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Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

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Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they’d withdraw it because it’s a total PR nightmare. “Apple knew my 14 year old was receiving sexual material and did nothing about it?!”

It might’ve served the greater good of bringing home to parents that their kids are, in fact, old enough to be sexual beings and suppression of their sexuality just isn’t possible anymore. Maybe that would lead to fewer cases of kids like the one in my classroom yesterday, who had just learned at the ripe old age of 14 in the 9th grade that he was going to be a father. The proud mother will join him in high school ne…

I don’t disagree with you at all but there’s zero chance a public tech company wants to be the face of educating youths about their sexual agency (with material out of their control, at that)

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#272
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>That position says that to achieve privacy, I must tolerate CSAM. I want both privacy and for us not to tolerate CSAM. I want to have more money than Elon Musk..... sometimes life is not fair and we can not always get what we want... Any "backdoor" or "frontdoor" in encryption is a total failure of encryption. That is a immutable truth, more fixed in reality than the speed of light is in physics.

This is the part that's really infuriating to me that I've seen in several comments - this implication that the onus is on programmers or people who work in technology to somehow figure out a way to do this impossible thing, as if nobody has tried. And then they have the gall to say something like "I want both privacy and for us not to tolerate CSAM." without proposing any kind of theoretical solution. If you can't e…

Come on, now. People are entitled to have any opinion at all. Even exceptionally ridiculous ones.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#273
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people who own performance cars take them to racetracks where driving above 100mph is entirely legitimate. So doing this wouldn't affect zero legitimate use.

Not to distract from the topic but vehicles cost orders of magnitude more could be geofenced like $500 rental scooters so the engine computer would recognize the handful of high-speed tracks in the region.

I can’t believe the amount of benevolent authoritarian sentiment in the world.

How many more times do we have to see this movie before people remember how it ends.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, somebody can train an algorithm to create false positives or real csam like pictures, like close enough to trigger the check. Afaik csam is not about exact match but rather close enough match based on a clever hashing algorithm, and in this case, algorithm can be induced into false positives(and by my limitet knowledge, hashing can have collisions) or even true positives but that are fully generated(and afaik…

People DID get into a huge fuss and started building false positive generators in a huge wave. Like they were proving something or pwning apple. Nobody read the bit about an actual human verifying results before any law enforcement would be called in. And outsourcing checking is a huge industry even today[0]. How do you think the huge social media companies keep CSAM, gore etc out of their systems? They're not using…

And outsourcing checking is a huge industry even today[0]. How do you think the huge social media companies keep CSAM, gore etc out of their systems? They're not using Pied Piper's hotdog or not algorithm, that's for sure. - is this done for private data or public? Public data check can be outsourced no prob, not sure abt private.

Nobody read the bit about an actual human verifying results before any law enforcement would be called in. - again, if system can be gamed, human check is useless. Imagine someone will generate 100k false positives, multiply this by 1k ppl and imagine among them there is a real bad person with 10 real csam images and another person with fully generated csam images (like generated porn is a thing now so generating csam like images is possible). How do you think gov will human evaluate 100kk pictures that are triggering the system? Because if they can't, system is useless for this usecase but is still useful for potential gov oppression or company ad targeting

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#275
post #268
post #23

> "Scanning every user’s privately stored iCloud data would create new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit" > "It would also inject the potential for a slippery slope of unintended consequences. Scanning for one type of content, for instance, opens the door for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types." Yes, and it was patently obviou…

>what's your actual problem here? Post Steve Jobs Apple, especially after Scott Forstall and Katie Cotton left. ( Along with a few other top executives) Tim Cook's Apple were left with people of Harmony. These left aligning, DEI focus people have the same characteristic, their way is for the force of good, hence their way is the only way. Same as early Google in the 00s. ( Privacy is a fundamental human right? Active…

Well said

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#276
post #268
post #23

> "Scanning every user’s privately stored iCloud data would create new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit" > "It would also inject the potential for a slippery slope of unintended consequences. Scanning for one type of content, for instance, opens the door for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types." Yes, and it was patently obviou…

>what's your actual problem here? Post Steve Jobs Apple, especially after Scott Forstall and Katie Cotton left. ( Along with a few other top executives) Tim Cook's Apple were left with people of Harmony. These left aligning, DEI focus people have the same characteristic, their way is for the force of good, hence their way is the only way. Same as early Google in the 00s. ( Privacy is a fundamental human right? Active…

> Tim Cook's Apple were left with people of Harmony. These left aligning, DEI focus people have the same characteristic, their way is for the force of good, hence their way is the only way.

Ironic that this opinion is just a reductive and reactionary as the thing that it decries.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#277
> Child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we are committed to breaking the chain of coercion and influence that makes children susceptible to it.

It is amazing that so much counter-cultural spirit remains in Apple. They are probably going to ban likes and other vanity features in all iOS applications, prohibit access to popular media, put “pop stars” into rehabs, and teach their users to disobey (the hardest of all tasks).

A lot of people try really hard not to see that “unusual” abuse of the children is the same as “usual” abuse of everyone. Conveniently, the need for distinction creates “maniacs” that are totally, totally different from “normal people”, and cranks up the sensation level. The discussion of “external” evil then can continue ad infinitum without dealing with status quo of “peaceful, normal life”.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#278
post #193

I'm curious about the new parental control features they announced at the same time as the iCloud photo scanning. My recollection is that when they withdrew the iCloud scanning they also withdrew the new parental controls. I'm curious why they also withdrew those. For those who don't remember the parental control, which were largely overshadowed by the controversy over the cloud stuff, they were to work like this: 1.…

This feature is back in iOS 17, but it doesn’t do notifications and can be enabled per-device. It basically just blurs nsfw photos when they’re on the screen. It’s great when on a business trip and sexting with the SO. You can open your messages in front of your coworkers without having to worry about the messages being open from the night before.

I would be far too worried about false-negatives to do that. Especially as they get rarer, and I'd become more confident about loading up images in public.

Big fan of keeping different forms of content separate.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#279
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-encryption ≠ CSAM scanning That said, I could be wrong about them not scanning currently, I simply don’t have anything authoritative saying either way. Only statements that imply that they currently don’t, nothing more.

I don’t know if they do or not, but like everyone else I assume they are. Seems like it would be a massive legal (and PR!) liability if it was discovered they weren’t.

Why do you think so? AFAIK there is no legal requirement to scan uploaded files.

Re: Apple clarifies why it abandoned plan to detect CSAM in iCloud photos

#280
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to distract from the topic but vehicles cost orders of magnitude more could be geofenced like $500 rental scooters so the engine computer would recognize the handful of high-speed tracks in the region.

I can’t believe the amount of benevolent authoritarian sentiment in the world. How many more times do we have to see this movie before people remember how it ends.

How much hyperbole will we see before people realize that our entire society is built on nuanced positions? Preventing someone from driving irresponsibly is no more tyranny than saying they can’t fire a gun randomly in a neighborhood but have to go to a range.
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