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EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

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Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#91
here is a quote from EFF complaint about Apple alerting parents to kids under 13 being sent porn:

"The recipient’s parents will be informed of the content without the sender consenting to their involvement."

Are parents really outraged by this? Are people sending porn upset about this?

My own view is as a parent if you send porn to my kids, I shouldn't NEED your consent to be alerted to this. I paid for the device, so it should do what I want, and if I turn this feature on than it should alert me.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#92

> As we’ve explained in Deeplinks blog posts, Apple’s planned phone-scanning system opens the door to broader abuses. It decreases privacy for all iCloud photo users, and the parental notification system is a shift away from strong end-to-end encryption. It will tempt liberal democratic regimes to increase surveillance, and likely bring even great pressures from regimes that already have online censorship ensconced i…

"it just gives an additional parental control in addition to the many numerous parental controls (with them kids have no privacy already)"

Wait, sending data (of matching CP hashes) to law enforcement is parental control?

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#93
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but that is a feature of this particular problem. For example, I see a lot of people who are simply wrong about how the hash matching works. One way to be wrong is to think it’s a cryptographic hash. Another way to be wrong is to think it’s just a perceptual hash match. The problem is that these are both not crazy. The actual solution is far more complex and non-obvious than most people would suspect. I thin…

Apple have been pretty clear that a human will review things. That is (I hope) a feature of any system that leads to child porn charges. If not it should be - AI gets things wrong and can be tricked (as can humans but in different ways usually). But agreed, the technical bits may not be obvious (though apple released I thought a pretty darn complete paper on how it all works).

Sure - but who wants a human reviewing their private photos? I don’t.

Unless you understand the technical bits you have know way of knowing how rarely this is likely to happen in practice.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#94
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’d have to not only have over 30 hash collisions That's trivial. If the attacker can get one image onto your device they can get several. It's very easy to construct preimages for Apple's neural hash function, including fairly good looking ones (e.g. https://github.com/AsuharietYgvar/AppleNeuralHash2ONNX/issue... ) > collide with another secret hash function The supposed other 'secret' hash function cannot be se…

If this really was such a problem, then as I said, we’d have been getting reports of this over the past 10+ years it’s already been in place at big cloud providers. So where is all of this ruining of peoples lives by uploading CP on their devices? Also if you’re a gov actor trying to frame someone, why bother with a pre-image when you could put the real images on it? None of that is new today — all that’s new is Appl…

> So where is all of this ruining of peoples lives by uploading CP on their devices?

It's already happening. Except we just choose to SWAT people instead, since it's faster, easier, and there's effectively no liability on the behalf of the caller.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#95

> As we’ve explained in Deeplinks blog posts, Apple’s planned phone-scanning system opens the door to broader abuses. It decreases privacy for all iCloud photo users, and the parental notification system is a shift away from strong end-to-end encryption. It will tempt liberal democratic regimes to increase surveillance, and likely bring even great pressures from regimes that already have online censorship ensconced i…

> (though that could easily be the same even without all these CSAM measures.. not a new threat) Apple has historically avoided being pressured by governments to allow this kind of surveillance by arguing they can't be forced to create functionality that doesn't exist, or hand over information they don't have. It's the argument they made in the San Bernadino case. If they release this, it'll be much harder to avoid g…

Not really.

Apple simply tells the DOJ if any non-CSAM content is added surreptitiously to the DB, Apple will drop CSAM scanning. Also, if DOJ makes any request to scan for non CSAM by court order or warrant, Apple will in kind drop support for the technology.

Apple is making the good faith effort here. If DOJ makes a bad faith effort, Apple is in now way required to continue to participate.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that isn’t true. This is only photos uploaded to iCloud.

Why would you lie about something so easily disproven? "Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching..." https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

It is not a lie. The scanning is done on device, but photos are not scanned unless they are going to be uploaded to iCloud. Apple has explicitly stated this.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#97
post #48
post #18

> [...] and the parental notification system is a shift away from strong end-to-end encryption. That particular statement doesn't make much sense to me. The parental notification system is just a frontend action (one of many, like link previews and such). What does that have to do with iMessage's encryption? I can see an argument about a shift away from privacy (though it only pertains to minors under 13 receiving se…

It is not about the encryption, it is about what an "end" is. Generally, we consider the "end" to be the end user. If someone else can see the message along the way, it is not end to end anymore from a user perspective, even if it is from a network perspective. And Apple has complete control over your device through software updates. So that the leak is from your device or from the network is a mostly meaningless tec…

But the message isn't being sent anywhere. The parental notification stuff doesn't do that.

And obviously both the sender and receiver software processes the unencrypted messages in a variety of ways.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five Eyes

You are suggesting that another country could launder the request on behalf of the USA in order to circumvent the 4th Amendment. Okay then, let's play that out. Australia contacts Apple and demands they augment CSAM detection so that every iPhone in the USA is now scanning for image hashes supplied by Australia. Apple says no. End of hypothetical.

You haven't heard of how GCHQ would happily hand over intelligence they had on U.S. Citizens?

I know for a fact there are efforts at creating fusion centers across national boundaries. The question you need to ask is not if but what will make you interesting enough to mobilize against.

Thou shalt not build the effing Panopticon, nor it's predecessors. Is that so hard to not do.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#99

here is a quote from EFF complaint about Apple alerting parents to kids under 13 being sent porn: "The recipient’s parents will be informed of the content without the sender consenting to their involvement." Are parents really outraged by this? Are people sending porn upset about this? My own view is as a parent if you send porn to my kids, I shouldn't NEED your consent to be alerted to this. I paid for the device, s…

For ideological consistency, I can only hope the EFF has a lecture prepared about two party consent for kids who show their phones to their parents if they receive a dick pic.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#100

After the EFF lied about the system in the first place, does anyone care what they’re asking for now? What they’re really asking for is donations.

What did the EFF lie about? Missed that…

2/3rds of their original letter was spent describing a parental control over sensitive content detection in iMessage as an end to end encryption back door. At best, that is highly cynical. At worst, it is an intentional conflation of different features to raise false alarm.
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