111–120 of 316 posts
It seems like a large part of the ruling hinges on the fact that Google matched the image hash to a hash of a known child pornography image, but didn't require an employee to actually look at that image before reporting it to the police. If they had visually confirmed it was the image they suspected it was based on the hash then no warrant would have been required, but the judge reads that the image hash match is not…
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I'm trying to imagine a more "real-world" example of this to see how I feel about it. I dislike that there is yet another loophole to gain access to peoples' data for legal reasons, but this does feel like a reasonable approach and a valid goal to pursue. I guess it's like if someone noticed you had a case shaped exactly like a machine gun, told the police, and they went to check if it was registered or not? I suppos…
But this court decision is a real world example, and not some esoteric edge case. This is something I don’t think needs analogies to understand. SA/CP image and video distribution is an ongoing moderation, network, and storage issue. The right to not be under constant digital surveillance is somewhat protected in the constitution. I like speech and privacy and am paranoid of corporate or government overreach, but I a…
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I'm trying to imagine a more "real-world" example of this to see how I feel about it. I dislike that there is yet another loophole to gain access to peoples' data for legal reasons, but this does feel like a reasonable approach and a valid goal to pursue. I guess it's like if someone noticed you had a case shaped exactly like a machine gun, told the police, and they went to check if it was registered or not? I suppos…
It's like a digital 'smell'; Google is a drug sniffing dog.
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The main factual components are as follows: Party A has rented out property to Party B. Party A performs surveillance on or around the property with Party B's knowledge and consent. Party A discovers very high probability evidence that Party B is committing crimes within the property, and then informs the police of their findings. Police obtain a warrant, using Party A's statements as evidence. The closest "real worl…
Is there any such thing as this surveillence applying to the inside of the renters bed room, bath room, filing cabinet with medical or financial documents, or political for that matter? I don't think there is, and I don't think you can reduce reality to being as simple as "owner has more right over property than renter" renter absolutely has at least a few rights in at least a few defined contextx over owner because…
Yes. Entering property for regular maintenance. Any time a landlord or his agent enters a piece of property, there is implicit surveillance. Some places are more formal about this than others, but anyone who has rented, owned rental property, or managed rental property knows that any time maintenance occurs there's an implicit examination of the premises also happening...
But here is a more pertinent example: the regular comings and goings of people or property can be and often are observed from outside of a property. These can contribute to probable cause for a search of those premises even without direct observation. (E.g., large numbers of disheveled children moving through an apartment, or an exterior camera shot of a known fugitive entering the property.)
Here the police could obtain a warrant on the basis of landlord's testimony without the landlord actually seeing the inside of the unit. This is somewhat similar to the case at hand, since what Google alerted the police to a hash match without actually looking at the image (ie, entering the bedroom).
> I don't think you can reduce reality to being as simple as "owner has more right over property than renter"
But I make no such reduction, and neither does the opinion. In fact, quite the opposite -- this is contributory why the court determines a warrant is required!
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The hash functions used for these purposes are usually not cryptographic hashes. They are "perceptual hashes" that allows for approximate matches (e.g. if the image has been scaled or brightness-adjusted). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing These hashes are not collision-resistant.
They should be called embeddings.
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The hashes involved in stuff like this, as with copyright auto-matching, are perceptual hashes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing ), not cryptographic hashes. False matches are common enough that perceptual hashing attacks are already a thing in use to manipulate search engine results (see the example in random paper on the subject https://gangw.cs.illinois.edu/PHashing.pdf ).
It seems like that is very relevant information that was not considered by the court. If this was a cryptographic hash I would say with high confidence that this is the same image and so Google examined it - there is a small chance that some unrelated file (which might not even be a picture) matches but odds are the universe will end before that happens and so the courts can consider it the same image for search purp…
An important part of the ruling seems to be that neither Google nor the police had the original image or any information about it, so the police viewing the image gave them more information than Google matching the hash gave Google: for example, consider how the suspect being in the image would have changed the case, or what might happen if the image turned out not to be CSAM, but showed the suspect storing drugs somewhere, or was even, somehow, something entirely legal but embarrassing to the suspect. This isn't changed by the type of hash.
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The language is defined by how people actually use it, not by how a handful of activists try to prescribe its use. Ask any random person on the street, and most of them have no idea what CSAM is, but they know full well what "child porn" is. Dictionaries, encyclopedias etc also reflect this common sense usage. The justification for this attempt to change the definition doesn't make any sense, either. Just because som…
> Just because some porn is child porn, which is bad, doesn't in any way imply that all porn is bad. I think people who want others to stop using the term "child porn" are actually arguing the opposite of this. Porn is good, so calling it "child porn" is making a euphemism or otherwise diminishing the severity of "CSAM" by using the positive term "porn" to describe it.
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I'd say the focus on hashing is a bit of a red herring. Most anyone would agree that the hash matching should probably form probable cause for a warrant, allowing a judge to sign off on the police searching (i.e., viewing) the image. So, if it's a collision, the cops get a warrant and open up your linux ISO or cat meme, and it's all good. Probably the ideal case is that they get a warrant to search the specific image…
> Most anyone would agree that the hash matching should probably form probable cause for a warrant I disagree with this. Yes, if we were talking MD5, SHA, or some similar true hash algo, then the probability of a natural collision is small enough that I agree in principle. But if the hash algo is of some other kind then I do not know enough about it to assert that it can justify probable cause. Anyone who agrees with…
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This is an excellent example, I think I get it now and I'm fully on-board. Thanks. I could easily see an AirBNB owner calling the cops if they saw, for instance, child abuse happening on their property.
With their hidden camera in the bathroom.
Anyways, that's why I just rent hotel rooms, personally. :)