Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning • Hacker News Board

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#11

Post by inetknght » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #6

aidenn0 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't like client-side scanning, that's overly reductive. "Client side scanning" (both in general, and in the recent Apple kerfuffle) is talking about a network client, that will be talking to servers that are owned by "them." If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server then to enforce that right, the only two choices are to disallow E2EE or to perform client-side scanning. Really client…

Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled.

> Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled.

I have an iPhone. The Photos app keeps telling me that it's unable to upload things to iCloud because my account is full.

I never turned it on. I never intended to upload any photos to the cloud.

I haven't signed into my iCloud account for years because I don't use it. Nonetheless, iCloud has a magical way of uploading things to something that I've literally never used.

Next you'll be arguing that people using Windows should have simply turned off online logins if they didn't want their Windows computer to phone home. Bullshit, Microsoft shoves that shit down people's throats.

So your statement of "you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well" is ludicrous. That's deliberately burying your head into he sand against the fact that big business sets defaults to settings that users often have no idea were set or are buried behind huge warnings against turning them off.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#12

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #11

dylan604 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled.

> Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled. I have an iPhone. The Photos app keeps telling me that it's unable to upload things to iCloud because my account is full. I never turned it on. I never intended to upload any photos to the cloud. I haven't signed into my iCloud account…

I've had an iDevice since 2007. I've never signed up for the paid iCloud. I get the standard 5GB plan that all Apple accounts receive. I have never accidentally uploaded a photo to it. I have never enabled it. I don't understand how your situation happens as it has never happened to me. It makes no sense other than someone (maybe you forgot, a significant other, a kid) played around with some settings? There's no other explanation that makes sense to me.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#13

Post by Shish2k » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #8

aidenn0 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't like client-side scanning, that's overly reductive. "Client side scanning" (both in general, and in the recent Apple kerfuffle) is talking about a network client, that will be talking to servers that are owned by "them." If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server then to enforce that right, the only two choices are to disallow E2EE or to perform client-side scanning. Really client…

> If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server The whole point of end-to-end encryption is that what is stored on their server is statistically uniform binary white noise. If they wish to enforce that, there are a plethora of server-side tools (like the Diehard test suite) with which to do so.

You are completely correct from a computer science perspective - unfortunately, this is not a computer science discussion. As far as the FBI are concerned, “storing encrypted child porn on behalf of people with the keys to decrypt it” still counts as “storing child porn”.

You can disagree with that (and there are many good reasons to do so) - but “it’s encrypted so it’s fine” isn’t going to convince anybody who matters.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#14

Post by inetknght » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #12

inetknght wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled. I have an iPhone. The Photos app keeps telling me that it's unable to upload things to iCloud because my account is full. I never turned it on. I never intended to upload any photos to the cloud. I haven't signed into my iCloud account…

I've had an iDevice since 2007. I've never signed up for the paid iCloud. I get the standard 5GB plan that all Apple accounts receive. I have never accidentally uploaded a photo to it. I have never enabled it. I don't understand how your situation happens as it has never happened to me. It makes no sense other than someone (maybe you forgot, a significant other, a kid) played around with some settings? There's no oth…

There's nothing better than knowing everything and never having to play around with settings to discover what they do, never forgetting what you've set your settings to, and not having children, family members, or friends do the same. There's no way any reasonable person could ever have their uploads accidentally turned on without their full knowledge and consent so that definitely invalidates any reason to argue against the idea that client-side scanning is unreasonable because it only happens to things that you wanted to upload anyway.

There's definitely no way a new version could patch your system and turn something on without your knowledge. No, there's absolutely never been a situation where some new setting has shown up and you didn't know what it does or inspected what it was set to by default. And there's absolutely no way you could have restored a backup and not had all of your settings transfer over correctly. No, there's no way you'll ever turn the setting on and forget that it's on when you plug your device into some network. And you know you will never be the victim of any malicious activity that could screw you over in some way. You've never had some app automatically connect to something that you didn't know it could even connect to. You'll never have someone else pick up your phone and take random pictures or recordings that you don't know about because those would never get automatically uploaded because, of course, you didn't turn on that setting for yourself. You'll never have to worry about your battery going low because you turned on automatic uploads and not only did your upload happen but your device also scanned your uploads too. You never use your phone for work because your work definitely pays for a new device for you to use for work.

Gosh it sure is weird hat so many people don't want client-side scanning. Scanning your device before uploading anything is just a very reasonable thing to do.

/s

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#15

Post by haswell » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #12

inetknght wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled. I have an iPhone. The Photos app keeps telling me that it's unable to upload things to iCloud because my account is full. I never turned it on. I never intended to upload any photos to the cloud. I haven't signed into my iCloud account…

I've had an iDevice since 2007. I've never signed up for the paid iCloud. I get the standard 5GB plan that all Apple accounts receive. I have never accidentally uploaded a photo to it. I have never enabled it. I don't understand how your situation happens as it has never happened to me. It makes no sense other than someone (maybe you forgot, a significant other, a kid) played around with some settings? There's no oth…

> since 2007

I'm speculating here, but I wonder if part of your experience is based on the fact that you're a long time user. Features like auto-uploading to Photo Library are new, and Apple is generally decent about informing you of new features before opting in.

