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Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#21

Post by St0n3d »

“Apple created its own proprietary alternative, NeuralHash, which apparently wasn’t as good. So Apple U-turned on its efforts to scan for CSAM in its cloud storage. Instead, Apple implemented end-to-end encryption for iCloud files.”

Wasn’t Apple’s design to explicitly NOT scan in its cloud storage, but look at the file on-device at the moment you wish to upload it to iCloud? This method would make it compatible with Advanced Data Protection; so ADP could have always been in the pipeline rather than Apple u-turning. In fact, NeuralHash may have been proposed because Apple wanted to introduce ADP and saw a potential problem here/get concerns from government agencies about it and saw this as a means to an end(-to-end).

The system was designed pretty elegantly and offers far better privacy protections - including guardrails - than what Microsoft and Google do, but the communication from Apple about it was absolutely horrible and generated enormous backlash. (Not saying I agreed with implementing it, just saying the design was infinitely better than competitors.)

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#22

Post by mschuster91 »

alistairSH wrote: post #16
twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

Do you have a citation for that? Sounds plausible, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it stated that way in any of the related media reports on CSAM efforts.

In Germany, the rise in "youth porn" material has been attributed to such kinds of cases where youth send intimate pictures to each other [1].

Our legal systems are not built to deal with that mess, and it may hang around your neck for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, the law is very explicit, leaving barely any avenue for the courts to drag us out of the mess, and politicians - even if they are actually interested in the topic in the first place - won't touch that area with a ten foot pole for fear of getting blamed a pedophile themselves.

[1] https://www.n-tv.de/panorama/KI-treibt-Jugendporno-Fallzahle...

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#23

Post by majorchord »

twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

Children cannot legally consent to most things in most places, especially until near the end of their teen years.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#24

Post by kstrauser »

twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

I think you’re right, but from another angle. In the state where I lived way back when, a state representative put forth a bill to explicitly make e-CSAM illegal. I guess it was already illegal for print media and this covered a gap in the law about cell phone pics, etc. Thing is, it had no allowance for the age of the picture taker, or even whether the picture taker was the photo subject. If a 16 year old girl took a nude selfie and sent it to her boyfriend, she was a felon.

I wrote to the rep and explained my concerns. I wholeheartedly agreed with the intent of the law, but the code was buggy. To my surprise, he wrote back in horror to say he hadn’t considered that and pulled the bill immediately. I’m proud of having done that.

I’m 100% pro yeeting child pornographers into the sun. I still don’t want to throw kids in prison or remove all traces of a right to privacy in our haste to sun-yeet them.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#25

Post by Aurornis »

twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

The proposed CSAM scanning used perceptual hashing to try to identify CSAM material known to law enforcement.

It was not a tool to identify private images as being underage. That’s an impossible task.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#26

Post by megous »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #7

The judge called the outcome disturbing, as it leaves victimized children as "collateral damage" of privacy protections. As sad as this is, end to end encryption means no CSAM scanning. As an alternative Apple previously tried to do scanning on the phones locally but caught hell for that too. This is one of those unfortunate tradeoffs but I see no alternative to privacy taking priority.

I wonder if the judge would be in favor of companies proactively going into people's houses at random to check on their belongings, if they don't have inappropriate photos somewhere, or whatever.

It's harder to do, but conceptually the same. So sad it's not being done. Very disturbing.

They could do it when people are not at home. There'd no problem, nobody would even notice.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#27

Post by cortesoft »

majorchord wrote: post #17
JSR_FDED wrote: post #7

The judge called the outcome disturbing, as it leaves victimized children as "collateral damage" of privacy protections. As sad as this is, end to end encryption means no CSAM scanning. As an alternative Apple previously tried to do scanning on the phones locally but caught hell for that too. This is one of those unfortunate tradeoffs but I see no alternative to privacy taking priority.

> As sad as this is, end to end encryption means no CSAM scanning. I think it depends on your definition of e2ee and where the "end"s are. If the locally running application can decrypt the data, it could always do whatever it wanted. Is that really how you define e2ee?

The locally running application is one of the 'ends' of the end to end encryption.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#28

Post by mrkeen »

aljgz wrote: post #18
twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

Are there statistics backing up the "VAST" majority claim? While on statistics, I wonder, are there reliable statistics about child abuse of different types? Studying correlations with other social metrics, like sex education, liberal/conservative, policies regarding prostitution, and others can provide support for/against decisions. Not that I hope these will impact people's and governments' choices, but I want to c…

That's the fun of it. Try to find out? Straight to prison.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#29

Post by pixel_popping »

majorchord wrote: post #23
twuopf wrote: post #8

I know creating a throwaway to hide your name for an opinion is a bad manner, but this one is one I really don’t want linked back to me The VAST majority of “CSAM” is consensually created and exchanged by teens. Their future selves and their parents form this pressure group attacking everyone’s liberty and privacy to try to undo the downsides of choices they made themselves with full knowledge of what could happen. T…

Children cannot legally consent to most things in most places, especially until near the end of their teen years.

They can't consent but it does make sense that it's true, I would genuinely bet that more nudes are being shared between 17-year olds than some freak, as this is common to the point where I feel a very large portion of all existing teens have done it.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#30

Post by an0malous »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #7

The judge called the outcome disturbing, as it leaves victimized children as "collateral damage" of privacy protections. As sad as this is, end to end encryption means no CSAM scanning. As an alternative Apple previously tried to do scanning on the phones locally but caught hell for that too. This is one of those unfortunate tradeoffs but I see no alternative to privacy taking priority.

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