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An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

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Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#331

Post by nix23 »

bborud wrote: post #313
nix23 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love a phone based on the ideas from Plan9.

Would you? How often do you come into contact with the OS when developing for a phone, let alone use a phone? Phones are products for people who use them. What sells phones is not what OS is underneath layers and layers of code, but user experience. If we are to even hope for alternatives, this is where the focus needs to be. If the OS underneath mattered the Nokia Communicator would have been a runaway success. It w…

>How often do you come into contact with the OS when developing for a phone, let alone use a phone

That's exactly the point,

Maybe you don't know what Plan9 is, but see it like that:

The Phone is just a Terminal. If i want todo business i connect my terminal to my Workplace-servers, every application, datas and settings are there, the calculation heavy stuff and backup is made on the server. If finished i connect to my private plan9-cluster, the Phone is just a bit more than a intelligent Terminal.

The difference is with a plan9 phone you would ~never have anything todo with software ON the phone, let alone having to worry to "sync" to the cloud to make backups, update Apps or need to encrypt the datas in case of loss.

It's a bit like Cloud-gaming or Virtual Desktops with thin-clients, but much much more integrated.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#332

Post by CSAECop »

feanaro wrote: post #237
Grustaf wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd deal with explicit reports Where would these reports come from though? Without these dragnet methods, it would seem like a very simple matter to get away with owning this kind of material.

This is a reality you have to accept. It is a simple matter to get away with owning this kind of material, dragnet method or not. There is no point in trying to eradicate all such material and bring the number to absolute zero. It's impossible. The only way to semi-ensure this would be absolute slavery of the citizenry, which I hope is a non-goal.

Nobody is proposing that though...

It's a fact that NCMEC referrals have identified teachers who were secretly pedophiles, who were subsequently banned from teaching. Most people see this as a good thing. If you want to do away with this, you have to bring a compelling argument.

I support everybody's right to argue for the type of society they want to see, but there's an arrogance/conspiratorial flavor to a lot of the comments here that suggest they don't really understand what they are up against. There are actual benefits.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#333

Post by sillysaurusx »

nicce wrote: post #285
ksec wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually view this as not a good sign. That many are still in the very very early stage of shock, what Apple is doing does not align with their perceived values. Deducting points from Apple in their own mental model. They write these letter because they think Apple is still mostly good and hope they could have a change of heart. What would happen as some others have pointed out, people will forget about it. Apple w…

It might be hard to understand, but iOS is a blackbox. Based on what they add and say, we still don't know what exactly is happening. All we have is trust. We can speculate that with "what ifs", but same "if" is applying already. Once we take other big platforms on account, Apple is actually trying to note privacy. Other platforms just scan everything you put in cloud, but Apple tries to limit the information what th…

This is an interesting point. I think you might be right.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#334

Post by brigandish »

hnlmorg wrote: post #146
brigandish wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am currently planning the migration away from the Apple ecosystem Me too. I told my wife today that I'll be looking at a feature phone as I'm not sure I can be bothered with jumping through all the hoops required to de-Google an Android phone. I remember a time before mobile phones, I was just fine without one - smartphones aren't that good, just convenient.

It's good that you're principled enough to do that but you guys will be rounding errors in Apple's revenue. Most people don't even know about this and those that do, most wont care. Even of those who do know and do care, most aren't motivated enough to change their habits beyond writing a few angry words on a forum Apple are never going to read anyway. Those that do change their buying habits, yourselves, are by far…

I completely agree, I have managed to influence parts of my family and a few friends to shift to better products (like Signal) but I simply don't like having all of my communications scanned by anyone, whether it be by disinterested (in me particularly) humans or computers. The often unspoken (ha) part of free speech is the bit about it being my choice to whom and when I share my thoughts. That means a lot to me. Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook will go on without me but they will only find out about me second hand, and that's fine by me.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#335

Post by amelius »

Jenda_ wrote: post #269

Notice, for example, that Thunderbird is sending file names and SHA-256 hashes when you open most (e.g. .pdf) attachments, in the clear, to Google. This seems worse to me (in the Apple case, the information is revealed only if enough files from one device match against a predefined hash list) and nobody really cares... I have just tested with a fresh profile with a freshly downloaded thunderbird-78.12.0.tar.bz2 (x64…

E-mail is an old technology which had privacy bolted on top of it as an afterthought.

