An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning • Hacker News Board

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#111

Post by dcow » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

doubtfuluser wrote: post #54

Most of the people see the adversary in Apple (or governments), I think there is something else: What about Adversarial Attacks. Let’s assume someone is going to spread regular memes modified as Adversarial examples to generate the same neural hash as the true bad images. Thinking back at the political campaigns, these could spread very easily among some voters for some party. Suddenly you have a pretty serious attac…

…Maybe we should? All it would take is someone publishing the hash database and then another group working to generate hamming-similar images. Shouldn’t be that hard if it’s as broken as people claim. What’s that saying, “can’t outlaw something that is commonly acceptable behavior”? Point being attacking the system would either prove or compel the false positive rate to be “acceptable”, or result in it being dismantled. Still ideologically opposed but this may be a practical “solution”.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#112

Post by hellbannedguy » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

ssss11 wrote: post #50

Related but slightly off-topic: am I the only one that thinks more technology is not the answer to catching crooks? Can’t the police do good old fashioned police work to catch people doing these things? Why does EVERYONE need to be surveilled for the 0.01% (or less?) who don’t behave properly. To further this point: why do we need cameras on every street, facial recognition systems and 3-letter orgs storing huge data…

We hire, and train, terrible cops in America.

They are basically Reveune Collectors.

I would like to see all cops under federal jurisdiction. Let the FBI train them.

I know in my county of Marin we have way to many just looking for any slight moving violation.

I have felt for awhile that we also need complete bans in certain kinds of tech.

With the exception of always on cop cameras.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#113

Post by EtienneK » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #16

foxpurple wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cloud service are you putting your images on? I would be shocked if google photos hasn’t already been doing this.

Cloud services doing this isn't the problem and they are already doing it. The problem is your device doing this. Imagine if your Tesla reported back to Tesla who was in your car and sent that to the authorities if they thought someone in your car was "illegal".

Coming in the not-so-far-future.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#114

Post by arp242 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:04 AM UTC

genocidicbunny wrote: post #107

arp242 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not really much of a conversation if you don't care what other people have to say, is it? I don't really understand this almost visceral hate towards Apple. They do some things I like, and some things I don't like. This kind of stuff is not going to change anyone's mind, much less help them understand your position.

The visceral hate here is towards Apple because they are the current subject. Substitute any FAANG, or really, any company behaving similarly, and my reaction would be similar. Was it ever a conversation in the first place? I'm pretty sure that unless there's enough blow-back financially, Apple is going to do whatever it wants. This was never a conversation, it was a dictum from Apple that we're all reacting to. They…

> Was it ever a conversation in the first place? [..] I don't need others to understand my position

What do you think the point of Hacker News is?

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#115

Post by jasonlfunk » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #98

jasonlfunk wrote: post #48

I’m not sure what to think of the backlash here. I’m sure that people aren’t trying to minimize the evil of child pornography and exploitation. But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered. People complaining that Apple is scanning your photos, they are already doing that. Where was this backlash when they released the memories feature? Why is scanning your photos for good pictur…

But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered Strip searching everyone hourly will stop most contraband, including child pornography. And, according to you, it should be fairly considered. Shall we start with you? (And as people do have naked photos of themselves on their phones often[1], make no mistake, the strip search analogy is NOT an exaggeration) [1] https://en.wikipedia.or…

Considered, sure. But easily rejected. Let’s be grownups here.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#116

Post by punnerud » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

doubtfuluser wrote: post #65

punnerud wrote: post #3

Because it’s based on machine learning, why can’t some of the network and weights used for the hash be shared? So we can be sure it is not possible to match anything else than children. The sub narrow network used for detecting only CP is of course secret, but then we know it can’t be used for revealing pictures of police, activists etc

Like stated below, I’m seriously worried about Adversarial examples that fool the network into A) hiding bad pictures being not recognized B) triggering false positives on harmless pictures to discredit people. Opening up the network would mate it even easier to create the adversarials… Im not sure there is a winning position in the approach they used

«even easier to create the adversarials», agree. But if they find one of this pictures they can retrain in a way that find all of them on all phones. So it will never be safe to have CP on the phone/iCloud.

