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WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

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Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#271

Post by aeternum »

throwaway75 wrote: post #212
Componica wrote: post #164

Imagine taking a photo or have in your gallery a photo a dear leader doesn't want to spread. Ten minutes later there's a knock at your door.

Imagine now a young child being sexually abused in front of a camera for all its years of existence, and that there's no knock on the door.

False dichotomy, how long will it take the predators to learn not to use apple devices as cameras?

Yet the privacy implications will last forever. Once it's implemented, it only takes a rubber-stamp warrant to compel Apple to scan your device for anything the government deems concerning. In fact, no warrant needed in most countries.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#272

Post by sumeno »

romwell wrote: post #258
hansel_der wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ability to scan all images is but a minor firmware update away ios already does on-device ml-based photo categorisation for some time, afaik no way to turn it off.

And now it's pretty much the same thing, but with a SWAT team knocking your door out when the ML messes up. Yay progress.

The SWAT team is knocking on your door after you've uploaded multiple instances of child porn to iCloud and those instances have been verified to actually be child porn by a human. That sounds fine to me.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#273

Post by trangus_1985 »

avianlyric wrote: post #185
RHSeeger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does NOT scan photos that are not uploaded to the cloud, despite being on-device. Yet. Once it's on the device, it's a MUCH smaller step to use it in other ways. It's certainly easier fro governments to argue that they should be able to force it to be used arbitrarily... you know, for the children/terrorists/etc. > And it's important to note the threshold and manual human review system put in place before the au…

> Yet. Once it's on the device, it's a MUCH smaller step to use it in other ways We crossed this bridge a long time ago. Apple already has on device Neural Nets processing everyone one of your on device photos. That’s what powers spotlight search and “photo memories”. Simple fact of the matter is that this isn’t the top of some slippery slope, it’s half way down one. A slope we started down when we figured out how to…

The key difference, of course, is that when the neural network classifies certain types of content, it doesn't forward it to a centralized server "for review"

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#274

Post by nicce »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #213
nicce wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to be aware of what is happening, before you can say that nothing criminal happens. This is where scanning steps in. You can’t turn blind eye.

There is a big jump from reporting criminal activity if you happen to see it, to actively searching it out. It is the jump from police arresting you if they see you smoking a joint to police searching your rooms to make sure you don’t have any cannabis in there.

I read the law and you are correct, there is explicitly mentioned that provider is not required to enforce seeking of CSAM evidence. However, they might be required to comply the demands of NCMEC if they ask to stop redistribution of certain visual depictions by providing hashes. This is were scanning steps in.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#275

Post by strzibny »

f3d46600-b66e wrote: post #151
hughrr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

How does Nokia 215 solve the problem? All messages, including any images, wi now go through the carrier's network (and the recipient's carrier) and be subject to intercept, analysis, and sale by those two entities. I'm not sure how is that better? Wouldn't AOSP/Lineage with Signal installed be better?

Carriers, at least in the Czech Republic, are very restricted in what they can do. Regular phone calls and SMS messages are much more private than anything else out there.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#276

Post by strzibny »

myspy wrote: post #20

What is striking is that a lot of misinformation is spreading around. How it works, what is behind it, what the alternatives could be, and especially what problem it tries to solve. This tweet here gives interesting options to learn more about it https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1424154582372872192?s=20 I have no imagination of the suffering of the kids behind it and it's definitely good that we fight it. But why no…

It isn't. It's the worst one.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#277

Post by Cwizard »

blacktriangle wrote: post #158
hughrr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

Even Apple Music has gone to shit. iTunes keeps managing to get worse and worse, and they're pushing hard to pretend you don't have your own collection to get you to buy into the subscription model. At this point I'm going back to owning a seaparate dedicated music device that is totally divorced from the computer. There's just something intentional about walking over to a CD player or record player, picking out an a…

I recently started looking into buying my music again since 90% of my Apple Music listen time goes to the same generic piano playlist. I figure I could have bought the playlist 10 times over by now... My question is where do you buy music these days? I would like it digitally but I would like to own it (no DRM stuff). Any suggestions on a good store to buy music online? Last time I bought music I did it on itunes...

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#278

Post by emptysongglass »

ryandrake wrote: post #220
RHSeeger wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple can already technically do anything they want to compromise the security of your device in the next software update But they're making it easier for governments to come along and force them to do more. Or even for themselves, but I tend to think they're less of an issue. I know "it's a slippery slope" gets overused... but if you keep taking baby slips down that slope, it only gets slipperier. You should avoid…

Anyone can imagine a hypothetical future feature and oppose it. What if Apple one day replaces all my music with Best of ABBA? That would be terrible, but they haven't done or proposed it, so why argue about it?

Because that's not what's being argued here. Nobody in power cares enough to mass load ABBA onto your phone. But there's very powerful nation states who care, more than they care about anything else, to maintain power at any cost.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#279

Post by pnt12 »

elzbardico wrote: post #250
bitcurious wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like building a tank and saying it’ll only be used for deliveries. Once the infrastructure is in place on every device to detect arbitrary images/messages on the device the switch will be flipped.

iOS is not open source, so, Apple could just deliver the spy payload with another update and probably nobody would ever know if that was the intention. The slippery slope argument simply don't make much sense here (as usual, btw)

You can keep that secret until someone goes to court or has police raid their house over photos that were supposedly end to end encrypted.

Like whatsapp saying their chat is encrypted, is it really? Well, Facebook is trying really hard to losen this up, why don't they just release an update sending them the keys?

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#280

Post by zepto »

sneak wrote: post #263
zepto wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven’t announced this, but they invest a lot in encryption and privacy, and have stated that user privacy is a value of theirs. They have also expressed that they don’t want access to be able to be forced by law enforcement.

Their actions speak louder than their words.

And their actions show that they aren’t likely to do any of the scary things they are being accused of.

That’s the point - people keep claiming some nefarious slippery slope, which is of course in the realm of possibility, but is not actually happening.

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