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How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

eclecticlight.co

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Re: How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

#31

Post by dessant »

jchw wrote: post #4

Based on the article, I’d expect Apple was retooling their CSAM scanner to try to catch art thieves. Jokes aside, I would like to use this opportunity to express something I really want: I really wish I could search Wayback Machine with perceptual hashes. Google Images has had search by image for a long time, but it seems to get rid of content after a while once it’s offline. Meanwhile, Internet Archive has a ton of…

Internet Archive has an experimental API to perform reverse image searches.

https://archive.readme.io/docs/reverse-image-search-api

There is also RootAbout: http://rootabout.com/

You may have a better chance of finding the image by searching on a couple dozen search engines using my extension.

https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image#readme

Re: How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

#32

Post by Someone »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #30
Someone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The false positive rate has to be a lot lower for this to work. If it is 1/1000, it is only 1/1,000,000,000 if they have only 3 of images from a customer. They typically have thousands, though. A 1:1000 false positive rate would mean several ones in many iCloud photo databases. On the plus side, in case of multiple hits, they would have a human look at the images. The whole thing was intended as a way to make that hu…

They wouldn't have a human look at it. They don't have the images, only the hashes–that's the point. And it's somewhat irrelevant how the probability of collisions is specifically calulated (1/1000 already assumed 1:n comparisons), as long as we agree it's easy to calculate for a given user. The algorithm does know about the sizes of the respective image libraries, for example, and could adjust the threshold with pre…

They don’t have the images, but they do have “visual derivatives”. https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...:

“The device creates a cryptographic safety voucher that encodes the match result. It also encrypts the image’s NeuralHash and a visual derivative. This voucher is uploaded to iCloud Photos along with the image.

[…]

Once more than a threshold number of matches has occurred, Apple has enough shares that the server can combine the shares it has retrieved, and reconstruct the decryption key for the ciphertexts it has collected, thereby revealing the NeuralHash and visual derivative for the known CSAM matches.”

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model... is even clearer:

“The decrypted vouchers allow Apple servers to access a visual derivative – such as a low-resolution version – of each matching image.

These visual derivatives are then examined by human reviewers”

Re: How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

#33

Post by jchw »

dessant wrote: post #31
jchw wrote: post #4

Based on the article, I’d expect Apple was retooling their CSAM scanner to try to catch art thieves. Jokes aside, I would like to use this opportunity to express something I really want: I really wish I could search Wayback Machine with perceptual hashes. Google Images has had search by image for a long time, but it seems to get rid of content after a while once it’s offline. Meanwhile, Internet Archive has a ton of…

Internet Archive has an experimental API to perform reverse image searches. https://archive.readme.io/docs/reverse-image-search-api There is also RootAbout: http://rootabout.com/ You may have a better chance of finding the image by searching on a couple dozen search engines using my extension. https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image#readme

Thanks, this is awesome stuff. I’ll have to give it a shot sometime.

I’m also seeing a full text search API, which is again, incredible, especially if these indices are relatively complete.

Re: How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

#34

Post by GekkePrutser »

KarlKemp wrote: post #23
GekkePrutser wrote: post #20

I have mixed feelings about this.. It sounds like a useful feature but I don't want to help Apple to train their algorithms which they're still planning to use to snoop on our computers. Their plans are only 'on hold', not cancelled. Which sounds a lot like they're waiting for the upheaval to blow over, or for some other vendor to introduce this so they can point the finger at them and say they're not doing anything…

They are not asking for users to correct or provide any information, so you really aren't helping. Plus, it isn't even obvious how tags on your sightseeing photos would be used to improve CSAM detection.

Fair enough, but the investment sure helps to serve both goals. I wasn't aware there was no training going on from the user side though.

I have to admit the text OCR in photos could be handy. But I hate it when their algorithms poke around my photos trying to identify people and locations and auto-categorise them (which it's already done for a few years now). It makes me feel spied upon and there didn't seem to be a way to switch this off on iOS.

That was one of the many more things (both on the privacy and vendor lock-in side) I have issues with on Mac and iOS now and I've moved away completely in my personal life. I only use it for work now. My personal mobile is Android but degoogled and with mostly open source apps and tracking blockers on the ones that aren't.

So this was not the only reason. I did move all my old content out of iCloud recently but there was also little need to still have it there especially because of its closed nature.

Re: How Good Is Monterey’s Visual Look Up?

#35

Post by GekkePrutser »

KarlKemp wrote: post #23
GekkePrutser wrote: post #20

I have mixed feelings about this.. It sounds like a useful feature but I don't want to help Apple to train their algorithms which they're still planning to use to snoop on our computers. Their plans are only 'on hold', not cancelled. Which sounds a lot like they're waiting for the upheaval to blow over, or for some other vendor to introduce this so they can point the finger at them and say they're not doing anything…

They are not asking for users to correct or provide any information, so you really aren't helping. Plus, it isn't even obvious how tags on your sightseeing photos would be used to improve CSAM detection.

By the way, another article from the same author came out today where he mentions the same thing: https://eclecticlight.co/2022/03/20/last-week-on-my-mac-is-l...

So I'm not the only one who sees a connection here :)

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