The user says that with ProShot it worked, it would be nice if those photos were provided so that we could look for differences.
The user supplied a link with a number of sample images, including the photo taken with ProShot at the bottom.
Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#32I doubt this is a censorship, or a anti-counterfitting feature. It's most likely something wrong with the codec used to display images, possibly 10-bit heif photos are being interpreted as 8-bit jpegs. See other people getting the exact same shade of green in random photos: https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/912123-photos... https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/4p2ief/pictures_on... https://forums.on…
When you click OPs link you get to the reddit thread where as an explanation they cite your very comment here on HN. And we've come full circle.
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#33I’ll bet someone slapped a common QR code library in there that also matches other barcode types, made a few modifications and didn’t test the unusual types.
The envelope contains no barcode :-)
They have:
- The strings "Entgeltfrei im Bereich der Deutschen Post" (free shipment in Germany), "Wahlbrief" (postal voting document), "An "
- The name of the manufacturer and an order number for the envelope (which is identical on all envelopes), "Fachverlag Jüngling-gbb, Bestell-Nr 109 024 9319 099"
- Two fields that are filled out by hand (with a pen) by the election office before sending them to the citizen, "Wahlscheinnummer" (serial number) and "Stimmbezirk" (polling station)
They have not changed in the last... 30 years? :-)
I don't think any of that could trigger a barcode library :-D
EDIT: This is not true for all postal voting documents in all German municipalities, every municipality can order their own postal documents from several sources (or even print their own), but the specific envelope with the "green image problem" still does not contain a barcode, as seen in the last image the user posted: https://imgur.com/a/SCHGo4N
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#34I doubt this is a censorship, or a anti-counterfitting feature. It's most likely something wrong with the codec used to display images, possibly 10-bit heif photos are being interpreted as 8-bit jpegs. See other people getting the exact same shade of green in random photos: https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/912123-photos... https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/4p2ief/pictures_on... https://forums.on…
I don't think that's right.
Why would a codec problem, repeatably, affect images of a particular document, but not other images?
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they built is a way of scanning things on your phone and reporting that to Apple. The chance of multiple governments not passing laws eventually to force this into scanning for whatever they wish is low. Previously to this Apple could have fought back on privacy terms but now its argument will be much weaker. edit: It's also a model based scanner so they scan for types of things and similar things instead of exp…
All of which has been common for a long time. You where already sending your unencrypted phots to Apple, that’s the point when you should be concerned. Apple and all other service providers are required by US and most other countries laws to do searches on their servers. The only difference is Apple is upfront about what their doing on iCloud where most backup providers are keeping silent. Edit: iCloud data is specif…
>All of which has been common for a long time
No, this has never been done before.
>You where already sending your unencrypted phots to Apple
No, I wasn't. The whole point here is that Apple is not scanning server side, they've built the functionality to scan device side. You need never use iCloud in any way whatsoever in order for Apple's new scanning tech to be used against you. That is a major difference.
>Apple and all other service providers are required by US and most other countries laws to do searches on their servers.
No, they are not, even if that was the new thing Apple is doing which it isn't. If a company builds server-side scanning, then they may be required to fulfill certain requirements. But companies are not required to actually do that in the first place even if many choose to do so. Apple already did scan uploaded photos and voluntarily chose not to have E2EE for iCloud data in order to please law enforcement agencies, but that's a voluntary choice by Apple. This new client side scanning is a different beast. Please try to gain even the slightest fucking clue what you are talking about before spouting off on something so important.
Edit: to add for those interested in more details on the law, the federal reporting requirements are under 18 U.S. Code § 2258A [0]. What you'll see there is a "Duty To Report", and the reason for that is to evade Constitutional protections. If the government compelled companies to scan, as well as any legal challenges (by very well funded actors) and public blow back, as a practical matter those companies would become State Actors for the purposes of 4th Amendment evaluation. However, even if it's heavily incentivized so long as it's "voluntary" courts have repeated ruled that 3rd parties can do searches that would be illegal for the government, turn discovered evidence over to the government who in turn may then use it freely. Walter v. United States (1980, [1]) is a good example, covering the [righteous and just prosecution] of someone transporting "films depicting homosexual activities" after it was mailed to the wrong address and turned over to the FBI which I'm sure everyone here on HN would applaud and definitely is what they have in mind when they think of client side scanning in the US. Tim Cook is carrying on that tradition with Pride no doubt.
