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Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

reuters.com

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Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#381

Post by AnthonyMouse »

js2 wrote: post #315
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woops, you're right, thanks for the correction. I think the issue is that, as Ben Thompson pointed out, the only thing preventing them from scanning other stuff now is just policy , not capability , and now that Pandora's box is open it's going to be much more difficult to resist when a government comes to them and says "we want you to scan messages for subversive content".

Yes, of course that is true. I use iCloud Photos and find this terribly creepy. If Apple must scan my photos, I'd rather they do it on their servers. I could maybe understand the new implementation if Apple had announced they'd also be enabling E2E encryption of everything in iCloud, and explained it as "this is the only way we can prevent CSAM from being stored on our servers."

> "this is the only way we can prevent CSAM from being stored on our servers."

Why is that supposed to be their responsibility?

Given the scale of their business, there is effectively a certainty that people are transmitting CSAM via Comcast's network. That's no excuse for them to ban end to end encryption or start pushing out code to scan client devices.

When you hail a taxi, they don't search you for drugs before letting you inside.

Because they're not the police. It isn't their role to enforce the law.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#382

Post by [deleted] »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #171
akiselev wrote: post #158

> It's a complete change of narrative and there's no easy way to explain it and still defend Apple's Privacy narrative, wihout doing extreme mental gymnastics. Everyone who took Apple at their word was already doing extreme mental gymnastics because Apple's privacy stance was a farce on borrowed time to begin with. Now it's just blatantly obvious to everyone.

Please stop insulting people because they chose less privacy than you. Don't act superior. I would posit that just about everyone who reads hackernews knows that privacy and security are on a spectrum. People complaining about this as the last straw have every right to do so and this is a huge leap from Apple's previous position. No one thinks you're any smarter by saying "I told you so".

[deleted]

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#383

Post by heavyset_go »

wyre wrote: post #321
heavyset_go wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still continued to believe that they would keep sticking up for privacy as much as possible. Considering how often Apple gives up customer data without a fight when requested to by the government, I don't really believe that. According to Apple, they respond to government data requests with customers' data ~85% of the time, and 92% in cases of "emergencies"[1]. Apple gave customer data from over 31,000 users/acco…

I don’t know if the first half of 2020 is a good time frame for sampling as this is when the country had the largest amount of protests in history and the police are going to be making a lot of requests in retaliation. Doesn’t make Apple look any better though. I’m curious about how often Google and Facebook hand over information.

There's a drop down menu that you can use to see other time periods. The numbers and rates in the July to December 2019 period are similar to 2020's.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#384

Post by dmix »

adolph wrote: post #262
inkyoto wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a sacrosanct line between "public" and "private," "mine" and "yours." That line cannot be crossed by Western governments without a warrant. This is a self-delusion, I am afraid. The line has been crossed more than once, and it will be crossed again. UK and Australian governments are just two prime examples of waving terrorism and pedobear banners as a pretext to get invasive with each new legislation, and…

And all the while: Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG (/ˈsævɪl/; 31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011) was an English DJ, television and radio personality who hosted BBC shows including Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It. He raised an estimated £40 million for charities and, during his lifetime, was widely praised for his personal qualities and as a fund-raiser. After his death, hundreds of allegations of sexual ab…

There's never been any indication that there has been any more difficulty in catching these guys with better smartphone privacy features. It's easier than ever largely because the police have become better at investigations involving the internet.

Asking the police to put some investigative effort in rather than a dragnet sweep of every photo on every persons device is not too much to ask.

Importantly this should be the hard-capped precedent for every sort of crime. There's always a ton of other ways these people get caught without handing over preemptive access to every innocent persons phone. Same with terrorism, murder, etc.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#385

Post by b0tzzzzzzman »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #171
akiselev wrote: post #158

> It's a complete change of narrative and there's no easy way to explain it and still defend Apple's Privacy narrative, wihout doing extreme mental gymnastics. Everyone who took Apple at their word was already doing extreme mental gymnastics because Apple's privacy stance was a farce on borrowed time to begin with. Now it's just blatantly obvious to everyone.

Please stop insulting people because they chose less privacy than you. Don't act superior. I would posit that just about everyone who reads hackernews knows that privacy and security are on a spectrum. People complaining about this as the last straw have every right to do so and this is a huge leap from Apple's previous position. No one thinks you're any smarter by saying "I told you so".

