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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

paulcarroty wrote: post #129
threatofrain wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many ways Apple is also the world leader on consumer privacy, pushing for changes when the rest of the industry is walking in the opposite direction. Paying with Apple Pay makes you safer because it gives out minimal payment information; the Target fiasco would've been avoided. Sign in with Apple allows users to provide minimal information in signing up for accounts; the idea that casual users should know how to s…

> is also the world leader on consumer privacy is also an early PRISM adopter and well known on cooperation with totalitarian regimes. Censoring Belarus protesters happened several months ago.

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by [deleted] »

idunnoman wrote: post #127
samrolken wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos The system seems designed to make it hard to use it for anything else. How will a hash driven by a visual perception based neural net be used on ZIP files? How can you add ZIP files to your iCloud Photo Library? Sure, Apple could possibly do any number of bad and worse things. It’s a matter of trust that every time we update our iPhones that…

I think the main issue is just that Pandora's box is now open. Once you make this move, you can't go backwards. If you'll indulge me, would you bet $1000 that this style of scanning isn't expanded in the next 3 years to include non-CSAM content?

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by dav43 »

This was the last straw for me. I’ve started looking around at alternatives (iCloud photos, literally no decent alternatives soo ok far to sync 400gb of photos) and have removed iCloud files to sub for just a simple NAS at home with tailscale.

I doubt I’ll buy a new iPhone next.

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

#144

Post by idunnoman »

npteljes wrote: post #79
88840-8855 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you, the general public doesn't give a shit. There will be headlines for a few times, some people change their phones, and that'll be it. The biggest of these movements, I think, is the "de-googling" one. There's a myriad of articles, subreddits, guides, websites even, listing alternatives. And look what happened to Google. Nothing. When the alternative to apple's surveillance is to smash the phone again…

But it doesn't happen over night. The cracks are forming though.

Duckduckgo.com is now at 93,533,476 searches daily.

My non-technical brother just purchased a 3 year Fastmail account and switched from Chrome to Firefox. For added effect, he bought a subscription to Bitwarden. I didn't push him to do any of this, I just told him what I'm using.

His wife refused to put an internet enabled webcam in their new babies room, citing security concerns.

It's happening. But Rome wasn't built in a day.

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

#145

Post by shapefrog »

samrolken wrote: post #99
skinkestek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mille…

> once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos The system seems designed to make it hard to use it for anything else. How will a hash driven by a visual perception based neural net be used on ZIP files? How can you add ZIP files to your iCloud Photo Library? Sure, Apple could possibly do any number of bad and worse things. It’s a matter of trust that every time we update our iPhones that…

> once this system is in place it will be used for anything, not just photos

There is a system in place to make a 'backup' of the entire device to a remote server in place and has been in place on every iphone since October 12, 2011. The entire device is covered; logs, calls, messages, files, photos etc. Pandoras box has been open for 10 years.

It is called iCloud backup. If they want to repurpose an existing function against the expressed permission of the user to exfiltrate their data and use it against them, why not just use that instead?

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

#146

Post by GistNoesis »

occamrazor wrote: post #104

There is another information leak that I have not seen mentioned in any news report. If an image hash matches the CSAM database, then it is sent to Apple, encrypted and with the “safety voucher”. Apple can decrypt the image only if they receive enough vouchers, and so they claim that they do not have any information about the user in case the number of vouchers is lower than the threshold. But actually they do have i…

Apple talk about in their technical documentation https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

page 9 : Synthetic Match Vouchers

They generate false positives themselves to hide their knowledge of the true number of collisions.

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

#147

Post by avh02 »

Erwin wrote: post #121
hamburgerwah wrote: post #4

Guarantee they will begin scanning your devices for unauthorized copyright material very soon if they have not already.

For many years, anti-virus vendors were able to do that. Why haven't those vendors been already co-opted by governments (Kaspersky on the Russian side, Microsoft in the USA side) into scanning for illegal, copyrighted or secret material and reporting on it? Even open source products like ClamAV rely on a opaque database of virus strings.

HTTPS and E2EE were not common many years ago

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

#148

Post by idunnoman »

koopmenistan wrote: post #139
laserlight wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just because there are sick and terrible people, we should give away our freedom and privacy?

It’s quite telling that my story described graphic sexual assault of children and you immediately forgot about the victims and made it about the perpetrators. Probably because if you had instead asked: “So, just because children are being raped, we should give away our freedom and privacy?” ...your ground wouldn’t be as perceptibly firm, even though it’s exactly the question you’re asking. I’m also not going to respo…

It's not telling at all.

Not a single person arguing against this idea is being obtuse or insensitive to the very real problem of CSAM.

This is why you are getting the eye roll induced "think of the children" arguments. Yes, we get it. We agree. It's bad. We don't like it either.

But this isn't going to solve anything and IS going to break security and privacy.

It's a bad trade.

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

#149

Post by tsherr »

gabrielblack wrote: post #96

My opinion about: 1. Every pedophile know about the existence of this system, so I don't think it will be useful to fight those monster, maybe only marginally; 2. Anyway, is that legal ? Even if some crazy store material on his Apple hardware isn't that illegal search non usable in law courts ? 3. Child abuse is often used as Trojan horse to introduce questionable practice. What if: - the system is used to looking fo…

As I understand it, in Canada, having a picture of your child in a bathtub is child porn. So I can see this going horribly wrong.

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

#150

Post by xvector »

paulcarroty wrote: post #129
threatofrain wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many ways Apple is also the world leader on consumer privacy, pushing for changes when the rest of the industry is walking in the opposite direction. Paying with Apple Pay makes you safer because it gives out minimal payment information; the Target fiasco would've been avoided. Sign in with Apple allows users to provide minimal information in signing up for accounts; the idea that casual users should know how to s…

> is also the world leader on consumer privacy is also an early PRISM adopter and well known on cooperation with totalitarian regimes. Censoring Belarus protesters happened several months ago.

Apple also dropped the idea of E2EE iCloud backups at the FBI's behest. They've also handed over iCloud in China to GCBD creating an incredible apparatus for the surveillance state.

And now we are supposed to believe they can resist adding a hash to a list if the government asks? Are they serious?

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