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Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

theguardian.com

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Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#21

Post by ribosometronome »

zmgsabst wrote: post #15
ribosometronome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read this article? It's re: functionality that would notify a parent account if a child account had received or sent a message potentially containing nudity. It's a difficult thing to force upon folk who don't want it, as you don't have to mark accounts as being for children.

Right — and how long until they (re)deploy CSAM scanning for all accounts, based on the same technology?

I don't believe it's based on the "same technology" in any meaningful manner. My understanding was that CSAM scanning was based on comparing perceptual hashes to known CSAM images. This doesn't seem like it would be particularly effective at preventing sexual images from being sent to minors because Apple doesn't have a collection of hashes every sexual image including ones yet to be taken.

Apple's got a FAQ for this at https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_... that explicitly states:

>These two features are not the same and do not use the same technology.

but doesn't clarify the differences. Gotta imagine they're referring to the distinction I made because, again, Apple's probably not developed some sort of precognitive nudie hashing.

Just spitballing but I'd imagine they're using some ML model trained to detect generic adult images, y'know, the same technology that they're using the make the Photos app more searchable. But detecting generic adult images has been around for ages.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#22

Post by theshrike79 »

nomel wrote: post #19
zmgsabst wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right — and how long until they (re)deploy CSAM scanning for all accounts, based on the same technology?

> (re)deploy CSAM scanning for all accounts Isn't Apple already scanning, just in iCloud, like all the other cloud providers?

Yep, it's pretty much the cost of doing business if you're a cloud storage operator.

You either automate the search or your servers will get investigated by the FBI.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#23

Post by cryptonector »

brimble wrote: post #12
niiinnneee9981 wrote: post #6

I really am against these tools -- the cost is extremely high for a relatively small amount of perpetrators. And any pedophile will know about this and simply disconnect from the Cloud or do everything offline. ...meanwhile everyone else's nude/promiscuous/ all of your other personal photos will be scanned. it is a huge breach of privacy and it really makes me consider whether Apple is the company for me. apparently…

This is about kids sending each other nudes, not the broader iCloud scanning thing that was all over the news a while back.

There are prosecutors who think minors sexting minors == pedophile minors. Hmm, yeah, this feature is a good idea -- protect your children from insane prosecutors!

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#24

Post by buildbot »

Someone1234 wrote: post #9

This is also available in the US, I enabled this on my kid's dedicated iPad linked to a family/child Apple account. There's no real downside, and it is entirely optional. I suspect some replies are confusing this with iCloud photo scanning (for e.g. CP), whereas this is a different feature entirely, they just happen to have been announced at the same time which caused a lot of people to treat them as a monolith. See:…

Honestly as it is on device, it would be quite useful for people who receive unsolicited/unwanted photos of a sexual nature as well. It is a cool feature, where as the reporting hashes remotely is...not

IAPs not being shared kinda makes sense from the perspective of the individual devs actually? The app is shared "purchased software", the account within the app probably is not.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#25

Post by rosndo »

legrande wrote: post #3

> Apple does not get access to the messages I routinely look at the network traffic of my iDevice and see a tonne of traffic being sent to Apple. I can't see the contents of the traffic, since 99% of it is encrypted, but I can safely say Apple is very cozy with your device. Just assume Apple can see everything, and change your behavior accordingly. If I want secure comms, I use battle-hardened things like Tails[0]. W…

> I can't see the contents of the traffic, since 99% of it is encrypted, but I can safely say Apple is very cozy with your device.

So in reality you are too lazy to hook their TLS verification code (super easy to do with public tools), or alternatively you did do this and the traffic just wasn’t that interesting.

