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One Bad Apple

hackerfactor.com

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Re: One Bad Apple

#161

Post by slg »

kbenson wrote: post #147
slg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or the long term impact. There is nearly a 1-to-1 relationship between people who deal in CP and people who abuse children. And they rarely victimize just one child. Nearly 1 in 10 children in the US will be sexually abused before the age of 18. I think we have see…

> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to…

>I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects.

The encryption everywhere mindset of a lot of the tech community is changing the nature of the right to privacy. 50 years ago all these images would have been physical objects. They could have been found by the person developing the photos or the person making copies. They could have been found with a warrant. Now they are all hidden behind E2EE and a secure enclave. To a certain extent the proliferation of technology means people can have an even stronger degree of privacy today than was practical in the past. It is only natural for people to wonder if that shift has changed where the line should be.

Re: One Bad Apple

#163

Post by jodrellblank »

zug_zug wrote: post #140
slg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or the long term impact. There is nearly a 1-to-1 relationship between people who deal in CP and people who abuse children. And they rarely victimize just one child. Nearly 1 in 10 children in the US will be sexually abused before the age of 18. I think we have see…

> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. Is it intangible? 18% of the world lives in China alone. That's more people than the "1/10 who are victims of child abuse*", and I'm sure that 18% will only grow as other authoritarian countries get more technologically advanced. I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to…

What tangible impact in the life of an everyday Chinese citizen are you expecting if Apple offered an E2EE messging and cloud backup service in China? And why do you think the Chinese government would not just ban it and criminalise anyone found using a device which connected to Apple's servers, rendering any benefits moot?

(And why do you think it's morally right, or the responsibility of a foreign private company to try and force anything into China against their laws? Another commenter in a previous thread said the idea was for Apple to refuse to do business there - but that still leads to the question, how would that help anyone?)

Re: One Bad Apple

#164

Post by DethNinja »

There is one particular thing I don’t understand about this Apple policy:

You can buy a SIM card and send images to your enemies/competitors through WhatsApp, and these images automatically gets downloaded to iPhone and potentially uploaded to iCloud.

What precautions are Apple taking against such actions? Or will it be some kind of exploitable implementation where you can easily swat any person you want and let them go to courts to prove their innocence?

Re: One Bad Apple

#165

Post by hnuser123456 »

hackerfactor1 wrote: post #115
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #7

NCMEC has essentially shows that they have zero regard for privacy and called all privacy activists "screeching voices of the minority". At the same time, they're at the center point of a highly opaque, entrenched (often legally mandated) censorhip infrastructure that can and will get accounts shut down irrecoverably and possibly people's homes raided, on questionable data: In one of the previous discussions, I've se…

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

Half of baby boys in the US are sexually assaulted and disfigured right after being born. We need a lot more people fighting against this, it shouldn't be so hard to stop.

Re: One Bad Apple

#166

Post by raincom »

heavyset_go wrote: post #102

As a fan of this blog for longer than I can remember, it's refreshing to hear this particular author's take on this issue, especially considering their background. I'm glad these issues were addressed in a much more elegant way than I would have put them: > Apple's technical whitepaper is overly technical -- and yet doesn't give enough information for someone to confirm the implementation. (I cover this type of paper…

There was a huge brawl of sorts about "a mathematical proof is not the same as a code review" between Neal Koblitz, Alfred Menezes, etc on the one hand and theoretical crypto community on the other hand wrt "provable security". Here is a site: http://anotherlook.ca/

Re: One Bad Apple

#167

Post by [deleted] »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #165
hackerfactor1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

Half of baby boys in the US are sexually assaulted and disfigured right after being born. We need a lot more people fighting against this, it shouldn't be so hard to stop.

[deleted]

Re: One Bad Apple

#168

Post by nullc »

shuckles wrote: post #138
nullc wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The private set intersection is part of the protocol to shield Apple (and their database providers) from accountability, not to protect the users privacy. They could instead send the list of hashes to the device (which they already must trust is faithfully computing the local hash) and just let the device report when there are hits. It would be much more CPU and bandwidth efficient, too. The PSI serves the purpose th…

The list of hashes is confidential. Good luck getting NCMEC to sign off on an implementation which lets clients infer which photos are matching their database. The database is embedded into iOS. There are at least three primary sources which say that users will not receive different databases, and it should be easily confirmed.

I am well aware but that is exactly the point. If Apple can't provide an accountable implementation they should not implement this at all. This should be table stakes that all users should demand, at a minimum.

Otherwise there is no way to detect if the system is abused to target lawful activities.

The fancy crypto in the system isn't there to protect the user, it's to guard the system's implementer(s) against accountability. It protects Apple's privacy, not yours.

Re: One Bad Apple

#169

Post by Sebb767 »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #155
antman wrote: post #18

There are a lot of articles about Apples hadh algorithm and for me they are mostly irrelevant to the main problem. The main problem is that Apple has backdoored my device. More types of bad images or other files will be scanned since now apple does not have plausible deniablity to defend any of ghe government’x requests. In the future a false? positive that happened? to be of a political file that crept in the list c…

> The main problem is that Apple has backdoored my device. Isn't that the shtick with Apple though? That they own the devices you rent and you don't have to worry too much about it. They always had the backdoor in place, they used it for software updates. Now they will also use it for another thing.

> That they own the devices you rent and you don't have to worry too much about it.

You didn't need to worry about it because they did a sufficiently good job at making the choices for you. This is a sign that they stopped doing so.

An appropriate metaphor might be a secretary. They can handle a lot of busy work for you so you don't have to worry about it, but they need access to your calendar, mails etc. to do so. This is not an intrusion as long as they work on your favor. If you suddenly find your mails on the desk of your competitor, though, you might reconsider. That, however, does not mean that the whole idea of a secretary is flawed.

Re: One Bad Apple

#170

Post by kbenson »

slg wrote: post #161
kbenson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to…

>I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects. The encryption everywhere mindset of a lot of the tech community is changing the natu…

In the past these people would have been developing the pictures themselves, and handing them between each other either personally or in some hidden manner using public systems.

Not only has communication become easier, so has surveillance. The only difference now is that it's easier for people not to be aware when their very personal privacy is invaded, and that it can be done to the whole populace at once.

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