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MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

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Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#421

My goodness, this has nothing to do with AI problems. I don't understand that people still buy an OS from a company that actively hates it's customers. The amount of things they pull should not even be succesful on a OS you get paid FOR to use.

Not that I love Microsoft, but they would get a lot of heat if they let anybody generate harmful content as well. They can't win on that topic. Now I would not want to appear to defend the mess they've created out of windows, that's not the point.

The guardrails that prevent generating adult/explicit/whatever content are a completely separate step. This has nothing to do with that.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#423
post #24

The AI aspect of this is a red herring. The real problem is that they're secretly adding in a unique identifier into every image you create. If somebody does not like your meme, they can just send a copyright subpoena to Microsoft to instantly get your full name, address, email, phone number, and any other data associated with your Microsoft account. Just like age verification, this is another weapon in the war again…

> Microsoft to instantly get your full name, address, email, phone number, and any other data associated with your Microsoft account. Provided you bent the knee and created a Microsoft account.

Not even. They log the IP and your ISP (or VPN provider!) knows the name/address of the person using that ip at that time.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#424

Injecting hidden GUIDs into local files without explicit user consent is a massive privacy overreach. It makes you wonder what other local tools are silently tagging user generated content.

Your printer has been doing this for decades. There's an invisible-to-human dot matrix pattern that encodes things like model, serial number and i don't remember what else.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think it would be nice if all pens added a unique isotopic tracer signature to their ink. You could tell exactly who wrote everything." "I think it would be nice if all typewriters had their unique fine-detail type artifacts registered with the government. You could tell exactly who authored a given document." I think it would be nice if you took these ideas back to Stalinist Russia where they belong.

Stalinist Russia? Stalin would be absolutely dumbfounded by the level of tracking common in the west today.

He would love the image editing though.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t printers done the same thing for decades?

Oh that makes it totally ok then...

No it's not ok, and most people are horrified when they learn. It's just a reality check that we've lived in a surveillance state for quite a while and it's time we take a stand. And a reminder that the government has done a good job of suppressing these realities from public awareness.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t printers done the same thing for decades?

And? Where are we going with this whataboutism?

And it's a reality check that we live in a surveillance state. To a degree that most people find appalling, but the government is good enough at suppressing public awareness enough to cause an outcry.

It's also not whataboutism, the comment specifically wondered how else were being surrupticously tracked without our knowledge. This is a concrete example and I think many would be surprised such tracking also exists outside the digital realm.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#428
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is kind of interesting when you think about it. what utility does something like paint actually have? did it ever have any real utility? (icon editing?) it always kinda felt like a demo that came with early versions of windows that didn't actually do anything useful.

Cropping and editing screenshots (eg add red circle) in a very lightweight application. Other image editing applications can do all of that, but they take 10 years to launch (during which they will ask for focus) and 2 GB of RAM.

ahh. kde has all that built directly into the screenshot utility. highlighting, text, cropping, etc.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacari: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/csam-using-... He still streams on Twitch, he got a temporary week "long" ban and then came back claiming it was a virus or an accident while also claiming he has a porn addiction problem... but don't worry he's very "sorry" (to have been caught). The state of this Amazon-owned streaming platform is wild... and that's without even looking at the rampant antisem…

You definitely shouldn't assert that someone is antisemitic based on the current US House, even if bi-partisan. And I thought bills of attainder were unconstitutional? To answer your question of why, it's probably because they make money.

There are plenty of evidence of Hasan Piker's antisemitism to the point that people have been collecting and contextualizing them: https://whoishasanpiker.com/antisemitism

Also plenty of groups fighting against racism and antisemitism have come out against him (ADL, AJC), it's easy to Google.

That House resolution is just the latest good indication that it's not just some isolated incidents.

Piker's only answers are that he's taken "out of context" or that he's "joking", there's literally no context that make his public statements better or less antisemitic though, if you have any I'm interested. He also publicly voice his support to groups that are openly antisemitic (Hamas and Hezbollah) and recognized as FTOs (Foreign Terrorist Organization) by the US government.

Now, it's his First Amendment right to be this way but Twitch/Amazon share a responsibility when they platform this content, and even more when they apply moderation selectively, in my opinion that should forfeit their Section 230 protection. They are deliberately shaping the discourse on their platform by permanently banning other streamers with opposing views and never taking similar actions against Piker.

"Fun" fact, Twitch even had to carve out their own rules because Hasan Piker couldn't stop himself from calling Jews in general or some groups of Jews "zionist pig-dogs" and "inbred": https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/twitch-changes-hateful-content-...

EDIT: Regarding the bills of attainder, it likely doesn't apply here because they aren't trying to punish these two antisemites specifically, they just use them as examples of the proliferation of antisemitic content on platforms like Twitch and want Congress to condemn this practice and encourage platforms to address the issue.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#430
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If C2PA and similar signature systems ever become a meaningful authenticity signal, they will create huge incentives for someone (potentially a state actor) to hack at least one camera in order to sign images of arbitrary provenance with its private keys. This will in turn inevitably lead to the same game of cat-and-mouse we have seen play out with video DRM schemes, where keys are regularly extracted from exploitabl…

I've done this btw. I went for the Pixel Camera app since they were the ones bragging the hardest about their "security". Writeup + PoC should be dropping some time tomorrow. Despite 90+ days from initial report, it remains unpatched. Some proof: https://verify.contentauthenticity.org/?source=https://retr0... I could also paste a privkey + cert chain in here but el goog's lawyers might not like that.

Published: https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/android-c2pa.html
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