Brand new account setups are a different story. You're encouraged to use all of the latest/greatest stuff (and why not, current topic notwithstanding?).

Bottom line: it's extremely easy for an average user to start uploading their stuff without really realizing it.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#16

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #9

aidenn0 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't like client-side scanning, that's overly reductive. "Client side scanning" (both in general, and in the recent Apple kerfuffle) is talking about a network client, that will be talking to servers that are owned by "them." If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server then to enforce that right, the only two choices are to disallow E2EE or to perform client-side scanning. Really client…

But none of these conundrums could exist if Apple had no access to the user's device, nor control over the software running on it. "Who owns your computer" is still the central question; we're just Sapir-Whorfing ourselves around it within the implicit language of walled gardens. "Apple owns your computer" is the unspoken premise, and it's not axiomatic. Stallman was very, very right.

There's a huge tangle of things with "Apple owns your computer" but I don't think most of it applies to the icloud question.

If you wanted to store photos in icloud on a Windows machine, you'd be using the Apple icloud client. Apple has at least some control over what software they write and ship does[1]. They can break 3rd party clients almost at will, so if they choose to be hostile to 3rd party clients that control is fairly strong.

Arguing over what amount of control Apple should exercise over what software runs on a device purchased by a consumer is mostly orthogonal to arguing over what amount of control Apple should exercise over what software can connect to their servers.

1: On a general purpose machine, debuggers and emulators can influence what software does, obviously, so the control isn't absolute.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#17

Post by mulmen » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

Shish2k wrote: post #13

a1369209993 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server The whole point of end-to-end encryption is that what is stored on their server is statistically uniform binary white noise. If they wish to enforce that, there are a plethora of server-side tools (like the Diehard test suite) with which to do so.

You are completely correct from a computer science perspective - unfortunately, this is not a computer science discussion. As far as the FBI are concerned, “storing encrypted child porn on behalf of people with the keys to decrypt it” still counts as “storing child porn”. You can disagree with that (and there are many good reasons to do so) - but “it’s encrypted so it’s fine” isn’t going to convince anybody who matte…

This is the part where we need laws to protect privacy. This is arguably an overreach by the FBI in the first place and if it is legal it shouldn’t be.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#18

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #11

dylan604 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled.

> Client side scanning of inappropriate pictures is of content you'd ordinarily be sending them as anyways as well. The proposal was only to do this if cloud services were/are enabled. I have an iPhone. The Photos app keeps telling me that it's unable to upload things to iCloud because my account is full. I never turned it on. I never intended to upload any photos to the cloud. I haven't signed into my iCloud account…

Bullshit, Microsoft shoves that shit down people's throats.

As an example of this, I never once opted into any kind of data sharing, set telemetry to the lowest allowed setting, and don't remember ever signing into a system-wide Microsoft account, yet when I eventually discovered deeply hidden privacy options I found that my MS account had a log of every single application I had ever used on my W10 laptop.

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#19

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

Shish2k wrote: post #13

a1369209993 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they wish to enforce rules over what is stored on their server The whole point of end-to-end encryption is that what is stored on their server is statistically uniform binary white noise. If they wish to enforce that, there are a plethora of server-side tools (like the Diehard test suite) with which to do so.

You are completely correct from a computer science perspective - unfortunately, this is not a computer science discussion. As far as the FBI are concerned, “storing encrypted child porn on behalf of people with the keys to decrypt it” still counts as “storing child porn”. You can disagree with that (and there are many good reasons to do so) - but “it’s encrypted so it’s fine” isn’t going to convince anybody who matte…

It's not even the just FBI; if the majority of your competitors claim to prevent child-porn from being stored on their servers and you don't, the reputational damage is real. Apple doesn't want to be the "Child Porn friendly cloud service."

Re: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning

#20

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #15

dylan604 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had an iDevice since 2007. I've never signed up for the paid iCloud. I get the standard 5GB plan that all Apple accounts receive. I have never accidentally uploaded a photo to it. I have never enabled it. I don't understand how your situation happens as it has never happened to me. It makes no sense other than someone (maybe you forgot, a significant other, a kid) played around with some settings? There's no oth…

> since 2007 I'm speculating here, but I wonder if part of your experience is based on the fact that you're a long time user. Features like auto-uploading to Photo Library are new, and Apple is generally decent about informing you of new features before opting in. Brand new account setups are a different story. You're encouraged to use all of the latest/greatest stuff (and why not, current topic notwithstanding?). Bo…

Maybe. I'm very anti-cloud from the first moments I ever heard of it and saw the first puffy shapes in slide decks. I don't trust it. It's not in my control and I don't know who does control it. That scares the bejeebus out of me.

I'm not the unsuspecting dupe that devs are targeting to get a new user tricked into something. I'm very much aware of the shenanigans devs try and pay attention to that shit from the go.

Having said that, I do read the crap and choose no where necessary. People just haphazardly pressing okay to get to new shiny almost deserve whatever they've agreed to. I say almost because these dialogs can be worded like "Vote No for Yes" kind of BS.

If you're one of the asshat devs FUCK YOU for making this a thing we even have to discuss in the first place. Edit: Royal You Devs