----
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#36I doubt this is a censorship, or a anti-counterfitting feature. It's most likely something wrong with the codec used to display images, possibly 10-bit heif photos are being interpreted as 8-bit jpegs. See other people getting the exact same shade of green in random photos: https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/912123-photos... https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/4p2ief/pictures_on... https://forums.on…
I don't think that's right. Why would a codec problem, repeatably, affect images of a particular document, but not other images?
Note that in the OPs photo (https://imgur.com/a/SCHGo4N) it happens to every other image consistently. If you were shooting raw (with Pixel, not familiar with Xiaomi camera), it would save the raw and jpeg together. The gallery not being able to display the raw image results in the green image would be consistent with whats being shown.
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#37I doubt this is a censorship, or a anti-counterfitting feature. It's most likely something wrong with the codec used to display images, possibly 10-bit heif photos are being interpreted as 8-bit jpegs. See other people getting the exact same shade of green in random photos: https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/912123-photos... https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/4p2ief/pictures_on... https://forums.on…
There is nothing special about this shade of green that causes it to come from a codec issue. This green is what you get when you convert a 0-buffer from YUV to RGB. Depending on what colorspace you convert with it will be a slightly different shade.
You can play around with this yourself in imagemagick:
dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.yuv bs=480 count=240
convert -depth 8 -size 320x240 yuv:zero.yuv green.png
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of which has been common for a long time. You where already sending your unencrypted phots to Apple, that’s the point when you should be concerned. Apple and all other service providers are required by US and most other countries laws to do searches on their servers. The only difference is Apple is upfront about what their doing on iCloud where most backup providers are keeping silent. Edit: iCloud data is specif…
> All of which has been common for a long time No, this has never been done before. > You where already sending your unencrypted phots to Apple No, I wasn't. The whole point here is that Apple is not scanning server side, they've built the functionality to scan device side. You need never use iCloud in any way whatsoever in order for Apple's new scanning tech to be used against you. That is a major difference. > Appl…
> The whole point here is that Apple is not scanning server side
False. Apple complies with the laws pertaining to customer data and provides data as legally required. III. Information Available from Apple
J. iCloud
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...
> You need never use iCloud in any way whatsoever in order for Apple's new scanning tech to be used against you.
False. Phones don’t download the CSAM hashes so they can’t do device side scanning as they have nothing to compare the images to. Yes, the phone uploads a hash, but they also upload the unencrypted images along side it.
Thus the only thing that changes is Apple isn’t paying for the compute power to do the hashing. That and a tiny amount of extra bandwidth on uploading images.
PS: In response to your edit, perceptual hashes are a grey area. However, as long as a judge agrees they can very much just take down production systems when it pertains to a case. That’s a rather big stick to force compliance even if it’s not an explicit law it’s very much a consequence of it. Thus companies really don’t push back as some that have simply got raided.
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#39I doubt this is a censorship, or a anti-counterfitting feature. It's most likely something wrong with the codec used to display images, possibly 10-bit heif photos are being interpreted as 8-bit jpegs. See other people getting the exact same shade of green in random photos: https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/912123-photos... https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/4p2ief/pictures_on... https://forums.on…
I don't think that's right. Why would a codec problem, repeatably, affect images of a particular document, but not other images?
Making a guess here, the envelope has a distinct shade of pink, which may trigger some processing. It looks like it is in "AI" mode, and who knows what "AI" does.
Re: Xiaomi Camera censoring German postal voting documents
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s probably unintended, but intentional censoring methods exist, as documented elsewhere in this thread. The most likely explanation seems to be this being a side-effect of those. Your explanations appear less likely, as I’d expect those types of bugs to show differently.
You believe what you want man, I personally don't buy it yet, and I'm not going to waste my brain power trying to convince people who are already convinced "It's the man! It must be the evil man!" and see any thing as proof of their evilness. "Most likely".. we live in different realities.
You can’t handle the truth and so you repress any idea of it.