Everybody knows that e-mail is not the best medium if privacy is of utmost importance.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#336

Post by Jolter »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #88
bsder wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I dislike what Apple is doing here, Apple is a long way down the list of companies that should be a black mark on your resume. Oracle is a MUCH better target, for example.

Oracle's on the blacklist too. One does not preclude the other.

In the end, which companies remain off your list?

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#337

Post by brigandish »

cylde_frog wrote: post #199
brigandish wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am currently planning the migration away from the Apple ecosystem Me too. I told my wife today that I'll be looking at a feature phone as I'm not sure I can be bothered with jumping through all the hoops required to de-Google an Android phone. I remember a time before mobile phones, I was just fine without one - smartphones aren't that good, just convenient.

I made the switch a couple months ago and its harder than you think. There is a lot of convenience you take for granted in the smartphone age.

Do you remember a time when you had to make a plan with a friend to meet at a specific place at a specific time and if one of you wasn't there or had a last minute problem there was probably no way to contact the other person? That was annoying, true.

I also refused to get a mobile phone for years, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend(s). It meant I used to come home to an answering machine full of messages and feel much more loved than I ever have with the immediate drip feed of messages I get now.

I wonder, what will I really miss that a book and a dumbphone won't be able to replace in my life? Perhaps the maps.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#338

Post by PartiallyTyped »

Wameaw wrote: post #321
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute. Today, the U.S. collectively spends $100 billion a year on policing and a further $80 billion on incarceration. Just the spending on policing is larger than what other countries spend on military. Actually, the only country that spends more on military is China [1], after taking in incarceration costs, it is 2.5 times the military expenditure of India. [1] https://www.sipri.org/publications/2021/sipri-fact-…

Thanks for the link, but have you read it? "the only country that spends more on military is China" 1 1 United States 778 4.4 -10 3.7 4.8 39 2 2 China [252] 1.9 76 [1.7] [1.7] [13] 3 3 India 72.9 2.1 34 2.9 2.7 3.7 :facepalm:

I compared US' __police__ spending of $100 billion, to the __military__ spending of other countries.

I assume you missed that. The comparison is not between militaries, but US' police vs the military.

:facepalm:

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#339

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

AlexSW wrote: post #206
axiosgunnar wrote: post #172

Let‘s play a simple game. Go to https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni... and then replace - "National Center for Missing and Exploited Children“ with „the new Trump administration“ - „child pornography“ with „LGBT content“ Doesn't look fun anymore, does it? (use „the new Clinton administration“ and „images of guns“ if you are conservative)

I'm not sure of the point you're getting at. You can do this with effectively anything. Replace "gay marriage" with "child sexual exploitation" in "I support gay marriage". Does that mean we shouldn't support anything?

I understand you wanted to refute the former comment, but, ironically, that is indeed the case in point: when we cannot trust that the the thing we support won't be exchanged with something else in the future we don't support, without our knowledge, then we indeed should not support it.

Re: An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning

#340

Post by randcraw »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #311

I wonder what image transformations would yield a different hash in the NeuralHash algorithm. Anyone know? From Apple: “The neural network that generates the descriptor is trained through a self-supervised training scheme. Images are perturbed with transformations that keep them perceptually identical to the original, creating an original/perturbed pair.”

Not a pair. The number of possible perturbations of each example image in deep learning are enormous. This blithe quote implies that a hash code somehow can provide a flexible match against the billions of perturbations even a single image can undergo. It's a specious claim, and intended to cow anyone from disbelieving in the effectiveness of such a brute force match model.
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