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Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

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Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#11

Post by enw »

88840-8855 wrote: post #9
daenz wrote: post #6

An Apple recruiter recently reached out to me. I am in a fortunate position to turn down opportunities, so I made sure to explain that I am not interested in working for a company that is at the forefront of enabling further infringement on people's privacy. If you are able to push back, do it in any small way that you can.

I don't want to be that guy, but for this job there were lining up 300 more people. Nobody except of a tiny group of nerdy guys (including myself, ofc) is against this apple csam move. Just ask your parents or your non-tech friends if it's "ok" to scan people's phones to find those "bad pedophiles" in order to jail then up for the rest of their life. You will be surprised how much support Apple's initiative has in th…

Everyone I asked understood the potential for misuse it introduces.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#13

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

88840-8855 wrote: post #9
daenz wrote: post #6

An Apple recruiter recently reached out to me. I am in a fortunate position to turn down opportunities, so I made sure to explain that I am not interested in working for a company that is at the forefront of enabling further infringement on people's privacy. If you are able to push back, do it in any small way that you can.

I don't want to be that guy, but for this job there were lining up 300 more people. Nobody except of a tiny group of nerdy guys (including myself, ofc) is against this apple csam move. Just ask your parents or your non-tech friends if it's "ok" to scan people's phones to find those "bad pedophiles" in order to jail then up for the rest of their life. You will be surprised how much support Apple's initiative has in th…

> Nobody except of a tiny group of nerdy guys

I think you oversimplify this by a lot. No, Apple reputation won't be severely damaged by this move immediately. But I do believe that those "nerdy guys" did a lot to push the Apple brand, and a big part of that push was due to security and privacy. Until recently Apple was always the "privacy brand" and it was hard to argue against it without going the full FSF route of argumentation.

This is no longer the case and I'm sure this will deal some damage over time, even if it only starts with the "screeching voices" of the (nerdy) minority. Maybe not directly to their revenue, but certainly to their reputation. Nothing wrong with shaving off a bit of the prestige of working at Apple ;)

> I don't want to be that guy, but for this job there were lining up 300 more people.

This is the case for many jobs that don't come close to the holy "working at Apple".

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#14

Post by carom »

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender.

EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defendant had CSAM on 5 different devices. The case was dismissed on a technicality. Never did the EFF mention this. Never did they say they were defending a gynecological doctor who had CSAM on 5 devices. Nope, it was spin city.

Now here we are. Apple has made a privacy preserving anti-virus scanner. It does not upload unknown files as Windows Defender does, it does not scan everything. It scans your photos, for known CSAM images, when you are using iCloud backups, in order to comply with the law that they must scan their hosting services for CSAM. It has a more narrow scope than an anti-virus scanner, and a bigger societal benefit.

We seem to have taken the idea that sometimes bad things are promoted through "think of the children" to mean we must oppose anything involving the protection of children. Our greatest fear in this is the government using a national security letter to search for banned ISIS memes? Let's address that slippery slope when we come to it, and let's note that we do not see Windows Defender or similar doing the same. This is great, I hope it puts a bunch of pedos behind bars.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#15

Post by bathtub365 »

carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

This analogy only works at a superficial, technical level. When a virus scanner finds a virus, it alerts me and I can either quarantine or delete it. It’s up to me to decide if what it’s found is actually a virus, or a false positive.

When Apple's tool thinks it’s found the material it’s looking for, the assumption is that I am a pedophile who collects CSAM.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#16

Post by gfody »

carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

Defender has been killing KMSAuto for years, I wonder what other utils are blacklisted

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#17

Post by skinkestek »

88840-8855 wrote: post #9
daenz wrote: post #6

An Apple recruiter recently reached out to me. I am in a fortunate position to turn down opportunities, so I made sure to explain that I am not interested in working for a company that is at the forefront of enabling further infringement on people's privacy. If you are able to push back, do it in any small way that you can.

I don't want to be that guy, but for this job there were lining up 300 more people. Nobody except of a tiny group of nerdy guys (including myself, ofc) is against this apple csam move. Just ask your parents or your non-tech friends if it's "ok" to scan people's phones to find those "bad pedophiles" in order to jail then up for the rest of their life. You will be surprised how much support Apple's initiative has in th…

> Just ask your parents or your non-tech friends if it's "ok" to scan people's phones to find those "bad pedophiles" in order to jail then up for the rest of their life. You will be surprised how much support Apple's initiative has in the broad public.

My Dad is an old teacher today and was formerly a farmer.

My view is he clearly understands these issues and has done since I was a teenager sometime in the last millenium when I followed him around the farm and we talked about stuff.

Maybe your parents are like what you describe but don't underestimate other peoples parents. They might not agree immediately, but if one is careful many actually aren't unreasonable.

Also everyone: stop this defeatist attitude. Instead of asking leading questions, talk about it calmly and politely.

Just explain that once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos (or otherwise bad guys could just zip the files). And when everything is scanned some people will add terrorist material (i.e. history and chemistry books), other will add extremist material (religious writings), blasphemous material (Christian or Atheist teachings in Saudi Arabia), and other illegal content (Winnie the Pooh, man against tank etc in China).

In the paragraph above there should be something to make everyone from Ateheists through Christians, Muslims, nerds, art lovers and Winnie the Pooh fans see why this is a bad idea.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#18

Post by bitwize »

bathtub365 wrote: post #15
carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

This analogy only works at a superficial, technical level. When a virus scanner finds a virus, it alerts me and I can either quarantine or delete it. It’s up to me to decide if what it’s found is actually a virus, or a false positive. When Apple's tool thinks it’s found the material it’s looking for, the assumption is that I am a pedophile who collects CSAM.

Rather than oppose a measure to protect children because of the fear of a few false positives, why can't you accept the fact that the societal benefit outweighs the potential risk?

A few innocent men might be condemned to rot -- or be murdered -- in prison, but Apple has developed a system that mostly protects your privacy and could save the lives of potentially millions of children around the world. The rights of a few harmed innocents must be balanced against the greater societal good.

(/s in case you were wondering)

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#19

Post by djanogo »

carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

"Virus Scanner" is optional, many ways to disable it, you won't be arrested if you are infected, and government doesn't get to decide what virus is.

Apple scanning is NOT optional, if they have false match or mess up you will be charged/investigated for one of THE most hated crimes in human history, even if you win the case the damage will be irreparable.

You lost your mind if you think governments are not going to setup their own CSAM database hashes with their own "manual review" centers. Apple will not be able to jack shit on what each country considers CSAM.

Re: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

#20

Post by throwaway476268 »

carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

Windows Defender a) tells you exactly what file/which virus triggered it and b) does not report you to the police. And AV that uploads files by itself is not OK either.

Then, either the DB or the algorithms will result in false positives, and you have to trust the reviewers 100% – with your life – to sort them out correctly. From the article at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28110159:

(The false-positive was a fully clothed man holding a monkey -- I think it's a rhesus macaque. No children, no nudity.) Based just on the 5 matches, I am able to theorize that 20% of the cryptographic hashes were likely incorrectly classified.

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