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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

#151

Post by sharikous »

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?

Not in three years, but in 10 I am almost sure it will. After making it completely impossible for a citizen to survive without a device.

They are winning the battle in incremental steps, they have no need to rush.

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

#152

Post by occamrazor »

GistNoesis wrote: post #146
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.

Thanks, I missed that paragraph.

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

#153

Post by koopmenistan »

idunnoman wrote: post #148
koopmenistan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> Pushing Spyware Engine is literally abuse to all people including children and it's much worse then any problem they would claim to fight. Even if you believe them.

>> It is an attempt to legalize such Spyware Engine installation. Nothing more. The story is just to sell this move using emotional response from naive people.

>> Those people should be educated what the real abuse is and they should teach their children to recognize it because abuse by Apple is already there and it is much worse then the problem they claim are trying to solve.

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

Not a single one, huh? Are you certain? I made sure to emphasize the six times lovelyviking dismissed or minimized child sexual abuse as a concern for you in case you somehow missed all six of them the first time through. Which is weird, too, because they repeated the same point a couple times to make sure we heard them loud and clear.

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

#154

Post by xvector »

gefhfff wrote: post #46
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No nerdy guy pushes apple for security and privacy. It is all closed source with data leaking by default - partially not possible to turn off. They rather push devices like librem 5, Pine phone, Fairphone with /e/os, but not Apple...

You can't seriously be recommending a Librem 5 for mom and grandpa? That's absurd. The thing barely functions.

As the parent commenter noted, Apple was really one of the only reasonable recommendations from privacy-oriented nerdy guys to their friends and family, if they didn't want to go the out-of-touch-with-reality route by recommending the phones you listed.

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

#155

Post by comeonseriously »

threatofrain wrote: post #108
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.

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…

Only because they found a common enemy in the likes of FB, etc al. If privacy didn't benefit them in some way, they wouldn't care.

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

#156

Post by xvector »

idunnoman wrote: post #138
oarsinsync wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I do believe that those "nerdy guys" did a lot to push the Apple brand We sure did. We're also ignoring all the celebrities that helped to push the Apple brand (remember the iPod and it's terrible but iconic white headphones?). Popular culture has a much stronger influence on Apple's standing with non-nerds, than nerds do. We like to think we're important, and that people value our opinions, but increasingly th…

I dunno. Isn't this how Chrome became so popular, and Firefox before that? "We" are the people that support, recommend and install this stuff. Hardware just has longer life cycles.

Not to mention, the "nerdy guys" play a big role in deciding what hardware your company buys, what OS and applications are installed, etc. Friends and family reach out to the nerdy guys for recommendations, etc. The impact is slow but massive.

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

#157

Post by 05 »

simondotau wrote: post #115
unityByFreedom wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why wouldn't that same whisteblower complain if Apple expands their CSAM detection system to other use cases ? I assume Apple could make it very difficult, if not impossible, to detect what they're searching for when they are using hashes created and transmitted by all their own hardware and software. But, even if they did publish the hashes and those were somehow verified in free-press countries by a trusted 3r…

> I assume Apple could make it very difficult, if not impossible, to detect what they're searching for when they are using hashes created and transmitted by all their own hardware and software. Correct, it would be easy to slip in additional hashes without the team knowing what those hashes represented. HOWEVER, as soon as these additional hashes match something, the first person to see them will be an Apple employee…

Very naive to assume those hashes won't be treated differently on the backend. The most logical thing would be to send those directly to the CPC/NSA, since Apple's human review is clearly a smokescreen at the point where non-CP hashes are added.

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

#158

Post by luckyandroid »

simonh wrote: post #123
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…

Of course it would be possible to implement content search, profiling and reporting mechanisms for such content, but this seems to be a singularly bad platform for that sort of search. The image profiles are part of the OS so there's no mechanism to deliver image profiles separately for different countries. Also when the threshold number of matching images is reached, the matches are reported to a manual reviewer at…

>Back in the 90s it was virus checking (Do you trust the AV company? What if they were bribed by the content companies?), full device indexing and search (Do you trust the OS vendor? What if they're in league with the government?)

These are examples of companies choosing to do something as a selling point of their software as a benefit to the end user, and people worrying that it could aid the government down the line if they change their mind.

Apple's content review change is explicitly FOR reporting people to police in a way that can be expanded beyond it's currently set purpose (child porn) later.

>I'm very surprised this didn't blow up when Apple implemented ubiquitous image text recognition.

I'm personally not a fan of that stuff anyway, but personally if it's only my local device I don't tend to care about image recognition, it's only when it involves communicating information from MY hardware to THEIR servers that I get antsy.

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

#159

Post by cageface »

nicce wrote: post #125
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…

There is strong evidence, that E2EE backups are coming. How about hold our horses until actual release of iOS 15?

What is the evidence for this?

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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