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Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

blog.ericgoldman.org

421–430 of 597 posts

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more… enthusiastic gun people among us think that the national firearms act (which strictly regulates automatic weapons) is an abomination. It’s unique in that it’s the only right that aligns with business marketing. Peddling fear, mostly to insecure men, has sold hundreds of millions of guns. The fetishized nature of modern gun culture killed, in addition to people, a lot of shooting sports and hunting.

What a strange take. I grew up in a small hunting town (I'm in my early 30s), where most high school boys (most girls didn't hunt, but some did) had a rifle and/or shotgun in their truck, mounted against the inside back of the cab where you could see it plain view. We had 0 homicides from guns in the 19 years I lived there, there was 1 suicide by gun that I know of. Many of us grew up hunting to feed our family. This…

My mom grew up in a small town (village? settlement even?) like that (surrounded by nature, lots of hunting, animals can wonder in town) in a country where guns weren't free.

Every family still had a rifle, getting license isn't that hard when you could answer questions about your intentions.

No handguns though, not very useful for self-defense or wildlife. I believe mom made and shot her first arbalest around 6-7 yo though.

Similar cultures, but one of them allows for outsiders to screen potential gun owners, and the other doesn't. Which, I believe, is the point – there always will be mentally unwell or ill-intentioned people. There should be a way for a small town to revoke the trust of allowing weapons in their hands.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#422

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 CSAM issue is both very real and abused by politicians. When I did some work with a police agency, it was explained to me that there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior. The detectives assigned to this work tend to not last long, and the horrific nature of the crime affects them. Like all rape, it’s a combo of control and dopamine. The…

Lets look at this specific situation. Was there regulation that dictate/encourage screening and education for organizations that work with children? How many adults were there in the organization and on activities with this scout leader? How much involvement had parents? Was there any adult in the children environment that was trained to detect CSA, for example school personal?

It is technical possible that in small villages there is only a single Boy Scout leader and no other adults, who then spend a lot of time alone with children. In my experience however, after school activities involving children also generally involve several adults. That makes it a major structural issue among the adults if they fail to detect a problem like hundreds of victims, and the more common remedy would be to train people, apply some form of screening, and change routines that limit risk and encourage reporting in case of inappropriate behavior.

In addition, having trained people that regular meet and talk to children can help detect situations even when they happen in peoples home, like having school employees training in detecting signs of CSA.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#423

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…

First, I think it’s likely that you hear more about one than the other because you read websites like Hacker News and are not (I assume) an FBI agent or someone else who works on this stuff. A public defender I know would say that child abuse of all sorts is ever-present and relevant to their work, unfortunately.

Second, detecting CSAM leads to its producers who are by definition abusers. Here’s a nice article in Wired about the digital forensics of cracking down on a CSAM ring with some interesting details about the role played by crypto, and abusers’ misconceptions about it: https://www.wired.com/story/tracers-in-the-dark-welcome-to-v...

With that said, I agree that a lot of political concern for this is a smokescreen for a creating more surveillance. “think of the children!” has the flavor of a rhetorical trump card.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CSAM (“see-sam”) refers to any visual content—photos, videos, livestreams, or AI-generated images —that shows a child being sexually abused or exploited. Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is not “child pornography.” It’s evidence of child sexual abuse [1] I can't wrap my head around how AI-generated imagery is evidence of child sexual abuse (CAS). How are you abusing a real child by generating an image of a fake o…

what about an AI generated image using the real face of a minor? That can (I would argue will ) cause real damage to the real child.

That's CSM, not CSAM.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#425
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we say that handguns cause more deaths than assault rifles, is that normalized towards ownership? Data and statistics is as always dependent on how and what you measure.

Not to get too off track, but it's actually an interesting case in that it's one of those where weighting for prevalence of ownership wouldn't matter for the purpose of discovering the more effective measure. If you did something to restrict handguns you would prevent more death than restricting other firearms. Also, not that it has any bearing on what I said, but I'm decidedly pro-gun for any repliers who want to fo…

If it's weighted by ownership then banning one type of gun would increase the ownership of other types of guns, maybe not solving the problem.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#426
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 this is very clearly unconstitutional. "shall not be infringed" is very very plain and simple

Yep, alongside "Congress shall make no law" which says it's fine for anyone who isn't Congress to infringe your free speech, or for Congress to do it in any way that isn't making a law.

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#427

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…

CSAM is the perfect trojan horse to undermine privacy everywhere. No politician and no company can oppose it on the grounds of protecting privacy before having the reputation ruined. Meanwhile the real pedos are rich people vacationing in well known places.

Are you sure? Can't they say "yeah pedophilia is fucked up but reading all our emails is also fucked up"?

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#428
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prot…

Sorry but I'm intrigued, what was the moral panic about bicycles and Walkman?

And pagers?

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CSAM issue is both very real and abused by politicians. When I did some work with a police agency, it was explained to me that there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior. The detectives assigned to this work tend to not last long, and the horrific nature of the crime affects them. Like all rape, it’s a combo of control and dopamine. The…

This is correct. Also, the people who produce CSAM usually don't just stop, so tracking down material, especially new and unknown, is one of the most important ways to stop active abuse. Also because the material is actual proof and many (C)SA cases fail due to lack of exactly that. This doesn't mean I agree with active scanning of things like iCloud, effectively making everyone a suspect, but counter to what people…

> the material is actual proof

How do you square this with fictional material being illegal?

Re: Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CSAM issue is both very real and abused by politicians. When I did some work with a police agency, it was explained to me that there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior. The detectives assigned to this work tend to not last long, and the horrific nature of the crime affects them. Like all rape, it’s a combo of control and dopamine. The…

> there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior I was curious about this. I did find some research here: https://www.suojellaanlapsia.fi/en/post/csam-users-in-the-da... (2021) That paper states > Traditional research on individuals who use CSAM is often inherently biased as it has focused primarily on convicted and known offenders. and appears…

FYI you are shadowbanned. Did you write this comment with AI? If you did, that's why.
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