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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

#391
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only reason why the US is so extremely lax on firearms is because people keep blathering on about how guns are the last line of defense against a tyrannical government No, it’s because the right to own firearms is very explicitly stated in our constitution and the constitution requires an extreme super majority to update. A 50%+1 majority is all that’s required to ban civilian ownership of guns in most parliamen…

> the right to own firearms is very explicitly stated in our constitution The right to bear arms does not necessarily mean firearms. Arms doesn't necessarily even have to include firearms, and America is already pretty damn strict about certain armaments, such as sub-machine guns. Americans are allowed to have certain firearms, sometimes, in some places. I'm not sure how one squares that with the blanket statement fr…

> and America is already pretty damn strict about certain armaments, such as sub-machine guns.

Not one but you're really validating their slippery slope fears and claims there.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#392

Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like there's a huge push by the legislature and some people to do anything and everything to prevent CSAM, yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA. For CSAM, there's all sorts of monitoring, scanning, identify capturing, etc. But it's all after abuse has taken place, and it seems that many of the people actually arrested are arrested for CSAM and not CSA. This has e…

Theory besides what others have said: remove the supply and you affect the demand. That's the theory anyway, I'm not sure it works like that; to make a parallel, punishing drug users didn't affect dealers/supply networks.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#393

Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like there's a huge push by the legislature and some people to do anything and everything to prevent CSAM, yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA. For CSAM, there's all sorts of monitoring, scanning, identify capturing, etc. But it's all after abuse has taken place, and it seems that many of the people actually arrested are arrested for CSAM and not CSA. This has e…

My thought is that many different stakeholders have reasons to focus on CSAM:

- Prosecutors want to go after it because it is much easier to prove than CSA.

- Authoritarians want to go after it because it gives them a chance to get things like ID checks accepted by the public.

- People who genuinely want to prevent CSA focus on it because a large amount of CSAM is made by serial abusers - so capturing producers can prevent future abuse. Additionally, they believe (with good reasons) that CSAM consumption is a gateway to CSA and CSAM production for many people. Further, finding CSAM can be a way to identify and rescue children from abusive situations.

- CSA survivors may advocate for it often feel traumatized not just by the abuse, but by the fact that people might be continuously viewing that abuse.

- Going after it winds up creating digital forensics specialists and task forces, which creates a special interest group within police departments which wants to continue focusing on CSAM but is not set up to do anything about CSA.

I would recommend the podcast Hunting Warhead to anyone interested in learning more about this.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#396
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm taking a guess at what the OP meant, but people focus on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Supposedly most incidents and deaths are caused by handguns. They're more affordable, and easy to discretely keep on your person. A data-driven policy would focus on them first, but it's easier to rile up the public about AR-15s so we keep doing the less-effective thing.

Are handgun deaths predominantly murder, or are they mostly accidents? If the latter, then I don't think it's odd to go after AR-15-type weapons, which usually end up killing people during mass shooting incidents.

you could of literally googled it, it's murder

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#397

Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like there's a huge push by the legislature and some people to do anything and everything to prevent CSAM, yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA. For CSAM, there's all sorts of monitoring, scanning, identify capturing, etc. But it's all after abuse has taken place, and it seems that many of the people actually arrested are arrested for CSAM and not CSA. This has e…

I'd like to know the link between availability of csam and CSA. There seems to be an assumption that the former causes the latter.

That's not to say it's acceptable if illegally produced.

We have issues in the UK. So far they've banned 'rape' porn. And now they're talking about 'barely legal'

None of this seems to be based on any statistics showing this is actually harmful in any way.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#398

Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like there's a huge push by the legislature and some people to do anything and everything to prevent CSAM, yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA. For CSAM, there's all sorts of monitoring, scanning, identify capturing, etc. But it's all after abuse has taken place, and it seems that many of the people actually arrested are arrested for CSAM and not CSA. This has e…

The problem is, the things that would actually prevent CSA require things like "giving children rights", "widely mandating effective age-appropriate sex education even for young children", and "admitting that it's mostly not scary strangers doing it." These are utterly anathema to huge chunks of society, especially American society. It's more and more clear, from the scope of the Epstein Files, just how much of Ameri…

[flagged]

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#399

It is crazy people think apple isnt on the side of privacy. Are they perfect? Not even close, but compared to the rest of big tech theyre simply on another level. Apple could easily not do this stuff and it may even be easier to not.

[dead]

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#400

Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like there's a huge push by the legislature and some people to do anything and everything to prevent CSAM, yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA. For CSAM, there's all sorts of monitoring, scanning, identify capturing, etc. But it's all after abuse has taken place, and it seems that many of the people actually arrested are arrested for CSAM and not CSA. This has e…

CSA doesn't neatly fit into a narrative.

If there's a person committing abuse against a child, usually a family member in their own household, there's no story there. They (hopefully) get arrested, get a minor mention in the media if that, and life moves on.

If, on the other hand, they send CSAM using a platform, device or protocol, then clearly the makers of that technology failed to uphold their sacred duty to protect the child. If most CSAM cases happen using a few major technologies (and they will, because societies tend to standardize on what technologies they use for communication), the technologies get blamed for the problem they supposedly enable.

If you dislike the technology for other reasons (the distrust of corporations from left-leaning politicians, censorship allegations on the right, a moral panic about the impact of smartphones on children's mental health), you can use people's misunderstanding of statistics to exaggerate the CSAM problem, blame the tech, and gain some notion of control over it in a way that is politically palatable to citizens.

It's worth saying explicitly that centralization doesn't have much to do with this. We've seen similar stories play out with bicycles, Walkmans, pagers, AI, heavy metal and Uber rapes. They were different moral panics, but the mechanic was roughly the same. I think the situation wouldn't change much if we all used PGP-encrypted email over personal mail servers to communicate.

An exception that proves the rule is the moral panic over CSA in primarily-catholic countries, notably relating to abuse committed by catholic priests, which are statistically no more likely to commit it than anybody else. As the influence of the Church on government policy is a hotly-debated topic in those countries, CSA is suddenly an issue that people can use to further their political causes.

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