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The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

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Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#491

Post by account42 »

carabiner wrote: post #479
ekianjo wrote: post #444

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? Am I going back to using Linux on the desktop (2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, remember), debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Oh come on. DOn't make it sound like it's that bad. Wifi is a solved problem for a long time now, and you can buy Lenovo, System76 or Tuxedo if you want to make sure 100% thi…

Can I upgrade video drivers without being dumped to a command line?

You can with AMD cards, presumably Intel too. Applications, including the display server, will continue to use the old drivers until they are restarted of course.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#492

Post by gambiting »

simondotau wrote: post #393
zionic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents take a lot of photos of their kid. Like, lots .

How many of them include erect adult penises and active participation in sex acts? Apple's on-device list of hashes only includes images which have been classified "A1" under the CSAM categorisation scale. If any other photographs are accidental hash collisions to these images, it's going to be pretty damn obvious to the human reviewer.

The problem with all of this, is that it's about to trust. We're are supposed to trust apple's algorithm to avoid false positives, we're supposed to trust apple that even with false positives there's some threshold to cross, and then supposed to trust apple that their employees will do a good job verifying the pictures, and then(most imporantly) trust that a giant american corporation won't honor secretive state requests to start scanning our phones for other data.

I just don't have that trust. Obviously I think that protecting children is an incredibly important thing to be doing, but I don't trust apple to be running such a system(I do trust them maybe a tiny bit more than I'd trust google in this case, but ultimately I'd rather this system didn't exist at all).

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#493

Post by stickfigure »

jrek wrote: post #457
windexh8er wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The false positive rate for any given image is not 1 in a trillion. Perceptual hashing just does not work like that. It also suffers from the birthday paradox problem - as the database expands, and the total number of pictures expands, collisions become more likely. There was a good article [0] that was on HN a couple days ago that touches on the flat out lie regarding "one in a trillion" and how PhotoDNA sounds po…

Apple is not using PhotoDNA, but in any event - this is a good article but they misconstrued the '1 in a trillion' quote, as is canvassed in the comments for the article itself. According to apple there is a 1 in a trillion chance of wrongly flagging an account, not a 1 in a trillion false positive rate for individual images, and we know that step to banning include: - multiple flagged images; and - human review The…

I don't want my private pictures reviewed by humans. What's the probability of that?

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#494

Post by intricatedetail »

fortenforge wrote: post #137
querez wrote: post #2

I have a newborn at home, and like every other parent, we take thousands of pictures and videos of our newest family member. We took pictures of the very first baby-bath. So now I have pictures of a naked baby on my phone. Does that mean that pictures of my newborn baby will be uploaded to Apple for further analysis, potentially stored for indefinite time, shared with law enforcement?

Lots of people responding to this seem to not understand how perceptual hashing / PhotoDNA works. It's true that they're not cryptographic hashes, but the false positive rate is vanishingly small. Apple claims it's 1 in a trillion [1], but suppose that you don't believe them. Google and Facebook and Microsoft are all using PhotoDNA (or equivalent perceptual hashing schemes) right now. Have you heard of some massive i…

I worked with perceptual hashes. The false positive rate makes it unusable. Even when combined with AI it does not work well. It can get you a list of possible matches, but only a human can really tell if the image is the image. Then you have a problem of images not making to the list. That was in 2016. Maybe things changed.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#495

Post by arespredator »

Hi, post author here.

To anyone upset or offended by the Linux/nerd paragraph: please chill, and please forgive my tone.

I am a nerd myself indeed, and what I wanted to convey by this not-as-funny-sa-expected paragraph was that "going full nerd" is not a solution. There are ways to protect your privacy that will not be available to less tech-savvy people, and it's a problem. HN crowd will use Thinkpads with Arch on them, and phones with Graphene or whatever, but most people won't.

Yours, Absolute nerd and lover of desktop Linux since SuSE 6.0

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#496

Post by fy20 »

farmerstan wrote: post #219

Whoever controls the hash list controls your phone from now on. Period. End of sentence. Apple has not disclosed who gets to add new hashes to the list of CSAM hashes or what the process is to add new hashes. Do different countries have different hash lists? Because if the FBI or CIA or CCCP or KSA wants to arrest you, all they need to do is inject the hash of one of your photos into the “list” and you will be flagge…

I imagine this very well being extended not just to match photos, but also metadata within the photos. And then the list of things it matches against is extended from CP to other undesirables by society.

After a 12 hour flight - that was of course delayed - Liam was pretty exhausted, but was looking forward to getting to his hotel in the center of Munich. He got to the front of the queue, and handed his passport over to the customs officer. The officer scanned Liam's passport, took it off the reader, and after 20 seconds asked "You flew from Los Angeles today?". Liam replied "Yes...". The customs officer, with his firm German accent, said "I need to check something with my colleague, wait here.". Not that there was anywhere Liam would go.

The customs officer came back with someone else who was slightly older and clearly more senior. The senior officer said "Come with me please", and led Liam to a room at the side of the customs hall. The officer said "Sit down please", indicating to the chair in front of the desk. The room looked like any other office, with a computer on a desk and chairs either side. The officer sat behind the desk and started typing something on the computer. After a few minutes he said "You are wanted by Interpol".

