Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 323 posts

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

#261

Post by merpnderp »

zionic wrote: post #255
threatofrain wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple failed to deploy E2EE iCloud because the FBI asked nicely (with a wrench in hand probably). The leading narrative on /r/apple is now that "oh this invasive spyware has to exist so that apple can do E2EE iCloud", which is nonsense. If they had done their job and deployed E2EE iCloud we wouldn't "need" this system in the first place. It's a classic government pattern: 1. Create the problem (blocking E2EE such tha…

Steve Jobs would have told the FBI he was doing E2EE and he'd see them in court.

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

#262

Post by zionic »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #80

I don't get people. It's not fucking E2E encryption when it is being scanned. That's just trying to change what encryption means.

They are also redefining "Privacy" to mean "only you, the person you're talking to, and Apple know".

/r/apple has a large number of robots suggesting "on device scanning is more private!"

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

#263

Post by strofcon »

GeekyBear wrote: post #215
adventured wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Gmail files that get scanned are contained on Google's property, in their cloud, on their machines. Entirely different context. It's the difference between the USPS coming into my home without permission and going through my documents, records, mail - versus if I send mail through their system and they track it,…

> Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. Nothing else is scanned. Scanning the files on server, the way Google and Microsoft do it, means that false positive data is lying around where it can be subpoenaed and used to incriminate innocent people. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizon…

Your whatboutism is profoundly unhelpful here.

Yes, other companies are doing bad things, and they should be stopped.

Doesn't by any stretch of the imagination mean that Apple should be allowed to do something even worse.

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

#264

Post by newbamboo »

larschdk wrote: post #136
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…

5. The system can easily be abused by governments or malicious actors to frame innocent people. People merely suspected of keeping such images are de-facto punished and stripped of rights even without standing before a judge or getting a conviction.

This is my primary concern. It will become a weapon to destroy the lives of anyone who is targeted by someone with middling or better hacking skills. A sort of digital “swatting” that makes using apple products a no go for anyone with cyber-enemies (one can’t opt out of Apple ID and apply security updates).

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

#265

Post by merpnderp »

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.

If they don't keep track of which matches are false positives, wouldn't it be possible to be extremely unlucky and pass the threshold with nothing but false positives generated by Apple?

This makes things worse not better.

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

#266

Post by nicce »

bathtub365 wrote: post #15
carom wrote: post #14

This is effectively a virus scanner. Files are hashed (in a fancy way), compared against known hashes, and matches are reported. Your Windows desktop has Windows Defender. EFF lost a lot of credence to me after the Best Buy case. They made this big fuss about how Geek Squad employees were agents of the state for reporting CSAM on a customers hard drive, while doing a requested file recovery. When searched, the defend…

This analogy only works at a superficial, technical level. When a virus scanner finds a virus, it alerts me and I can either quarantine or delete it. It’s up to me to decide if what it’s found is actually a virus, or a false positive. When Apple's tool thinks it’s found the material it’s looking for, the assumption is that I am a pedophile who collects CSAM.

> When a virus scanner finds a virus, it alerts me and I can either quarantine or delete it. It’s up to me to decide if what it’s found is actually a virus, or a false positive.

This is also a bit superficial. If you are breaking the law, you can't decide by yourself whether you are breaking the law of not. That is up to the judge.

While you can quarantine or delete the virus, AV vendor is still getting all the stats. It is not maybe including PhotoDNA matches but cryptographical hashes are included for identical match. It is still perfectly legal to inform CSAM content against these matches, and we can't be sure if that has been made or not.

In case of Windows Defender, what if automatic sample submission is enabled? Uploading and storing a file makes Windows as cloud-provider for this specific scenario, and is required by law to report CSAM content.

Who knows if PhotoDNA is also applied into this content, but that hasn't been told yet? It is legal, there is no need to to tell that.

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

#267

Post by FridayoLeary »

arvinsim wrote: post #241

If Apple thinks this is a very good feature that will help CP victims, why wasn't it headlined in WWDC?

What they did say was that privacy is a human right. So they are, by their own confession, abusing human rights, albeit to protect another human right. But the irony is striking.

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

#268

Post by newbamboo »

3pt14159 wrote: post #166
tsherr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, in Canada, having a picture of your child in a bathtub is child porn. So I can see this going horribly wrong.

Citation needed. Many parents here have photos of their kids in bathtubs.

Selective enforcement should concern anyone who cares about civil liberties.

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

#270

Post by strofcon »

nicce wrote: post #225
jackTheMan wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is possible in other ways as well today, this is a black pattern of going down step-by-step. When it will be when people will say no? These are all small steps only.

> this is a black pattern of going down step-by-step. This is very hard to argue. Functionality like spying all your files is trivial to add, and technically we haven't really moved anywhere. "Now technology is there", is not valid argument since it has always been there. Scanning your files and send some metadata is the feature which requires least effort to make from everything that Apple has released. It might fee…

And Google's entire Code of Conduct used to be "Don't Be Evil". Things change. Money drives all decisions, at all levels above the visceral.

Unfortunately, historical precedent for any given business entity provides absolute zero evidence of probable future behavior. :-\

Post reply on HN