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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

#161

Post by PartiallyTyped »

CompuHacker wrote: post #143
650 wrote: post #136

With all the news of CSAM going to be scanned on iPhones, which people are even going to keep such content on iPhones anymore? The news of this has been so prominent in the media, people not even in tech have heard about it plenty. If you are a Person of Interest that consumes/distributes such content and are a tad aware of the news, you aren't going to use iPhones/iCloud storage anymore.

Apple will then have a list of all the people who have an iDevice but disabled iCloud in August, 2021.

And how does that relate to CSAM? Are we going to start from the premise that everyone is guilty of something?

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

#162

Post by unityByFreedom »

GuB-42 wrote: post #117
simondotau wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I consider myself the "end user" of my child's device, not my child. That I might be looped in on any messages sent or received by this device is not at all a leak, it's a convenience—much like how I can receive messages sent to me on my phone and my laptop.

When someone sends a message to your child, the message is for your child, not for you. Your child is the "end point" and you are an evesdropper. This is a case where I think it is justified, as long as your child is a minor and you are his legal guardian. But as acceptable as it is, you are still a spy and the app is spyware. The fears, justified or not, is that the same feature that can be used for parental control…

Im a parent of young ones and I wouldn't want control of my kids' devices or messages. Good parenting is about preparing your kid for the world, not jumping in whenever there is a fire. Frankly I find this attitude very creepy. At what age do you "turn off" access? If you can't handle your kid being online then don't pay for their device or phone plan.

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

#163

Post by azinman2 »

noptd wrote: post #157
dwaite wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. all scan photos which are cloud hosted for CSAM. Apple's new system scans only photos which are cloud hosted for CSAM. This would be the source of the inconsistency - that the code to do scanning is on the client side of the uploader rather than the server side of the uploader does not change any abuse scenarios, but exclusively serves "slippery slope" arguments of full on-d…

>does not change any abuse scenarios It absolutely does. When the scanning is server-side, companies can only scan the files you choose to send to their servers but with a client-side system in place, all it takes is a change in company policy and a few simple directory config changes to result in ANY file on your device being scanned. Slippery slope or not, the client-side system massively lowers the bar for abuse a…

Except it's only occurring while simultaneously uploading to iCloud. The hash is metadata that goes along with it.

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

nullc wrote: post #70
tzs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's trivial. If the attacker can get one image onto your device they can get several. At which point everything you brought up about attacks on the hash function is completely irrelevant because the attacker can put actual child porn from the database on your device.

The apple system is a dangerous surveillance apparatus at many levels. The fact that I pointed out one element was broken in a post doesn't mean that I don't consider others broken. My primary concern about its ethics has always been the breach of your devices obligation to act faithfully as your agent. My secondary concern was the use of strong cryptography to protect Apple and its sources from accountability. Unfor…

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by azalemeth »

odessacubbage wrote: post #160
simondotau wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as acceptable as it is, you are still a spy and the app is spyware. I vehemently disagree that a feature could be classed as spyware if it clearly and unambiguously declares exactly what it's going to do prior offering a choice whether or not to do it. By that logic, the mere presence of a "report phishing" button in any cloud email service would be sufficient to declare it as spyware. But fine, whatever. You'r…

once given a device, a child's technical literacy will quickly surpass that of their guardian and as such, any form of 'protection' will be just as quickly circumvented. there is no technological panacea that will keep your child safe because that is not how predation happens in the real world.

I can't agree with this more. As a child, my technology skills were several orders of magnitude greater than my parents -- and the horrible spyware the school installed on its computers was a red rag saying "crack me" to a rapidly growing bull. These measures, arguably well-intentioned though they are, fundamentally teach kids that they don't own their devices and it's okay to spy on people. Good parenting is fundamentally different from that.

