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The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

netzpolitik.org

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Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#51

Post by Retr0id »

sparsely wrote: post #36
Retr0id wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% of all OK images may be falsely flagged, but what about specific categories of images? What would the error rate be for an album of legal pornography? What would the error rate be for an album of a family spending the day at a beach?

> 10% of all OK images may be falsely flagged, but what about specific categories of images? The article doesn't say what % of OK images are falsely flagged, only what percent of flagged images are OK. Agree that subsets might have different stats, but there's 0 information in the featured article about any of that!

Ah, I see what you mean.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#52

Post by nullc »

DangerousPie wrote: post #39

Important to note that this is not 10% of all messages being falsely flagged (= 10% false positive rate), but 10% of flagged messages being false positives (= 90% precision). As someone who works with these types of classification problems in a different context, 90% precision is actually quite good - especially assuming there is some sort of manual review process to take care of the 10%. Whether that makes this whol…

It's easy to achieve high precision when you just define a hit very broadly. See also the political flap about teachers factually describing the existence of alternative sexuality as 'grooming'.

If you want to see the lie behind any of these child protection surveillance initiatives when they talk about things like 90% precision or millions of hits per year ask them how many of those detection of vile child predators resulted in an arrest warrant -- not even an actual arrest, or an actual conviction, but just an attempt.

The answers is extraordinarily few and that tells you everything that you need to know.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#54

Post by dathinab »

gloppers wrote: post #24

That old adage " if you've nothing to hide, then you've nothing to fear " is oft berated in these sort of discussions, but it really does apply here. This regulation is for the purposes of criminal investigation into serious harms against children, not for spying on whatever innocuous messages you happen to be sharing with friends and family. The privacy fears are being way overblown for us ordinary people. Paedophil…

It doesn't apply at all.

If you get accidentally flagged as criminal it can easily destroy your live, without a years log curt case you might never get properly un-flagged even if you are innocent but then the damage is more then just done.

Worse after wards the chance to again be attacked when you are innocent aren't that small because even if you get un-flagged the system is most likely remembering that you had been flagged once. At least in similar cases involving police this is not uncommon.

You might literally end up in a situation with the state forcefully taking your child away because you send pictures to a doctor to ask if idk. some rash is dangerous. Even if it get's resolved it will traumatize your child, and likely you, too.

There are many ways to improve the situation with children and the internet, but this isn't a good one I think.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#55

Post by mayoi »

altacc wrote: post #5

Due to the volume of messages and the endless need to maximise profits, companies will accept 10% flagged content may be false positives but act against all 100% of flagged content, meaning that the default will be innocent people having action taken against them but with no real recourse to clear their name. I also didn't find anything in there about expectations for reducing numbers of false negatives (where automa…

Not just will have action taken against them, they already are: https://archive.ph/W41mf

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#56

Post by n4r9 »

isaacfrond wrote: post #8

With 90% accuracy, and assuming the incidence of true grooming in random conversation is way smaller, they are setting themselves up for the base rate fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

Good to know there's a name for this. It's pernicious. I came across it recently when someone said "if vaccines are effective then how come 60% of COVID patients in hospital have had one?".

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#57

Post by pelasaco »

ho_schi wrote: post #3

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption i…

> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way.

> https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html

Weren't we Germans calling out Poland, because they decided that national law can take precedence over EU law? So I guess our GG < EU Law.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#58

Post by mayoi »

Aeolun wrote: post #30
capableweb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm for E2E encryption wherever it's applicable, and for individuals having the ability to be fully anonymous online, but it's not useful to claim it doesn't have drawbacks as well. Yes, it's true that it might it harder to arrest criminals because of encryption, but the alternative that nothing can be 100% private is so much worse.

It was hard to arrest criminals before digital communication as well, I’m sure we’ll deal.

You can deal with it on your own. I won't be putting up with this, go ahead, make encryption illegal, I'll follow along with you to every fucking court because you have 0 proof that my disk drive is encrypted instead of overwritten with content of /dev/urandom

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#59

Post by LeeroyWasHere »

mayoi wrote: post #33
jand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While i get the sentiment, you should check the mentioned penalties for abusing the system (once known) before jumping to action.

I guess everyone should just check the penalties for committing crimes before assuming that crime is real...

That works so well with DMCA, no one ever abused it and it hasn't negatively impacted the lively hood of anyone.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#60

Post by fnord123 »

ho_schi wrote: post #3

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption i…

>The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way.

Well, now we can counter "Think of the children" with "Think of the Ukrainians"

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