And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…
I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. Every single other company is riding a post-covid tidal wave of sales. as WFH becomes a reality for so many workers, apple products are positioned to really take center stage for a massive segment of consumers... and then this. Apple intentionally injects uncertainty and controversy? what were they thinking?? sure its just phones right now but im sure mac u…
After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
141–150 of 255 posts
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#142This is by far the biggest misstep of Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple thus far. If they don’t kill this program soon, it’s going to overshadow the entire upcoming iPhone event, and will follow Apple around like a dark cloud for years. I can see the headlines now: “New iPhone launches amid massive new privacy concerns.” Anytime someone praises Apple for privacy, anywhere on the internet, there will be a tidal wave of peopl…
If they kill the program, headlines will read: “Apple refuses to protect sexually abused children” or “Apple sides with protecting child pornographers.” I anecdotally see no backlash outside of HN and the tech/libertarian-focused parts of Reddit. To the casual iPhone buyer making up their billions in revenue, turning back on the program wouldn’t be good optics. Obviously my statement is purely conjecture, I’ll admit…
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#143So they're still retaining the ability to look on users devices? I have nothing against them looking at the abuse material, I have a problem with them having power over my device, which could be piggy-backed on by state actors (or others) for their own purposes later. Nobody is against them trying to prevent child sexual abuse, pretty sure we all agree that fighting that is important, but doing so by creating what is…
Don’t use iCloud photos
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#144This is by far the biggest misstep of Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple thus far. If they don’t kill this program soon, it’s going to overshadow the entire upcoming iPhone event, and will follow Apple around like a dark cloud for years. I can see the headlines now: “New iPhone launches amid massive new privacy concerns.” Anytime someone praises Apple for privacy, anywhere on the internet, there will be a tidal wave of peopl…
This I think is a bit of HN myopia. I've talked around and nobody I know is even aware of this, when I brought it up, they didn't care about the issue. It's not news in the commons, it's not on CNN, Fox or MSNBC right now as a headline. It's one of those tertiary concerns that frustrates some groups, but most people are not aware and would only marginally maligned, and a good 2/3 of people really don't care. I suspec…
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#145And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…
I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. Every single other company is riding a post-covid tidal wave of sales. as WFH becomes a reality for so many workers, apple products are positioned to really take center stage for a massive segment of consumers... and then this. Apple intentionally injects uncertainty and controversy? what were they thinking?? sure its just phones right now but im sure mac u…
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#146And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…
I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. Every single other company is riding a post-covid tidal wave of sales. as WFH becomes a reality for so many workers, apple products are positioned to really take center stage for a massive segment of consumers... and then this. Apple intentionally injects uncertainty and controversy? what were they thinking?? sure its just phones right now but im sure mac u…
Purism addressed it yesterday[1]. Here's the HN thread[2].
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a very ill-considered argument, because Apple obviously already has the capability of pushing literally any conceivable software update to iPhones. Apple (and thus iPhones) already have the capability to do anything you can conceive of, regardless of how terrible. For instance, iPhones have the capability of activating the cameras at all times, detecting when they capture compromising or embarrassing video, and…
That isn't the argument at all. What Apple can't have happen without major reputational damage is get caught doing it without telling its customers. Thus this is seen as a marketing backdoor to the actual backdoor. This is seen as a ploy that later gives Apple the plausible deniability argument that the government is making them do it (other forms of content) even though they created the means (on device scanning) fo…
Any sane marketing person would try to find a way to sugarcoat it first.
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#148It's the practical scenarios where people in the United States have previously been indicted and their lives ruined over "child pornography" or "statutory rape" that stretches the definition to the breaking point. Young men just barely 18 years old have gone to jail because they have taken pictures of their technically under-aged girlfriends. Often their real crime is that they've simply upset someone rich and powerful, or that they were guilty of being black and dating a blonde white girl. I wish I was being facetious, but this happens all the time.
More importantly, in this digital age, many stupid teenagers upload nude pictures of their under-aged girlfriends to the Internet. Sometimes as revenge for the girl breaking up with them, sometimes because they "hacked" a girl's account and downloaded their selfies, or they legitimately have the photos and just wanted those sweet internet karma points.
Imageboards like 4chan are full of what is technically CP, even though nobody was directly harmed in its creation. Other stupid teenagers download these photos, as do older paedophiles that trawl these websites looking for CP. Some of them will share it with other paedophiles, internationally even.
So what happens if one of these paedophiles gets arrested for a serious child sex crime? Their PCs and their phones will be searched, and the pictures will end up on the CP hash database, of course. Even with this "multiple nations" requirement, that just requires two arrests for the hash to be added. Nothing really changed, there's just a delay.
Now what will happen to the stupid teenagers that downloaded the same photo? Teenagers that aren't child molesters! Teenagers that aren't paedophiles!
Apple will probably say: No worries, we filter out the phones belonging to under-aged children from the results.
... until they turn 18.
Get it? This is a legal landmine in the pocket of every stupid kid. YOUR stupid kid, that looks at porn on the internet, just like every other stupid kid.
This is just one scenario where this could lead to a false positive that totally and irrevocably destroys someone's life. I can think of several more, and dozens once you start adding the political pressure from various other nations.
There is just no way to make this kind of dragnet surveillance safe. Even a tiny false positive rate is unacceptable when there are hundreds of millions of people playing this distopian lottery.
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#149And I would also like to get some real numbers about children abuse cases compared to drugs/domestic/gangs/organized/etc. crimes. In other words, how much they impact the society. Wanna bet that in the world there are for example a lot more normal citizens abused by the police every day than old men wanking to a kid picture? When will come the scanning of cops iPhones to catch the "bad apples"?
I'm very serious. Child abuse is a cancer and must be stopped, but if they're employing all that technology for this and not for that, well, dear Apple, I want to see some numbers that would justify the choice.
And don't reply "even saving only one child is worth ... yadda yadda yadda" You know what I mean.
Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
#150And... Apple misses the point of the criticism completely. This problem is the capability, not what it's used for. Any such capability will be abused by new use cases be it terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking or whatever. Plus there will inevitably be unauthorized access. The only way to prevent all this is for the system not to exist. I don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on a…
Comments like this make me wonder how in touch HN is with the average person because I genuinely don't believe most people care or even know that this is happening. I may be wrong but Apple could've pretended this backlash doesn't exist and did nothing about it and they would lose nothing for it.