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

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

#231

Post by lixtra »

FabHK wrote: post #159
Dah00n wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The hashes are hard coded into each iOS release Do you have a source on that? Since it is illegal to share those hashes in any way or form. Even people working with photo forensic and big photo sharing sites cannot get access to them. I very much doubt Apple can incorporate them into the iOS release without breaking multiple laws. The hashes themselves can easily be reversed to (bad quality) pictures so having the h…

> Since it is illegal to share those hashes in any way or form Source? (The link you provide does not claim that, as far as I could see.)

The article claims that photoDNA is reversible to 26x26 images and claims that the hashes are therefore CP.

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

#232

Post by farmerstan »

benlivengood wrote: post #174
aczerepinski wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing hashes reminds me of this announcement from a few years ago that Google had produced a SHA1 collision: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-first-sha... Can you imagine the chaos of a successful collision matching some explicit material being sent as a prank or targeted attack?

No chaos. The photos would be reported, reviewers would say "that's weird" since the false positive was obviously harmless and the industry would eventually switch to a different hash method while ignoring the false positives generated by the collision. If there were a flood of false positive images being produced the agencies would work faster to come up with a new solution, not perform mass arrests.

Right. Kind of like how copyright violations on YouTube are double checked and the humans say “that’s weird” and deny the request. Or maybe they will just report everything and let the law work everything out. If they’re innocent they have nothing to worry about, right?

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

#233

Post by robertoandred »

farmerstan wrote: post #219

Whoever controls the hash list controls your phone from now on. Period. End of sentence. Apple has not disclosed who gets to add new hashes to the list of CSAM hashes or what the process is to add new hashes. Do different countries have different hash lists? Because if the FBI or CIA or CCCP or KSA wants to arrest you, all they need to do is inject the hash of one of your photos into the “list” and you will be flagge…

What on earth? To clear up some of your false statements:

- You need several hash matches to trigger a review

- The reviewer can of course see what triggered the review (the visual derivative)

- The reviewer would see that the matches are not CSAM, and instead of the report being sent on to the NCMEC it would instead start an investigation of why these innocuous images were matched in the first place

- If the CIA or FBI or CCP wanted to arrest you, there are much easier ways than this

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

#234

Post by akersten »

fortenforge wrote: post #137
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?

Lots of people responding to this seem to not understand how perceptual hashing / PhotoDNA works. It's true that they're not cryptographic hashes, but the false positive rate is vanishingly small. Apple claims it's 1 in a trillion [1], but suppose that you don't believe them. Google and Facebook and Microsoft are all using PhotoDNA (or equivalent perceptual hashing schemes) right now. Have you heard of some massive i…

This is all behind a huge, neon-flashing-lights asterisk of "for now."

How long until they try to machine-learn based on that database? The door's open.

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

#235

Post by darkhorn »

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?

Just don't critisize your government in any way. Otherwise they will find anything illegal to arrest you like from crossing street in red to I don't know what. You will be fine becouse there is a legal system and no one can put you into jail for crimes you have not commited. Just look at Julian Assange or random Joe in Belarus who was arrested for wearing red white hat. The justice system always is in the innocent people's side, without exception.

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

#236

Post by xg15 »

> In the world of computer security this technology has a name, it’s called “a backdoor.” A well-documented and well-intended backdoor, but still a backdoor. Installed and enabled by default on millions of devices around the world.

Sorry, but that backdoor has already existed for a long time. It exists in every IoT gadget, smart car, smart speaker, smart home and other connected device that phones home to its vendor and can receive arbitrary firmware updates. It exists for every app and every desktop software that will automatically update itself in the name of "evergreen software".

This is just the first time someone is publicly making use of the backdoor.

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

#237

Post by FabHK »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #154
Spooky23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The EFF article refers to a "classifier", not just matching hashes. So, three different things. I don't know how much you know about them, but this is what the EFF's role is. Privacy can't be curtailed uncritically or unchecked. We don't have a way to guarantee that Apple won't change how this works in the future, that it will never be compromised domestically or internationally, or that children and families won't b…

> When you take a picture of your penis to send to your doctor and it accidentally syncs to iCloud and trips the CSAM alarms, will you get a warning before police appear?

