141–150 of 393 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious, does any technological system used widely, standup to the threat levels you mentioned?
Probably not. Does any technological system used widely justify itself by saying "it would take two national jurisdictions cooperating to break this?"
In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…
> there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument The slippery slope argument is the only useful argument here. The fundamental issue with their PSI/CSAM system is that they already were scanning iCloud content [1] and that they're seemingly not removing the ability to do that. If the PSI/CSAM system had been announced along side E2E encryption for iCloud backups, it would be clear that they were attempting to act in…
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...
> This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake.
- Tim Cook, Apple
At what point does the fact that half a decade has passed since those words were written yet the hacker community has made little contribution to that discourse about the importance of privacy start implicating us in the collective failure to act?
I don’t like the idea of stuff running on my device, consuming my battery and data, when the only point is to see if I am doing something wrong? An analogy I can come up with is: the government hires people to visit your house every day, and while they’re there they need your resources (say, food, water, and electricity). In other words, they use up some of the stuff you would otherwise be able to use only for yourse…
In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…
>> Our system involves both an on-device component where the voucher is created, but nothing is learned, and a server-side component, which is where that voucher is sent along with data coming to Apple service and processed across the account to learn if there are collections of illegal CSAM. That means that it is a service feature.
The first paragraph does not follow from the detail in the second at all. Setting aside how abstract the language is, what about adding more complexity to the system is preventing Apple from scanning other content?
This is all a misdirect: they're saying "look at how complex this system is!" and pretending that, particularly when they built and control the entire system including it's existence, that any of that makes changing how it operates "difficult".
I think this is the first time they have mentioned that you will be able to compare the hash of the database on your device with a hash published in their KB article. They also detailed that the database is only the intersection of hash lists from two child safety organizations under separate governmental jurisdictions. My immediate thought is that this could still be poisoned by Five Eyes participants, and that it d…
the opportunity being to add general functions in photo viewing apps that add a little entropy to every image (for this specific purpose), to rotate hashes, rendering the dual databases useless monetization I guess being to hope for subscribers on github, as this could likely just be a nested dependency that many apps import. a convenient app for this specific purpose might not last long in app stores.
In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…
> It was illegal to export "strong encryption" for many years, remember? I've seen multiple reports that European lawmakers are planning to require some kind of scanning for CSAM. If this goes into effect, technology isn't going to block those laws for you. Your Purism phone will either be forced to comply or be illegal. The point is that with a Purism phone or custom ROM on my Android phone, I could disable these "l…
But if we assume a government is determined to do this, can't they find other ways to do it? If you were using Google Photos with your Purism phone, it doesn't matter what you do on your device. And you can say "well, I wouldn't use that," but maybe your ISP is convinced (or required) to do packet inspection. And then you can say, "But I'm using encryption," and the government mandates that they have a back door into all encrypted traffic that goes through their borders.
And I would submit that if we really assume a government is going to extreme lengths, then they'll make it as hard as possible to use an open phone in the first place. They'll make custom ROMs illegal. They'll go after people hosting it. They'll mandate that the phones comply with some kind of decryption standard to connect to cellular data networks. If we assume an authoritarian government bound and determined to spy on you, the assumption that we can be saved by just applying enough open source just seems pretty shaky to me.
So, I certainly don't think that a purely technological solution is enough, in the long run. This is a policy issue. I think hackers and engineers really, really want to believe that math trumps policy, but it doesn't. By all means, let's fight for strong encryption -- but let's also fight for government policy that supports it, rather than assuming encryption and open source is a guarantee we can circumvent bad policy.
> Apple generates the on-device perceptual CSAM hash database through an intersection of hashes provided by at least two child safety organizations operating in separate sovereign jurisdictions – that is, not under the control of the same government. Any perceptual hashes appearing in only one participating child safety organization’s database, or only in databases from multiple agencies in a single sovereign jurisdi…
They’re totally separate we promise.
In other HN comments on this subject I've (hopefully) made it clear that I'm not really in favor of this project of Apple's, and that there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument to be made here. So I hope people will entertain a contrarian question without downvoting me into oblivion. :) Here's the thing I keep circling around: assume that bad actors, government or otherwise, want to target political dissidents us…
What Neuenschwander said doesn't establish it isn't just an arbitrary limitation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
Where the hashes get checked is relevant to the policy problem of what
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there's a legitimate "slippery slope" argument The slippery slope argument is the only useful argument here. The fundamental issue with their PSI/CSAM system is that they already were scanning iCloud content [1] and that they're seemingly not removing the ability to do that. If the PSI/CSAM system had been announced along side E2E encryption for iCloud backups, it would be clear that they were attempting to act in…
> This is an area we’ve been looking at for some time, including current state of the art techniques which mostly involves scanning through entire contents of users’ libraries on cloud services that — as you point out — isn’t something that we’ve ever done; to look through users’ iCloud Photos. https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p... > This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our c…
That’s not my area of expertise and don’t know how to fix that, but that should be an important consideration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, exactly why Apple breaching user trust matters.
And how is telling you in great detail about what they’re planning to do months before they do it and giving you a way to opt out in advance a breach of trust? What more did you expect from them?
Well they could not do it.