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Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

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Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#181

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Detrytus wrote: post #180
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #173

>please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. (@dang) On topic, I like this quote from the first page of the opinion: >A “hash” or “hash value” is “(usually) a short string of characters generated from a much larger string of data (say, an electronic image) using an algorithm—and calculated in a way that makes it highly unlikely another set of data will produce the same valu…

What's so weird about this? CS literature is not legally binding in any way. Of course a judge would rather quote a previous ruling by fellow judge than a textbook, Wikipedia, or similar sources.

They didn't say it was weird.

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#182

Post by ajsnigrutin »

bluGill wrote: post #96
gcbirzan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it reasonable? Even if the hash was md5, given valid image files, the chances of it being an accidental collision are way lower than the chance of any other evidence given to a judge was false or misinterpreted.

This is NOT a secure hash. This is an image similar to hash which has many many matches in not related images. Unfortunately the decision didn't mention this at all even though it is important. If it was even as good as a md5 hash (which is broken) I think the search should be allowed without warrant because even though a accidental collision is possible odds are so strongly against it that the courts can safely assu…

You're assuming accidential collision. Images can be generated that intentionally trigger the hash algorithm while they still appear as something else (a meme, funny photo, etc.) to a person looking at them. This brings many possibilities for "bad people" to do to people they hate (like an alternative to swatting etc.)

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#183

Post by Dylan16807 »

multjoy wrote: post #154
fear-anger-hate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the person is a passive consumer with no messages / money exchanged with anyone, it is very hard to prove social harm or damage. Sentences should be proportional to the crime. Treating possession of cp as equivalent of literally raping a child just seems absurd to me. IMO, just for the legal protection of the average citizen, a simple possession should never warrant jail time.

CP is better described as "images of child abuse", and the argument is that the viewing is revictimising the child. You appear to be suggesting that you shouldn't go to prison for possessing images of babies being raped?

You don't go to prison for possessing images of adults being raped, last I checked. Or adults being murdered. Or children being murdered.

I don't think making the images illegal is a good way to handle things.

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#184

Post by ajsnigrutin »

multjoy wrote: post #154
fear-anger-hate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the person is a passive consumer with no messages / money exchanged with anyone, it is very hard to prove social harm or damage. Sentences should be proportional to the crime. Treating possession of cp as equivalent of literally raping a child just seems absurd to me. IMO, just for the legal protection of the average citizen, a simple possession should never warrant jail time.

CP is better described as "images of child abuse", and the argument is that the viewing is revictimising the child. You appear to be suggesting that you shouldn't go to prison for possessing images of babies being raped?

For the record, i'm against any kind of child abuse, and 25 years for an actual abuser would not be a problem.

But...

Should you go to prison for possesing images of an adult being raped? What if you don't even know it's rape? What if the person is underage, but you don't know (looks adult to you)? What about a murder video instead of rape? What if the child porn is digitally created (AI, photoshop, whatever)? What if a murder scene is digitally created (fake bullets, holes+blood made in video editing software)? What if you go to a mainstream porno store, buy a mainsteam professional porno video and you later find out that the actress way a 15yo Traci Lords?

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#185

Post by int_19h »

programjames wrote: post #157
jampekka wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no room for sensible discussion like this in these matters. Not demanding draconian sentences for morally outraging crimes is morally outraging.

I think their point was they think the law should be based off of harms, not necessarily "morals" (since no one can seem to decide on those).

GP is saying that people who want this to be a crime are morally outraged that someone else might disagree, and so it's impossible to have a reasonable debate with them about it. They're probably correct, but it never hurts to try.

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#186

Post by ISO-morphism »

water-data-dude wrote: post #88
crooked-v wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ).

That makes sense - if they were using a cryptographic hash then people could get around it by making tiny changes to the file. I’ve used some reverse image search tools, which use perceptual hashing under the hood, to find the original source for art that gets shared without attribution (saucenao pretty solid). They’re good, but they definitely have false positives. Now you’ve got me interested in what’s going on und…

> what's going on under the hood

Rather simple methods are surprisingly effective [1]. There's sure to be more NN fanciness nowadays (like Apple's proposed NeuralHash), but I've used the algorithms described by [1] to great effect in the not-too-distant past. The HN discussion linked in that article is also worth a read.

[1] https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/432-Lo...

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#187

Post by hyperliner »

kulahan wrote: post #21
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #12

> Google’s hash match may well have established probable cause for a warrant to allow police to conduct a visual examination of the Maher file. Very reasonable. Google can flag accounts as CP, but then a judge still needs to issue a warrant for the police to actually go and look at the file. Good job court. Extra points for reasoning about hash values.

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…

[dead]

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#188

Post by Dylan16807 »

henryfjordan wrote: post #47
ARandumGuy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively, 1/(2^{hash_size_in_bits}). Which is about 1 in 4 billion odds for a 32 bit hash, and gets astronomically low at higher bit counts. Of course, that's assuming a perfect, evenly distributed hash algorithm. And that's just the odds that any given pair of images has the same hash, not the odds that a hash conflict exists somewhere on the internet.

You need to know the input space as well as the output space (hash size). If you have a 32bit hash but your input is only 16bit, you'll never have a collision (and you'll be wasting a ton of space on your hashes!). Image files can get into the megabytes though, so unless the output hash is large the potential for collisions is probably not all that low.

You do not need to know the input space.

Normal hash functions have pseudo-random outputs and they can collide even when the input space is much smaller than the output space.

In fact, I'll go run ten million values, encoded into 24 bits each, through a 40 bit hash and count the collisions. My hash of choice will be a truncated sha256.

... I got 49 collisions.

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#189

Post by petermcneeley »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #12

> Google’s hash match may well have established probable cause for a warrant to allow police to conduct a visual examination of the Maher file. Very reasonable. Google can flag accounts as CP, but then a judge still needs to issue a warrant for the police to actually go and look at the file. Good job court. Extra points for reasoning about hash values.

No. What I send through my email is between me and God.

Re: Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf]

#190

Post by aiforecastthway »

ok_computer wrote: post #149
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that argument supports the better analogy of breaking into a computer or filing cabinet owned by someone renting the space. Just because someone is renting space doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want to them. Cameras in bathrooms of a rented space would be another example.

But he wasn’t running a computer in a rented space, he was using storage space on google’s computers. In an older comment I argued against analogies to rationalize this. I think honestly at face value it is possible to evaluate the goodness or badness of the decision.

> In an older comment I argued against analogies to rationalize this. I think honestly at face value it is possible to evaluate the goodness or badness of the decision.

I generally do agree that analogies became anti-useful in this thread relatively quickly.

However, I am not sure that avoiding analogies is actually possible for the courts. I mean, they can try, but at some point analogies are unavailable because most of the case law -- and, hell, the fourth amendment itself -- is written in terms of the non-digital world. Judges are forced to reason by analogy, because legal arguments will be advanced in terms of precedent that is inherently physical.

So there is value in hashing out the analogies, even if at some point they become tenuous, primarily because demonstrating the breaking points of the analogies is step zero in deviating from case law.

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