You would have to have not one, but N perceptual hash collisions with existing CSAM (where N is chosen such that the overall probability of that happening is vanishingly small). Then, there'd be human review. But no, presumably there won't be a warning.

> Will there be a whitelist to allow certain people to "opt-out for (national) security reasons" that regular people won't have access to or be able to confirm?

Everyone can opt out (for now at least) by disabling iCloud syncing. (You could sync to another cloud service, but chances are that then they're scanned there.)

Beyond that, it would be good if Apple built it verifiably identically across jurisdictions. (If you think that Apple creates malicious iOS updates targeting specific people, then you have more to worry about than this new feature.)

> How can we know this won't be used against journalists and opponents of those in power, like every other invasive system that purports to provide "authorized governments with technology that helps them combat terror and crime[1]".

By ensuring that a) the used hash database is verifiably identical across jurisdictions, and b) notifications go only to that US NGO. Would be nice if Apple could open source that part of the iOS, but unless one could somehow verify that that's what's running on the device, I don't see how that would alleviate the concerns.

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

#238

Post by tehjoker »

I'd like to point out that the government (and by proxy Apple, companies care even less) doesn't give a shit about children. They are advocating a policy of mass infection, they didn't give a crap about children in Flint drinking toxic water, etc. If they cared about kids, they would care a lot about thinks that physically hurt and kill them. This means we don't have to take their stated reasons for this at all seriously.

Apple, if you care about children, you'll pay more than your legally owed taxes and push for improved access to education, nutrition, and free child care. They're only interested in the avenue that coincidentally dramatically increases their surveillance powers and the powers of the government.

Weird, can't figure that one out.

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

#239

Post by gonehome »

drenvuk wrote: post #208
gonehome wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the one thumbnail of the matching hash? Just to make sure there isn't a (they argue one in a trillion, but I don't know if I buy that) false positive. That's if there is enough matches to trigger the threshold in the first place, otherwise nothing is sent (even if there are matches below that threshold). Alternatively this is running on all unencrypted photos you have in iCloud and all matches are known immed…

I really don't understand how you're arguing as if you don't see the bigger picture. Is this is a subtle troll? They are now scanning on the device. Regardless of how limited it is in its current capabilities, those capabilities are only prevented from being expanded by Apple's current policies. The policies enacted by the next incoming exec who isn't beholden to the promises of the previous can easily erode whatever…

Frankly the distinction seems arbitrary to me.

This is a policy issue in both cases - policy can change (for the worse) in both cases.

The comparison is about unencrypted photos in iCloud or this other method that reveals less user information by running some parts of it client side (only if iCloud photos are enabled) and could allow for e2e encryption on the server.

The argument of "but they could change it to be worse!" applies to any implementation and any policy. That's why the specifics matter imo. Apple controls the OS and distribution, governments control the legislation (which is hopefully correlated with the public interest). The existing 'megacorp' model doesn't have a non-policy defense to this kind of thing so it's always an argument about policy. In this specific implementation I think the policy is fine. That may not hold if they try to use it for something else (at which point it's worth fighting against whatever that bad policy is).

Apple's good solutions to the CSAM problem (which I think thread the needle for a decent compromise) could prevent worse policy from the government later (attempts to ban encryption or require key escrow like in the 90s).

Basically what I said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28162418

This implementation as it stands reveals less information about end users and could allow them to enable e2ee for photos on their servers - that's a better outcome than the current state (imo).

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

#240

Post by fortenforge »

akersten wrote: post #234
fortenforge wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people responding to this seem to not understand how perceptual hashing / PhotoDNA works. It's true that they're not cryptographic hashes, but the false positive rate is vanishingly small. Apple claims it's 1 in a trillion [1], but suppose that you don't believe them. Google and Facebook and Microsoft are all using PhotoDNA (or equivalent perceptual hashing schemes) right now. Have you heard of some massive i…

This is all behind a huge, neon-flashing-lights asterisk of "for now." How long until they try to machine-learn based on that database? The door's open.

Apple previously stored photo backups in their cloud in cleartext. The door was always open. At some point if you are providing your personal images for Apple to store, you have to exercise a modicum of trust in the company. If you don't trust Apple, I suggest you don't use an iPhone.
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