WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan • Hacker News Board

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#151

Post by f3d46600-b66e » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #6

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

How does Nokia 215 solve the problem? All messages, including any images, wi now go through the carrier's network (and the recipient's carrier) and be subject to intercept, analysis, and sale by those two entities.

I'm not sure how is that better?

Wouldn't AOSP/Lineage with Signal installed be better?

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#152

Post by RHSeeger » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

treesknees wrote: post #147

RHSeeger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does NOT scan photos that are not uploaded to the cloud, despite being on-device. Yet. Once it's on the device, it's a MUCH smaller step to use it in other ways. It's certainly easier fro governments to argue that they should be able to force it to be used arbitrarily... you know, for the children/terrorists/etc. > And it's important to note the threshold and manual human review system put in place before the au…

> Yet I keep seeing this jump. There's no evidence this will happen. Apple can already technically do anything they want to compromise the security of your device in the next software update, so could Google or Samsung or any other company. But when in Apple's history have they done this? There is zero reason to believe this is the next step other than speculation and fear mongering.

> Apple can already technically do anything they want to compromise the security of your device in the next software update

But they're making it easier for governments to come along and force them to do more. Or even for themselves, but I tend to think they're less of an issue.

I know "it's a slippery slope" gets overused... but if you keep taking baby slips down that slope, it only gets slipperier. You should avoid taking as many of those steps as possible.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#153

Post by okokwhatever » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

throwaway75 wrote: post #107

Sometimes there are more important things than maintaining individual privacy and this is clearly one of them. Finding and protecting even a few children from becoming victims of pornography is clearly something that is well worth my not having 100% privacy. Even knowing that there might be false alarms. Despite what the strident discourse has been, individual privacy is not some sancrosanct idea that cannot ever be…

No sir, not at all. The basement of all individual rights is freedom. If police can't do their job in a proper way we shouldn't abandone our right to not be monitored in our private life to supplant their ineffectiveness.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#154

Post by f3d46600-b66e » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #6

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

On a DSLR front: are there now DSLR/cameras that do the type of "computational photography" that pixel or iphones are doing?

Not having to edit the pictures is a huge plus, and JPG files in Nikon, even with dynamic range on, are pretty mediocre compared to Pixel phone.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#155

Post by nicce » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #150

nicce wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every cloud infrastructure holder is required for doing that. Closing an eye does not take a duty away. You must be actively pursuing that. Encryption would start flood of new laws https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2011-title18/USCO...

Those laws do not exist (yet?). You can’t justify this as a compliance measure for legislation that does not exist.

Yes, but current laws also restrict storing images as E2E encrypted, so there is dilemma?

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#156

Post by ianmiers » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

siscia wrote: post #35

So I was ignorant on the issue and completely against the approach of Apple. Then HN taught me that any company storing images on their infrastructure in the US must report pedophilic images to the US government. At this point, the approach taken by Apple seems like the best one to me, if you don't want to store pictures in clear on your servers. What other technical approach are people advocating for? Another point…

Apple's banned image reporting wont stay iCloud only.iMessage is next. Maybe all data on your phone. 1) phone scanning is overkill for pics already on their servers. You don't build this and take the PR flack for something you can already do server side 2) Even if it's somehow not Apple's plan, they will be forced to use it on iMessage. Congress has been trying to for years.See the EARN IT act[0].

Apple just erroneously said "it's safe" despite the fact that it clearly can be abused.

[0] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/03/06/earn-it-...

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#157

Post by unionpivo » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

nicce wrote: post #127

unionpivo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it probably took additional code to only scan pictures that are synced to iCloud. Probably not monumental task, to change to scan every picture.

I have to remind again, that iOS is a blackbox, closed source system. All this speculation applies also for a moment before they added anything. They might have had this code ready for years already. All we have is what they say. It is already very trivial to scan everything on on your device and send that metadata. Few lines of code. At the moment when they say about scanning everything in phone publicly without opt…

The difference is now every government knows too.

They can't pretend they don't have the capability.

And if they can scan for CP, why can't they scan for "whatever" else instead.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#158

Post by blacktriangle » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #6

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

Even Apple Music has gone to shit. iTunes keeps managing to get worse and worse, and they're pushing hard to pretend you don't have your own collection to get you to buy into the subscription model.

At this point I'm going back to owning a seaparate dedicated music device that is totally divorced from the computer. There's just something intentional about walking over to a CD player or record player, picking out an album, and putting it on compared to mindlessly browing Spotify playlists.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#159

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #72

Fnoord wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's like three major options if you want to run a FOSS smartphone, and I'll sum them up. Pinephone: Cheap. The device isn't very powerful. With people coming from an Apple device, that's a problem. Fairphone 3: Fair. The hardware isn't very powerful either, and the device is more expensive, but the product is better for the people who assembled it and the environment. Librem 5: Open. Even more expensive than Fair…

"Fairphone" It is nice the the fairphone trys to be nice and fair, but I would rather have a focus of a actual open phone under my control and they do not deliver this (not to blame them, the issue is hard). Fixing the global exploitive economy is a different issue and trying to solve everything at once is not working usually. "Librem 5" How useful is a microphone killswitch, if there is no killswitch for the speaker…

> if there is no killswitch for the speakers, that can be used as a microphone, too?

Speakers can be wired to do that, but this is not something you can change with software.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#160

Post by hughrr » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

f3d46600-b66e wrote: post #154

hughrr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

On a DSLR front: are there now DSLR/cameras that do the type of "computational photography" that pixel or iphones are doing? Not having to edit the pictures is a huge plus, and JPG files in Nikon, even with dynamic range on, are pretty mediocre compared to Pixel phone.

You can post process that from RAW if you want to. I generally want people to not fuck around with my images before I get to do it though if I'm honest.