester or not. It is just like the possession of drugs being illegal…

The worst thing about it is that CP possession is a strict liability crime in most jurisdictions. Meaning that prosecution doesn't have to prove intent - if they can find it on your machine, you're guilty regardless of how it got there.

But for any serious charge you need indisputable evidence, and usually lots of it, usually the threshold is quite high.. But in the United States the system is insane so I could be wrong

Re: Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view

#240

Post by smorgusofborg »

mthoms wrote: post #229
sithlord wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess its hard to believe that their is a world outside of the United States. Already do whatever it takes to pin some BS on someone that opposes them and has them executed. This would be no different.

I don’t understand. If the government can just claim you had CP without proof, then they can just… do that? They don’t need Apples system. Especially since anything flagged by this system is manually reviewed by Apple. So, there would exist counter-evidence for the govt claim. Don’t misunderstand, I see how this system is ripe for abuse. I was just commenting on the specific claim that there will be automated SWAT ca…

It should be extremely easy for any group that has access to tools like NSO Group's to use the information on a device to convincingly add data to devices. What is generally missing is the question of why certain people's devices were selectively searched. Attacks by the west on journalists often rely on the excuse of border searches for example.
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