I have told people so?

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#386

Post by shakezula »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223
whoisjuan wrote: post #132

This CSAM Prevention initiative by Apple is a 180 degress change of their general message around privacy. Imagine investing hundreds of millions of dollars in pro-privacy programs, privacy features, privacy marketing, etc... just to pull this reverse card. Of course this is going to spark concern within their own ranks. It's like working for a food company that claims to use organic, non-processed, fair-trade ingredi…

I actually think something else happened, and to be honest I think many at Apple behind this decision are likely pretty surprised by the blowback. That is, it seems like Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption, but they needed to do something to address the CSAM issue lest governments come down on them hard. Thus, my guess is, at least at the beginning, they saw this as a strong win for privacy. As th…

There are methods for dealing with CP that would maintain privacy, not subject humans to child pornography, and would jive with their end to end encryption goals. But we’ll never know what they’re doing under the hood and I think that’s the concerning part.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#387

Post by heavyset_go »

heavyset_go wrote: post #208
busymom0 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I knew that the "privacy" stance from Apple in prior years was always a marketing facade to sell more devices, I still continued to believe that they would keep sticking up for privacy as much as possible. It's kind of funny how I am very suspicious of governments and politicians but when it comes to a trillion dollar corporation, I was giving them more of benefit of doubt. I was wrong.

> I still continued to believe that they would keep sticking up for privacy as much as possible. Considering how often Apple gives up customer data without a fight when requested to by the government, I don't really believe that. According to Apple, they respond to government data requests with customers' data ~85% of the time, and 92% in cases of "emergencies"[1]. Apple gave customer data from over 31,000 users/acco…

> During that same 6 month period, Apple provided customers' data to the government's data requests (not FISC related) about 9,000 times

To clarify: The 9,000 figure is the number of individual data requests, but the requests themselves asked for data from a total of ~120,000 different users/accounts. Multiple users' data can be requested in a single request.

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#388

Post by spenvo »

Many people take the following maximalist stance: "Apple can't save users' privacy in China, nor can it push back against laws, so therefore it's unreasonable to ask them to hold the privacy line." But for every China there is a Brazil, Hungary, or India.

For every "completely authoritarian" regime, you have handfuls of (historically democratic) governments on their way toward authoritarianism. In these countries, it's often not the laws calling the shots but the politicians that happen to be in charge at that moment.

Even in democracies with laws as guardrails, presidents will push for data on political opposition - at times threatening techies along the way (see: Brazil jailing WhatsApp execs for access to data [0], Twitter/India raids, or, in the USA: Trump DOJ asking Apple to turn over info on House Dems [1])

Simply "doing what you're told" around the world (no-questions-asked, aka "being in the arena" as Tim Cook says) will turn you into an enabler of authoritarianism, and not just in totally FUBAR countries like China but in many nations with a lot of freedom at stake.

0 - https://washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senior-fa...

1 - https://www.techmeme.com/210610/p51#a210610p51

From: https://twitter.com/SpencerDailey/status/1426008754143776771

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#389

Post by int_19h »

vageli wrote: post #86
C19is20 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the people not USA?

The USA is not the only country with a constitution.

It's not, but it's one of the few that doesn't have some verbiage along the lines of UDHR:

"In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society."

Re: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources

#390

Post by ribosometronome »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #337
tshaddox wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that they obviously already have the capability to send software updates that add new on-device capability, this seems like a meaningless distinction. It’s already “just policy” preventing them from sending any conceivable software update to their phones.

I disagree, strongly. Let's say you're authoritarian government EvilGov. Before this announcement, if you went to Apple and said "we want you to push this spyware to your iPhones", Apple would and could have easily pushed back both in the court of public opinion and the court of law. Now though, Apple is already saying "We'll take this database of illegal image hashes provided by the government and use it to scan you…

Why do you think essentially no one is complaining about using ML to understand the content of photos, then (especially in comparison to this rather targeted CSAM feature)? My impression is that both Apple and Google have already been doing that since what? 2016? Earlier? There's been no need for a database of photos, either company could silently update those algorithms to ping on guns, drugs, Winnie the Pooh memes, etc.
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