Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:11 AM UTC

djoldman wrote: post #175

pushcx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In short, in US law, CSAM is a visual depiction of a real-world act of child sexual abuse. Visual depictions like you're describing are covered under a different law, and I'm not aware of it having a short name. There's a good expert thread on this with links to the relevant federal laws here: https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3lbt7zkvlq...

Currently it is explicitly against the law[0]: (a)In General.—Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly produces, distributes, receives, or possesses with intent to distribute, a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that— (1) (A)depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B)is obscene; or ... (b)... (c)Nonrequired Element of…

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:13 AM UTC

majorchord wrote: post #285

slashdave wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the company misleads and adds a backdoor to the front-end app (thus this entire discussion). If the company is misleading, any encryption technology is irrelevant anyway.

In the US at least, companies can and do receive secret demands from the government to add whatever kind of backdoor they want, and you're not allowed to disclose it in any way, they even order you to preserve any warrant canaries you have implemented. This is for example why Lavabit chose to go out of business instead of giving up their keys.

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:19 AM UTC

slashdave wrote: post #63

megous wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kind of a bad analogy (not service related, no associated liability). A better one: what about rental property, like a business? Can the landlord randomly check for criminal behavior?

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:24 AM UTC

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #263

kccqzy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you, but I do think that these teens do not have good opsec around these photos. It’s like the revenge porn problem but way worse. A teenager sending a nude selfie to a friend who then later shared these images non-consensually is a much bigger problem than if the same thing happened to adults. I don’t have any ideas for a solution, but I suspect that the heightened focus on CSAM is really com…

There is no good solution to revenge porn. It is impossible to enforce that only a single person has access to an image (physical or digital), and that the person doesn’t redistribute the image. The only way I can see this working is that people in explicit images need to publicly declare their intent for who can see the images (maybe a hash of the image content and the name of the person who can see that content) an…

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:27 AM UTC

rationalist wrote: post #307

abayedris wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just by casually glancing at KMP or VoL, you'd find that even the darknet pedo community itself strongly vilifies actual child abuse (known as "hurtcore"). There's truly no place for people who rape children. They are scum of the earth even in the eyes of the scum of the earth itself.

> KMP or VoL I'm aftaid of putting those terms in my search engine, can you please expand those acronyms?