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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”

#31

Post by [deleted] »

gonehome wrote: post #21
samename wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#32

Post by vxNsr »

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…

> 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

It's actually worse than this, if the hashes are similar then they'll get sent for review. Your picture could be a picture of an abstract painting[0] which has no visual similarity to anything in the db, but through the magic of crypto is similar and it too will be flagged.

[0] The reason I use this example is because someone posted a bunch of abstract art that was flagged by the algo.

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

#33

Post by acdha »

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…

> 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.

You mean the same Gruber who described the situation as “justifiably, receiving intense scrutiny from privacy advocates.”? The one who said “this slippery-slope argument is a legitimate concern”?

I'm having a hard time reconciling your pat dismissal with the conclusion of his piece which very clearly rejects the position you're attributing to him as grounds for dismissal:

> But the “if” in “if these features work as described and only as described” is the rub. That “if” is the whole ballgame. If you discard alarmism from critics of this initiative who clearly do not understand how the features work, you’re still left with completely legitimate concerns from trustworthy experts about how the features could be abused or misused in the future.

I mean, sure, know where he's coming from but be careful not to let your own loyalties cause you to make a bad-faith interpretation of a nuanced position on a complex issue.

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

#34

Post by stevenicr »

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?

from my current understanding - that does occur with m-soft one-drive which is a default in many systems), but not the hash-looking thing apple is currently proposing.

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

#36

Post by nullc »

czzr wrote: post #12
seph-reed wrote: post #9

I really don't see why the scanning would ever be done on the phone instead of on iCloud if it only affects iCloud images. But I do have guesses why.

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

Apple is free to enable E2E encryption today, without the backdoor.

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

#37

Post by gonehome »

acdha wrote: post #33
echelon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. You mean the same Gruber who described the situation as “justifiably, receiving intense scrutiny from privacy advocates.”? The one who said “this slippery-slope argument is a legitimate concern”? I'm having a hard time reconciling…

Thanks - I couldn't have said it better.

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

#39

Post by gambiting »

Spooky23 wrote: post #25
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Literally Apple said in their own FAQ that they are using a perceptual(similarity based) hash and that their employees will review images when flagged. If that's not good enough(somehow) then even the New York Times article about it says the same thing. What other evidence do you need?

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

#40

Post by AlexandrB »

gonehome wrote: post #21
samename wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One logical conclusion of systems like this is that modifying your device in any "unauthorized" way becomes suspicious because you might be trying to evade CSAM detection. So much for jail-breaking and right to repair!

I think I'd rather have the non-e2ee cloud.

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