Live data from Hacker News

Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

ft.com

131–140 of 390 posts

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#131
post #3

https://towardsdatascience.com/black-box-attacks-on-perceptu... I mean, who's to say that my hash is actually what they think it is... ...and if it's not uploaded to iCloud for someone to manually review what the image is, is that going to be enough to get a search warrant for my phone? "AUSA SOMEONE: But, Your Honor, The Defendant's phone has an image that matched a hash of a CSAM picture!" "DEFENDANT: I'm not going…

Fifth amendment holds that the state can't compel someone to give up their password.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#132
post #124

I really don't see how this is going to end well, there could be perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children doing perfectly normal things that kids do. Like a kid running butt naked around the house, or a photo of something like a rash that is sent to a nurse friend for advice on what it is etc. I'm all for protecting children from being abused, but how are they going to filter what is normal…

Don't worry, AI is very good at these things and never makes mistakes. It is so advanced it even understands nuance and complex communication mechanisms like sarcasm in text, even if it's only a single sentence to contrast! It will be able to know exactly the context of each image and it will affect only the sickos. We're also working on watching your face through the camera to see your true expression when viewing t…

Yep. And if you dont like it, build your own iPhone.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#133

If it matches, am I guilty until found innocent? I have no illicit images, but false positives are always going to be a problem and even at sub-1% rates if you're scanning literally every image stored on an iOS devices that could still be thousands of wrong matches. If I lose the false-positive lottery, am I going to have the police calling and have my mugshot in the evening news for "CP on their device" in particula…

"I have no illicit images, but false positives are always going to be a problem"

Or someone that doesn't like you can MMS/iMessage/e-mail you images that match PhotoDNA image hashes. Maybe even in a way where the images don't appear to be anything alarming.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Images are submitted by over 1400 organizations[0] like the FBI and NCMEC, although the inner-workings of the database aren’t public and I can’t find a source or confirmation of every image actually being human-verified. The closest is how the "Child Victim Identification Program" helps identify victims in these images. 0: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/csam#:~:text=Electroni... (ctrl-f "1,400")

Of all of the discussion, my brain has only keyed in on the child porn aspect. It just now clicked that if a missing kid is in a photo (even if not porn), it could help ID the missing kid. Some runaway at the age of 13 gets photographed in a group of other kids just doing teenager things. So even if not running hashes against known porn, it could still be doing facial recognition. Wonder what kind of implications tha…

Think of the children will erode everything. It is magic.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#135
post #92
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes. Probably similar to PhotoDNA[0]. There can be false positives, but AFAIK the algorithms are not trying to identify naked children, but comparing 2 similar image hashes. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

I bet(or know...) the people who verify those images don't get paid anywhere near enough.

I believe that US federal agents tasked with investigating these kinds of crimes typically only do so for a limited time.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#136
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes. Probably similar to PhotoDNA[0]. There can be false positives, but AFAIK the algorithms are not trying to identify naked children, but comparing 2 similar image hashes. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

> They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes I didn't get that from the article, could you point to a source on this?

Directly said in the article:

“Users’ photos, converted into a string of numbers through a process known as “hashing”, will be compared with those on a database of known images of child sexual abuse.”

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#137
post #23

I really don't see how this is going to end well, there could be perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children doing perfectly normal things that kids do. Like a kid running butt naked around the house, or a photo of something like a rash that is sent to a nurse friend for advice on what it is etc. I'm all for protecting children from being abused, but how are they going to filter what is normal…

What will happen is that criminals who actually had bad intent will move off of the platform and the ones who get the brunt of the blame are the innocent who had no ill intent.

Just lobby Congress to make it illegal to switch to Android. Problem solved.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#138
post #129
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will happen is that criminals who actually had bad intent will move off of the platform and the ones who get the brunt of the blame are the innocent who had no ill intent.

I actually do want a feature where I will get a notification on my phone if someone nearby has snagged a picture of me or my kids. A creepy shopper at Costco once took a pic of my 2-year-old. They pretended to be working up a conversation with my little kid meanwhile they had their phone at hip-level to snag a shot. I even confronted them about it. The Costco employees couldn't do a thing. Phones with cameras are use…

That's silly. You're in public. Your photo (and your kids') are being taken all the time.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > The automated system would proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected, who would then contact law enforcement if the material can be verified. The scheme will initially roll out only in the US. This is dystopian and needs to be opposed, not applauded.

This is how every single cloud service has worked for a decade. You’ll need to elaborate on how, exactly, you believe it’s dystopian. The article is clearly wrong, because Apple cannot know which jurisdiction to forward a report to. That is NCMEC’s responsibility.

This is on your device, not hosted by a third party (and therefore not a third party liability). Kind of like if your microwave was checking that there wasn't any illegal activity happening in your home and phoning home if it has a suspicion.

As others mentioned, privacy erosion only goes one way. This is a frontier being breached, i.e. searching your physical device without a warrant, and as usual in the name of CP (the alternative typical pretext being terrorism). It won't take very long before this gets extended to any illegal activity. Gay dating was an illegal activity until not so long ago. This sort of chinese-style monitoring is not desirable in any way, and I find it appalling that Apple seems to want to be the sponsor.

Re: Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guilty until proven innocent type of program But this software doesn’t make arrests? A comparison would be police asking for what cellphones were in an area. There should be a lot of due process that happens before anything comes of this. I imagine police won’t look into one photo, they would want to match more than one. I agree though, the scary part might be how to clear your name after an overreaction occurs, si…

Apple will be scanning the photos on your phone and cross-referencing them against photoDNA for a government database. You don't see how that's not a huge potential for abuse right there? The government decides the images. And you best believe they're not going to release the images publicly to verify what's in the db, for [many] obvious reasons. This is a horrible idea, a massive regression in Apple (and therefore t…

The article says Apple will have your phone generate safety vouchers for images you upload into iCloud, and when enough of those vouchers are for photos that match a government-supplied blacklist, they will access the photos you’ve given them. How is this worse than what Google Photos and Facebook already do?
Post reply on HN