Not really sure what we are supposed to take away from this.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#26

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

keddad wrote: post #7
legrande wrote: post #3

> Apple does not get access to the messages I routinely look at the network traffic of my iDevice and see a tonne of traffic being sent to Apple. I can't see the contents of the traffic, since 99% of it is encrypted, but I can safely say Apple is very cozy with your device. Just assume Apple can see everything, and change your behavior accordingly. If I want secure comms, I use battle-hardened things like Tails[0]. W…

I'm a bit skeptical about Tails and other comsec tools which are a full OS instead of small, separate app. I don't have the time or knowledge to inspect full OS image in detail, and it feels like "secure communications, protected from the guys you don't like" is exactly the thing the "guys you don't like", like government, would create, with proper backdoors in place. After all, that had happened numerously before. (…

I'm skeptical as well since I don't believe the CIA or NSA even use such tools. Don't they just use RHEL or Windows? Why would they backdoor their own stuff?

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#27

Post by browningstreet »

zmgsabst wrote: post #15
ribosometronome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read this article? It's re: functionality that would notify a parent account if a child account had received or sent a message potentially containing nudity. It's a difficult thing to force upon folk who don't want it, as you don't have to mark accounts as being for children.

Right — and how long until they (re)deploy CSAM scanning for all accounts, based on the same technology?

Can we please differentiate between "CSAM" and "not CSAM"?

They said they were going to deploy CSAM, and then they retracted (albeit temporarily). A lot of what made CSAM a concerning issue for many (including me) isn't in effect for this particular feature.

Maybe they'll redeploy CSAM, maybe they won't, but this isn't CSAM.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#28

Post by Someone1234 »

buildbot wrote: post #24
Someone1234 wrote: post #9

This is also available in the US, I enabled this on my kid's dedicated iPad linked to a family/child Apple account. There's no real downside, and it is entirely optional. I suspect some replies are confusing this with iCloud photo scanning (for e.g. CP), whereas this is a different feature entirely, they just happen to have been announced at the same time which caused a lot of people to treat them as a monolith. See:…

Honestly as it is on device, it would be quite useful for people who receive unsolicited/unwanted photos of a sexual nature as well. It is a cool feature, where as the reporting hashes remotely is...not IAPs not being shared kinda makes sense from the perspective of the individual devs actually? The app is shared "purchased software", the account within the app probably is not.

I can see why devs don't check the IAP-share-for-family box, but ultimately the result is that fewer people are using child-specific accounts and the safety benefits as a direct result.

I understand that devs have to make a living, but how many repeat sales do they expect to make for the same family?

Regardless, it would be nice if the Apple app store told you if an IAP is shared or not within a family, it is important information for making purchasing decisions.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#29

Post by twocards »

rosndo wrote: post #25
legrande wrote: post #3

> Apple does not get access to the messages I routinely look at the network traffic of my iDevice and see a tonne of traffic being sent to Apple. I can't see the contents of the traffic, since 99% of it is encrypted, but I can safely say Apple is very cozy with your device. Just assume Apple can see everything, and change your behavior accordingly. If I want secure comms, I use battle-hardened things like Tails[0]. W…

> I can't see the contents of the traffic, since 99% of it is encrypted, but I can safely say Apple is very cozy with your device. So in reality you are too lazy to hook their TLS verification code (super easy to do with public tools), or alternatively you did do this and the traffic just wasn’t that interesting. Not really sure what we are supposed to take away from this.

Laughs in certificate pinning. Updating/restoring MacOS behind a TLS intercepting proxy is more or less impossible.

Re: Apple to roll out child safety feature that scans messages for nudity to UK

#30

Post by zmgsabst »

misnome wrote: post #20
zmgsabst wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right — and how long until they (re)deploy CSAM scanning for all accounts, based on the same technology?

How does this help them do that, when they could just do it anyway?

By normalizing an idea they were previously rebuked for implementing (“we’ll scan all your photos for goodness!”) into a context people accept under “think of the children”.

See how readily your sibling comments accept the premise and normalization of photos on a device being scanned as long as it’s appropriately contextualized — and then you wait five years, say you need to do even more to stop CSAM, and roll out the original scanning of all photos, everywhere.

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