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After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

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Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#191
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until the September event. Apple’s media attention quadruples during that time. “Apple creates authoritarian government wet dream” will be the main narrative coming out of the iPhone event. Not the new phone. And investors will not be happy.

I doubt that. I mentioned it to a non-tech person today. They hadn’t seen the news, and their first instinct was to empathize with the Apple executives having to confront that their products are enabling pedophiles.

hearin the number of CSAM reports apple made (265) vs facebook (10 million) changed my perspective. i don't like it but they are going to have to start scanning icloud photos sometime

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#192
post #176
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>I just have to wonder who green-lit this idea to begin with. I suspect, with no inside knowledge, that there's someone high up in Apple who feels very, very passionately about child abuse/these sorts of images due to some personal connection, and they are championing the idea internally. And tbh not the worst bugbear to have, but obviously this isn't the way to address it. As for why the big players aren't jumping…

Having read the coverage and the documents that Apple has been putting out to manage the … what, crisis? Backlash? … I’ve been thinking about the design of the system and how I would want CSAM to be detected, if different than this.

Honestly, I’m pretty impressed by what this approach accomplishes. Your comment says this obviously isn’t the way to do it— what’s better than this?

In a legal context where detecting CSAM is a strong requirement, what’s preferable to this approach?

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#193
post #28

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…

Sooner, rather than later, I think adding this to all devices will be mandated, by law. Apple can intend to do only good things with this, but governments can bend and twist things very easily so that a beneficial idea becomes dystopian. Regardless of intention, Apple still has to answer to government, not the other way around.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t use iCloud photos

You need to read what they are doing. It's on-device scanning. You have no privacy or choice. May as well have a Facebook Phone.

You need to read what they are doing. Yes it is on device But it is only done to photos uploaded to the cloud.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t use iCloud photos

This is as unhelpful as saying "don't have CSAM on your phone." As has been reiterated many times, the problem is not the capability it is claimed to start off with, it is how the capability will be evolved, abused, and exploited as time goes on.

I mean, don’t do that either, but the venn diagram circles of those two statements are not identical.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#196
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait until /child-safety 404s or redirects to /safety and there's a wall of marketing blurb (possibly only in Chinese at first) that explains how 'national security' concerns are reported to the CCP. This has totally pushed me over the edge, though I'll admit I was oblivious to begin with. My plan is to replace the MacBooks with a Thinkpad P15 gen 2 running Ubuntu and replace the iPhone with something running…

I might be reading between the lines here, but you know that Thinkpads are made in China, by a Chinese company, Lenovo.

Dell XPS 13's are better than MBP anyway.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#197
If they cared about privacy so much, why wouldn't they just alert you and block you from uploading in the first place?

By this becoming such a hot topic, I think this will push the activity to more underground.

I bet most people didn't even know that other cloud companies did search for CP.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#199
post #28

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…

> 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. Apple even says it themselves[1]: > This program is ambitious, and protecting children is an important responsibility. These efforts will evolve and expand over time. [1] https://www.apple.com/…

I'm pretty sure all cloud storage providers have good idea about who has what pirated content already.

Re: After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

#200
post #28

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 don't buy into theories that Apple is being pressured or coerced on any of this.

Of course they were.

It’s well known that Apple chose not to introduce e2e encrypted iCloud backups back i 2017/18 or so, due to FBI complaints.[1]

This is clearly Apple’s play to be able to introduce that again and tell law enforcement “Look, we ‘thought of the children’, if you want further access to our customers data, you’re going to need to come up with a better justification than that.”

If Apple pull that off, adopting client side image scanning with this quite impressive privacy preserving system behind it, and then e2e encrypt everything they upload to iCloud, that’d arguably be a very big win for Apple customers privacy.

Whether that’s an acceptable trade off for having a device I purchased run code I didn’t ask for and don’t want to monitor where or not I’m a paedophile, possibly snitching on me for false positives or bad-faith additions of non CSAM hashes into the database, or not is a good question still.

1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

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