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The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

piotr.is

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Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#21

Post by gonehome »

samename wrote: post #11
gonehome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

John Gruber is biased because his brand is closely tied to Apple’s brand. Ben Thompson wrote a better review on the topic: https://stratechery.com/2021/apples-mistake/ There’s also the Op-Ed by Matthew Green and Alex Stamos, cyber security researchers: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/apple-iphones-pri...

They have a podcast together called Dithering which is pretty good (but not free) - they're friends.

I think John's article is better than Ben's, but they're both worth reading.

Ben takes the view that unencrypted cloud is the better tradeoff - I'm not sure I agree. I'd rather have my stuff e2ee in the cloud. If the legal requirements around CSAM are the blocker then Apple's approach may be a way to thread the needle to get the best of both worlds.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#22

Post by mistrial9 »

echelon wrote: post #14
gonehome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

Gruber practically (no, perhaps actually ) worships Apple. He'd welcome Big Brother into his house if it came with an Apple logo, and he'd tell us how we were all wrong for distrusting it. He's not the voice to listen to this time, and you should trust him to have your best interests at heart. People are furious with Apple, and there's no reason to discount the completely legitimate concerns they have. This is a slip…

> regulating Apple and Google

this is not strong safety for citizens

source: political history

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#23

Post by josefx »

samename wrote: post #8
querez wrote: post #2

I have a newborn at home, and like every other parent, we take thousands of pictures and videos of our newest family member. We took pictures of the very first baby-bath. So now I have pictures of a naked baby on my phone. Does that mean that pictures of my newborn baby will be uploaded to Apple for further analysis, potentially stored for indefinite time, shared with law enforcement?

Unless those pictures are also in the NCMEC database, there won’t be a match.* * As addressed in the comments below, this isn’t entirely true: the hash looks for visually similar picture and there may be false positives.

As far as I understand they use some kind of hash. I suspect their paper on avoiding hash collisions is right next to the Nobel price wining description of the worlds first working perpetuum mobile.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#25

Post by Spooky23 »

gambiting wrote: post #16
samename wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless those pictures are also in the NCMEC database, there won’t be a match.* * As addressed in the comments below, this isn’t entirely true: the hash looks for visually similar picture and there may be false positives.

Absolutely not true. Apple is using a similarity based hash, so if the NCMEC database contains a picture that's similar to one that you have, it could produce a match even if it's not the same. Apple says this isn't an issue, because a person will look at your picture(yes, a random person somewhere will look at the pictures of your newborn) and judge whether they are pictures of child abuse or not. If this unknown pe…

Where’s your evidence on this?

The NCMEC database and this hashing have been around for like 15 years. I’m curious as to how you know this.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#26

Post by czzr »

roody15 wrote: post #17
czzr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only semi-good reason is it would enable E2E encryption in the cloud while still allowing detection of CSAM.

Except despite this being repeated over and over… Apple has not said anything about E2E

As I said, the design enables this, if Apple chose to do it. It remains to be seen if they will.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#28

Post by lawkwok »

gambiting wrote: post #16
samename wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless those pictures are also in the NCMEC database, there won’t be a match.* * As addressed in the comments below, this isn’t entirely true: the hash looks for visually similar picture and there may be false positives.

Absolutely not true. Apple is using a similarity based hash, so if the NCMEC database contains a picture that's similar to one that you have, it could produce a match even if it's not the same. Apple says this isn't an issue, because a person will look at your picture(yes, a random person somewhere will look at the pictures of your newborn) and judge whether they are pictures of child abuse or not. If this unknown pe…

Keep in mind, this manual review only happens after Apple’s system detects multiple occurrences of matches. Until that point, no human is alerted of matches nor does anyone see how many matches there have been.

In a TechCrunch interview Apple said that they are going after larger targets that are worth NCMEC’s time.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#29

Post by Spooky23 »

gonehome wrote: post #6
querez wrote: post #2

I have a newborn at home, and like every other parent, we take thousands of pictures and videos of our newest family member. We took pictures of the very first baby-bath. So now I have pictures of a naked baby on my phone. Does that mean that pictures of my newborn baby will be uploaded to Apple for further analysis, potentially stored for indefinite time, shared with law enforcement?

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

The EFF wrote a really shitty hit piece deliberately confused the parental management function with the matching against hashes of illegal images. Two different things. From there, a bazillion hot takes followed.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#30

Post by potatoman22 »

josefx wrote: post #23
samename wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless those pictures are also in the NCMEC database, there won’t be a match.* * As addressed in the comments below, this isn’t entirely true: the hash looks for visually similar picture and there may be false positives.

As far as I understand they use some kind of hash. I suspect their paper on avoiding hash collisions is right next to the Nobel price wining description of the worlds first working perpetuum mobile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing
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