And easier to keep Apple accountable on not matching anything else than the purpose.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#117

Post by dmitrygr » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

jasonlfunk wrote: post #115

dmitrygr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered Strip searching everyone hourly will stop most contraband, including child pornography. And, according to you, it should be fairly considered. Shall we start with you? (And as people do have naked photos of themselves on their phones often[1], make no mistake, the strip search analogy is NOT an exaggeration) [1] https://en.wikipedia.or…

Considered, sure. But easily rejected. Let’s be grownups here.

Yes, indeed, let's! Grownups recognize that strip searches are unwarranted in this and most other cases, be they physical OR digital...

And certainly you've heard of software bugs. You do not think that a small one like "accidentally" "forgetting" to check that a photo had been synced cannot happen, and an "accidental" scan of ALL photos couldn't possibly happen in any situation no matter what bug/corruption/etc? Surely you'll share with the class where YOU hire infallible programmers.

An accidental strip search is a strip search nonetheless.

Luckily, this can all be solved by NOT writing such code. Ever.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#118

Post by KONAir » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #98

jasonlfunk wrote: post #48

I’m not sure what to think of the backlash here. I’m sure that people aren’t trying to minimize the evil of child pornography and exploitation. But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered. People complaining that Apple is scanning your photos, they are already doing that. Where was this backlash when they released the memories feature? Why is scanning your photos for good pictur…

But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered Strip searching everyone hourly will stop most contraband, including child pornography. And, according to you, it should be fairly considered. Shall we start with you? (And as people do have naked photos of themselves on their phones often[1], make no mistake, the strip search analogy is NOT an exaggeration) [1] https://en.wikipedia.or…

If UN or another international body like Interpol suddenly grew the courage to do it planetwide, I'd be the first to volunteer.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#119

Post by jasonlfunk » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

hvocode wrote: post #79

jasonlfunk wrote: post #48

I’m not sure what to think of the backlash here. I’m sure that people aren’t trying to minimize the evil of child pornography and exploitation. But anything that has the potential to stop or slow it should be fairly considered. People complaining that Apple is scanning your photos, they are already doing that. Where was this backlash when they released the memories feature? Why is scanning your photos for good pictur…

I think the point is that yes, they have always had the power to do these things - but they haven't thus far. We rely on entities with power (companies, governments, people) to exercise restraint in how they exercise it. Those that DO exercise restraint gain trust since exercising restraint demonstrates an understanding of the consequences of not doing so. What the Apple move is doing is showing that they are willing…

Yeah, but they are already doing this for pointless things. They already use facial recognition on all the photos on your phone. That’s what I don’t understand. The only new thing is what they are looking for and their willingness to alert the authorities. The slippery slope argument that this will eventually be used by China to arrest journalists is scare tactics. We have zero evidence that Apple would allow such a thing to happen. And the only thing stopping them is Apple’s word. The fact that they are announcing this should actually give confidence that they aren’t doing it in the shadows for China. They didn’t have to say anything about this. The fact that they should give you confidence that they are respecting your rights, not evidence that they aren’t.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#120

Post by brigandish » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:17 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #105

sillysaurusx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a non-insignificant amount of people in tech take this seriously We're all here to make ourselves feel good saying we Took A Stand. In reality, four weeks from now, do you think anybody will still be talking about it? I made this same mistake. I was pretty convinced that people were taking Copilot seriously, and that there was possibly going to be ramifications for Microsoft. I wasn't particularly looking forward t…

Can’t speak for everybody of course, but I am currently planning the migration away from the Apple ecosystem and I’m heavily invested (watch, phone, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV). I’ve also been recommending to friends and family to move to droids with microG. The largest concern I have for them is that they’re stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Most people aren’t going to run a droid without google, or Lin…

> I am currently planning the migration away from the Apple ecosystem

Me too. I told my wife today that I'll be looking at a feature phone as I'm not sure I can be bothered with jumping through all the hoops required to de-Google an Android phone. I remember a time before mobile phones, I was just fine without one - smartphones aren't that good, just convenient.