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

#166

Post by mijamo »

simondotau wrote: post #125
GuB-42 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone sends a message to your child, the message is for your child, not for you. Your child is the "end point" and you are an evesdropper. This is a case where I think it is justified, as long as your child is a minor and you are his legal guardian. But as acceptable as it is, you are still a spy and the app is spyware. The fears, justified or not, is that the same feature that can be used for parental control…

> But as acceptable as it is, you are still a spy and the app is spyware. I vehemently disagree that a feature could be classed as spyware if it clearly and unambiguously declares exactly what it's going to do prior offering a choice whether or not to do it. By that logic, the mere presence of a "report phishing" button in any cloud email service would be sufficient to declare it as spyware. But fine, whatever. You'r…

I would have you know that in some countries this would be illegal. A child has a right to private conversation just like any other person in many law systems.

And yes it is obviously a spyware.

The report phishing analogy is also completely wrong because it does not include any surveillance. You report the phishing and send the message to some authority. It is the same as going to the police after receiving a threatening mail, whereas the spyware is like the postal service opening each of your letters.

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

#167

Post by mijamo »

slownews45 wrote: post #153
GuB-42 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one who pays doesn't matter. Unchecked and applied to adults that line of thinking gives right to terrible things, including slavery. Children are a different story, they are not free, they are under the control and responsibility of their legal guardians. In fact, the status of a child and the status of a slave are not so different, that's why there are very strict laws regarding child labor, because otherwise i…

This is just such a crazy position. If I buy a car it doesn't matter that I own it? If I rent it to you I can't set the terms of that rental? This is just nuts from the EFF.

You have the fructus but no longer the usus and associated rights. If you own an apartment it does not give you a right to set up webcams to look at the tenants.

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

#168

Post by Grustaf »

sennight wrote: post #78
Grustaf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of that? If you don't trust Apple, why would you use Photos.app in the first place? They already have 100% control over that, and can spy as much as they want to. No need to go by way of the CSAM database, that would be absurd.

I've never been a customer of Apple but I'll try and imagine the experience... I might trust them to assemble hardware and write software for my consumer needs - but that doesn't mean I trust them to competently reason about me potentially being a pedo. That is only a small part of a much larger point, but it is reason enough alone.

My point is that people seem to think that this feature somehow makes it easier for Apple to spy on you.

In fact it doesn’t make any difference at all, since they already have full access to everything you do on the phone, so if you don’t trust them you shouldn’t use an iphone.

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

#169

Post by nullc »

dwaite wrote: post #147
nullc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every step you've described is unfalsifyable: You just have to blindly trust that Apple is doing these things, and that e.g. authoritarian regemes haven't compromised Apple staff with access to the data. > They have to come from the intersection of two databases from two jurisdictions. My message directly answered that. A state actor can modify an apparent childporn image to match an arbitrarily hash and hand that im…

> Every step you've described is unfalsifyable: You just have to blindly trust that Apple is doing these things, and that e.g. authoritarian regemes haven't compromised Apple staff with access to the data. So third party auditors as well?

Better than not, but how much can you trust the word of a third party auditor in a world where government intelligence agencies conspire to spy on each other's citizens because their laws expressly prohibit on spying on their own... where the (one time) worlds largest supplier of cryptographic hardware was covertly owned by the CIA and shipped backdoored units for decades, where our national standards bodies make standard backdoored random number generators, and where the US government used a sham vaccination campaign to collect genetic samples from a whole community in order to locate and assassinate a single terrorist.

When it comes to keeping data private we face adversaries whos only rules seem to be what they can get away with. Against that, full transparency when it comes to the construction of our security infrastructure really needs to be the starting position.

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

#170

Post by LocalH »

simondotau wrote: post #66
GuB-42 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a parent, I consider myself the "end user" of my child's device, not my child. That I might be looped in on any messages sent or received by this device is not at all a leak, it's a convenience—much like how I can receive messages sent to me on my phone and my laptop.

It's very creepy that you want to eavesdrop on your child in that way, in my opinion. This is the micro version of governments wanting ubiquitous surveillance.
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