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Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

reuters.com

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Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#331

Post by 6AA4FD »

cucumb3rrelish wrote: post #242
breck wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is this is secretly about nuclear, bio, chemical or other WMD or “dangerous” material. I can’t imagine that Apple would be so stupid to open such a Pandora’s box to an Orwellian state and crimes against all children in the name of making no statistical difference in the porn problem. There has got to be a hidden story here and severe pressure on top executives, otherwise I can’t see how the math makes sense.…

Something tells me people with access to nuclear arsenal are not going to take pictures of it with an iphone and share them via imessages

You mean like american soldiers wouldn't store sensitive nuclear info on public Quizlet decks? Hmm

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#332

Post by nhumrich »

colinmhayes wrote: post #211
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162

> Apple was surprised its stance then was not more popular, and the global tide since then has been toward more monitoring of private communication Huh. That’s a big problem. If the American public doesn’t support privacy, we won’t have it.

The American public broadly does not care about privacy. Facebook is more than enough proof of that.

Facebook does significantly more business outside the US then inside of it.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#333

Post by ipv6ipv4 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #98
nrabulinski wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iCloud content was encrypted (as it should be given what Apple says about themselves and privacy) they wouldn’t and couldn’t care any less what the data on their servers contains since, ideally, they’d have no way of decrypting that data. No need for any privacy invasion! > Apple needs to make sure you don’t have certain content on your phone. Excuse me, what? What does Apple care what I have on my device?

> they wouldn’t and couldn’t care any less what the data on their servers Except they're legally forced to care. Thats why this is happening at all. They have a legal obligation to care, encryption be damned. They chose to preserve encryption instead of preserve trust.

No, they are not. I linked to the text of the law itself [1]. In particular note the section titled "protection of privacy" that states:

(f) Protection of Privacy. —Nothing in this section shall be construed to require a provider to— (1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider; (2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or (3) affirmatively search, screen, or scan for facts or circumstances described in sections (a) and (b).

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#334

Post by 6AA4FD »

istingray wrote: post #278
post_break wrote: post #259

Cancelled my Apple TV+, iCloud. In the process of selling my iPhone and Apple watch. I know it seems crazy but I feel betrayed and this is the only way I can protest this. Will I have less privacy on android? Yes.

Taking action ftw. Any alternatives you're purchasing or thinking about? I'm quite interested in http://puri.sm . Just setup a NextCloud today, they have free 2GB of hosting plans: http://nextcloud.com

Synching will also do the trick, with more configuration involved perhaps.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#336

Post by FabHK »

cletus wrote: post #292

Apple's track record on user protection compared to Google or Samsung has been very good. For example, resisting wide net Federal "because terrorism" warrants as much as they legally can. There's a reason why Apple 0 day exploits sell for way more on the black market than Android exploits. Trust is hard to earn, easy to lose and even harder to regain. User trust is such a huge part of Apple's business and success, it…

That strikes me as a much more nuanced and sensible take than all the facile "Apple's privacy stance has always just been a marketing ploy to maximise profits, you sheeple".

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#337

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tshaddox wrote: post #320
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woops, you're right, thanks for the correction. I think the issue is that, as Ben Thompson pointed out, the only thing preventing them from scanning other stuff now is just policy , not capability , and now that Pandora's box is open it's going to be much more difficult to resist when a government comes to them and says "we want you to scan messages for subversive content".

Given that they obviously already have the capability to send software updates that add new on-device capability, this seems like a meaningless distinction. It’s already “just policy” preventing them from sending any conceivable software update to their phones.

I disagree, strongly. Let's say you're authoritarian government EvilGov. Before this announcement, if you went to Apple and said "we want you to push this spyware to your iPhones", Apple would and could have easily pushed back both in the court of public opinion and the court of law.

Now though, Apple is already saying "We'll take this database of illegal image hashes provided by the government and use it to scan your phone." It's now quite trivial for a government to say "We don't have a special database of just CSAM, and a different database of just Winnie the Pooh memes. We just have one big DB of 'illegal images', and that's what we want you to use to scan the phones."

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#339

Post by FabHK »

Tsiklon wrote: post #310
_23sd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>dont like someone who uses an ios device, msg them some cp and destroy their entire life. For this to work one would have to send multiple photos and convince the other person to save the photos to their library.

WhatsApp on iOS for example will by default, save images that people send to you to your photo gallery.

What about WhatsApp on Android? If it also stores to the local photo library, and then syncs to the cloud, then it would have been subject to this "vulnerability" for a long time, no?

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#340

Post by arn »

wonderwonder wrote: post #327

I assume this is some sort of machine learning algorithm. How did they get the data set to train it on? That seems really strange. How did they test it? Seems like any engineers involved on this would come out with PTSD. Whatever they used to test it and train it with is illegal to possess and could only be used with some sort of massive government cooperation.

It's not. It's a specific database of image hashes they are comparing against. Not AI, Not ML.
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