Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.quintarelli.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 318 posts

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

#301

Post by cblconfederate »

mulmen wrote: post #254
userbinator wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> ...and as much as I'd like to see at least that amount of "watering the liberty tree" directed at Big Tech […] I’m having a hard time finding a reading of this that isn’t advocating violence against tech workers. Is that what you intended?

tech workers are replaceable. even if we assume violence was implied, it s better directed at their datacenters.

I did not find it very hard to assume a not-the-worst-possible reading of the comment. What's with the comment police here lately that's labeling various comments? I hope this ain't becoming the new twitter

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

#302

Post by axiosgunnar »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #267
u10 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> possessing CP to automatically considering them a child molester, yet someone posessing an action movie is not considered a murderer That's specious reasoning. Someone who posesses an action movie likes action movies, while someone who posesses child porn likes child porn. One is ok, the other is pretty vile and illegal for a reason. I don't agree with Apple on this but let's be clear on what is and what isn't

You can have videos of somebody actually getting killed and it's not a crime. Reddit killed the /r/watchpeopledie subreddit, but it wasn't illegal to go on. Until people are actively encouraging people dying for people getting killed by paying for gladiator matches, I agree with you it's not the same thing, but I don't think the person you're answering to is talking about action movies.

> You can have videos of somebody actually getting killed and it's not a crime.

yet

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

#303

Post by [deleted] »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #298
gonehome wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time of my comments people weren’t discussing the fuzziness of perceptual hashing - they weren’t discussing implementation details at all. I don’t know enough about the specific implementation or perceptual hashing details and probably pushed back too hard as a result of the other comments at the time (which were comments out of ignorance). The level of downvotes I received is disproportionate to what I wrote…

Apple is obviously already scanning for CSAM for whatever non-E2E content hits their servers. With this, they offload some of the cost of computation to the end nodes but that can’t be the only reason for pushing this tech, so it’s only natural to ask why and look for avenues of exploitation. The Trojan horse/foot-in-the-door hypothesis is basically Occam’s razor.

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by gonehome »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #298
gonehome wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time of my comments people weren’t discussing the fuzziness of perceptual hashing - they weren’t discussing implementation details at all. I don’t know enough about the specific implementation or perceptual hashing details and probably pushed back too hard as a result of the other comments at the time (which were comments out of ignorance). The level of downvotes I received is disproportionate to what I wrote…

Apple is obviously already scanning for CSAM for whatever non-E2E content hits their servers. With this, they offload some of the cost of computation to the end nodes but that can’t be the only reason for pushing this tech, so it’s only natural to ask why and look for avenues of exploitation. The Trojan horse/foot-in-the-door hypothesis is basically Occam’s razor.

This Daring Fireball blog post is a better summary than the discussion I’ve found on HN: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia...

Occam’s razor is that they’re doing what they say they’re doing and not some more complicated future action.

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

#305

Post by dwaite »

noduerme wrote: post #293
dwaite wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They of course have the ability to exfiltrate data, they created the hardware and OS. However since this is part of the opt-in iCloud photos sharing mechanism, it doesn’t appear they have started to exfiltrate data without consent.

>> They of course have the ability to exfiltrate data, they created the hardware and OS. I don't in know why you're assuming they have a backdoor built in already. The whole point is that they don't, but they're going to add one.

I don’t count this as data exfiltration because it only releases data if you are doing iCloud photos sync, which is opt in. iCloud photo sync has also always been recoverable on the server by government request.

So they have always been one software update from non-opt-in data exfiltration and remain so.

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

#306

Post by pas »

rahkiin wrote: post #294
least wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a misrepresentation whatsoever. If Apple wishes to scan what's on their servers, that is their prerogative. They can use their compute resources and energy to do so. You needn't install spyware on a person's device that is of no benefit to the user. I'll reiterate, this can only ever be harmful to the user. Its utility right now is at its absolute best and most altruistic and it is still a violation of peopl…

Maybe they want to turn iCloud fully e2e, so cannot actually scan anymore on their servers. They have to scan for CSAM by US law.

Could someone point to the relevant statute/regulation?

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

#307

Post by pas »

DSingularity wrote: post #290
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…

Here are other statistics that suggest this is anything but a “niche” crime. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

This seems unbelievably high (though I have no reason to doubt the researchers).

If the prevalence is really around 8-30%, this seems a lot bigger than what Apple could even make a dent in. (Because most of the offenders are relatives/acquaintances of the victims. The phones don't seem to have any influence on the underlying numbers.)

Furthermore, criminalizing content again pushes the actual problem deeper into the shadows.

Why there are no routine questions about abuse for kids? At least that would help to identify victims, remove them from the abusive environment, and even potentially help catch the perpetrator.

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

#308

Post by xyzzy21 »

At what point do other picture types become surveilled?

Maybe if you take pictures of Trump signs...

Maybe if you take pictures of Red states...

Maybe if you take pictures of cis relationships...

Maybe if you happen to be male and white and take a selfie...

What/when do these get reported to the FBI or other woke agencies in government?

It's a very slippery slope AND WE KNOW there are sociopaths in positions of power who'd gladly do such things without a second thought.

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

#309

Post by lancemurdock »

lijogdfljk wrote: post #167
lancemurdock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

commenting here as I share the same exact sentiment. I guess I am going to look into LineageOS which falls in the de-googled category but im not sure I am in love with that idea. edit: Whoa, 2K for that purism phone. fuckin' a.

The standard ( https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ ) is cheaper - i guess the USA one comes with a large uptick for locally sourcing?

ah thats much more reasonable. The reviews on this phone are pretty awful although looks like its rather new to the market.

Anyone who comes across this comment use one?

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

#310

Post by therealjumbo »

gonehome wrote: post #304
ComputerGuru wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is obviously already scanning for CSAM for whatever non-E2E content hits their servers. With this, they offload some of the cost of computation to the end nodes but that can’t be the only reason for pushing this tech, so it’s only natural to ask why and look for avenues of exploitation. The Trojan horse/foot-in-the-door hypothesis is basically Occam’s razor.

This Daring Fireball blog post is a better summary than the discussion I’ve found on HN: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... Occam’s razor is that they’re doing what they say they’re doing and not some more complicated future action.

How will you know? And actually, how will Apple know that's all their doing? They won't because all they can see is a hash, so they don't actually know if they're checking for anti-winnie the pooh memes, or CP. And there is no public auditing, there is no auditing by your senators, there is no public disclosure of the hashes they are checking, and no public disclosure of the exact algorithm used. And even if they tried to do the latter two, you'd have no way of verifying it.

You said earlier upthread, that HN is ignoring the tradeoffs. I find that distasteful, people have considered the tradeoffs of this and they don't like them, but that doesn't mean they need to preface every single statement about the thing with "well actually i've considered the tradeoffs, and I've found them to be blah, and..." That would quickly get tiresome which is why people don't do it.

I'll make a different, similar generalization. Like most people pushing this, you are pretending to care about the "tradeoffs", but you don't. You don't care about the downsides, you just say you do, and then blithely ignore them when they are brought up. What's the golden rule again?

Post reply on HN