The customs officer explained to Liam that he had been flagged as a photo he had taken 6 months before included a known terrorist, and so by association Liam had been flagged. Liam asked how they accessed his photos - he is tech savy and only takes encrypted backups onto his own devices. The customs officer explained that they didn't need to, as this flagging had been done entirely by his device. The customs officer gave the date of the photo, and Liam found it on his device. He had been on holiday with his girlfriend in Paris, and they had taken a selfie. There was someone clearly visible behind them, and the customs officer explained that the facial recognition had identified this person. Due to privacy laws he wasn't able to say (or even see themselves) who this person was, only that they were on the highest German terrorist watch list.

From the photo it looked quite obvious that this person was just a passer by who glanced at the couple just at the moment they were taking a photo. The customs officer took Liam's fingerprints and asked Liam questions about his trip to Paris - typing the answers into the computer - and then the computer decided that Liam could be released. However the customs officer told Liam that he would be closely monitored while in Germany, and may receive 'check in' calls from police. He told Liam he must answer them otherwise a team will be dispatched to intercept him. Liam was then allowed to go on his way. He was only delayed by 45 minutes, but it wasn't a great start to his holiday in Germany. 3 years later when he visited Germany again the same thing happened, at least he knew what to expect this time...

(This is partially based on something that actually happened to me. Nearly a decade ago my passport was stolen, and every time I go to Germany I need to have a fun conversation with customs officers. Every other country I've visited - including the US - let's me through without even mentioning it)

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#497

Post by neop1x »

ekianjo wrote: post #455
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a nerd and don't take it as an insult. Rather as "going full nerd on this" in the sense of giving a lot more importance and effort to a small detail in an already full life. And even if it was not, let's not get upset for every quip, I don't want to live in a world where bloggers have to ponder every word because they are afraid of offending someone. A bit of spice is ok, the dose makes the poison.

> I don't want to live in a world where bloggers have to ponder every word because they are afraid of offending someone. I don't find it offending, I find it stupid to write like that, that's not the same. So you write a long piece about how Apple is bad for privacy, just at the end to detract the available alternatives because you know, you don't like them for no particular reason? Who said that privacy was going to…

As Stallmain said - people are trading privacy and freedom for convenience.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#498

Post by danhor »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #488
KronisLV wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? ..., debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Coincidentally, this is actually a good idea. Apart from using supported hardware (that others have checked actually works), contributing fixes for hardware that's not officially supported yet and hasn't been tested would benefit everyone in the future! I remember having to…

Yeah... when you have a home-built PC with *nix unsupported hardware and invested lots of $$ you're still looking for a hard time. First, there's the hardware cost. I'm not throwing my Surface out, and I'm not throwing out my perfectly working desktop components either. But that aside... Every time I read how the great unwashed should just contribute fixes already to benefit everyone, I despair. I write code. I build…

For Linux there is supported hardware from Vendors like system76 or similar. You don't expect to run Windows on Chromebooks, Android Smartphones or M1 Macbooks without issues, because these vendors only optimize & test for linux. But since linux is such an open platform, you have a large grey area "vendor didn't test it, ymmv". It may work fine, but you never know if the vendor decided to e.g. ignore standards for reboots and only react to the exact things that Windows does (This also applies to macos running on other devices, but way worse). Most devices have an entry in e.g. the arch wiki describing if they work OOTB, with hacks or some parts just don't.

There are devices where the vendor tries to support linux, e.g. Thinkpads, but if you're using Nvidia it's still a pile of hacks in the background.

I haven't needed to contribute any code myself nor use non-upstream drivers, but the process to use non-upstream drivers is usually pretty streamlined in arch (packaged in the aur).

And since we're in hacker news: Programming things close to the hardware can be a great learning experience, maybe not when done under pressure.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#499

Post by formerly_proven »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #488
KronisLV wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? ..., debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Coincidentally, this is actually a good idea. Apart from using supported hardware (that others have checked actually works), contributing fixes for hardware that's not officially supported yet and hasn't been tested would benefit everyone in the future! I remember having to…

Yeah... when you have a home-built PC with *nix unsupported hardware and invested lots of $$ you're still looking for a hard time. First, there's the hardware cost. I'm not throwing my Surface out, and I'm not throwing out my perfectly working desktop components either. But that aside... Every time I read how the great unwashed should just contribute fixes already to benefit everyone, I despair. I write code. I build…

What kind of hardware are we talking about here for a self-built PC which isn't supported by Linux?

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#500

Post by formerly_proven »

jrek wrote: post #457
windexh8er wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The false positive rate for any given image is not 1 in a trillion. Perceptual hashing just does not work like that. It also suffers from the birthday paradox problem - as the database expands, and the total number of pictures expands, collisions become more likely. There was a good article [0] that was on HN a couple days ago that touches on the flat out lie regarding "one in a trillion" and how PhotoDNA sounds po…

Apple is not using PhotoDNA, but in any event - this is a good article but they misconstrued the '1 in a trillion' quote, as is canvassed in the comments for the article itself. According to apple there is a 1 in a trillion chance of wrongly flagging an account, not a 1 in a trillion false positive rate for individual images, and we know that step to banning include: - multiple flagged images; and - human review The…

"Don't worry, even if the system flags your baby pictures, we'll just hand them to the lowest-bidding subcontractor who will review the pictures of your naked baby (you know, to catch pedophiles!) and then probably not report you to the authorities. If this happens too often we're just going to ban you tho, this process costs money y'know?"
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