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

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

#401

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #206

"The hypothesis that I have is that Apple wishes to distance itself from checking users' data. They've been fighting with the FBI and the federal government for years , they've been struggling with not reporting CSAM content to the NCMEC, they don't want to be involved in any of this anymore." However there is close to zero evidence to support this idea. I was just reading something the other day that directly contra…

"They've been fighting with the FBI and the federal government for years..."

Besides a single anomaly, what is the other evidence.

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

#402

Post by Clubber »

macintux wrote: post #51
roody15 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except despite this being repeated over and over… Apple has not said anything about E2E

Apple almost never talks about features like that until they’re ready, so while you’re correct, it doesn’t mean much.

With all this backlash, now would probably be a tactically good time.

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

#403

Post by stetrain »

farmerstan wrote: post #400
nomel wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find how severely this is all being misunderstood, as in very few actually RTFM, on a site like HN, incredibly eye opening.

It’s eye opening how naive some people on HN are despite decades of evidence that things are always twisted in favor of more government surveillance especially outside of the US.

If the worry is that a government can order Apple to do something, they could do that before or after this system was added just the same.

Again I’m not in favor of this system but I think a lot of the criticism misses the mark.

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

#404

Post by Clubber »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #116
phkahler wrote: post #108

I really don't get all the hype. This is not a backdoor as it's called in TFA. It's not Apple "reaching into your device". It is literally checking for specific images and reporting their presence to Apply if found. It's not using AI to analyze your photos or anything like that. It's looking for specific images, and only prior to uploading them to iCloud. It won't even flag your own nasty images because the hash won'…

The 'hype' seems to me to be the valid-sounding concern that this tool creates the ability to "look for specific images prior to uploading them to iCloud" on Apple devices, and that while today that capability is exclusively applied to save the children, that tool could later be repurposed by authoritarian regimes or other human rights abusers. Speaking towards what we can assume the authorities can do, we know the F…

Plus it's just creepy that my phone will be scanning my pictures. I use iCloud Photos now and understand anything I put on someone else's servers is subject to search. With it on my phone, it feels radioactive to me and needs to be disposed of promptly.

It's just icky.

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

#405

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #206

"The hypothesis that I have is that Apple wishes to distance itself from checking users' data. They've been fighting with the FBI and the federal government for years , they've been struggling with not reporting CSAM content to the NCMEC, they don't want to be involved in any of this anymore." However there is close to zero evidence to support this idea. I was just reading something the other day that directly contra…

If Apple wished to distance itself from checking users' data, then it could stop collecting users' data in its data centers. This is the highest valued company in the world. It would not put them out of business. Would it even cause any decline in revenue. Lets be honest here. Apple wants user data.

(NB There is no reason to "sell user data". For example, Facebook does not "sell user data". Apple and Facebook provide access to consumers. These consumers are ad targets. In the case of Apple, they expected to purchase more stuff after they purchase an Apple computer. Apple intends to be an intermediary in those transactions.)

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

#406

Post by jhayward »

FabHK wrote: post #198
amelius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing sent is the hash and signature and that's if there are enough matches to pass some threshold. Not true. If there are enough matches, someone at Apple will have a look at your pictures. Even if they are innocent.

> someone at Apple will have a look at your pictures No, but at a "visual derivative"

A JPEG is a "visual derivative". It's also a "mathematical fingerprint" of an image.

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

#407

Post by farmerstan »

stetrain wrote: post #403
farmerstan wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s eye opening how naive some people on HN are despite decades of evidence that things are always twisted in favor of more government surveillance especially outside of the US.

If the worry is that a government can order Apple to do something, they could do that before or after this system was added just the same. Again I’m not in favor of this system but I think a lot of the criticism misses the mark.

Apple’s whole marketing scheme was that they protected privacy. That was their market differentiation. So no, it wasn’t like this before and this is why so many people like myself feel betrayed by Apple. This is what most of the outrage is about. The largest most profitable company in the world was selling their products saying they believed in privacy and now created a Trojan horse wrapped around CSAM that can be used by governments to spy on whatever is in our phones and I guess our laptops too. Maybe not today. But in 10 years? Yes definitely. They have already bent to government pressure since 2016 what would stop them going forward? Nothing. Tim Cook doesn’t want to go to Guantanamo for defying a government order.

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

#408

Post by jhayward »

lawkwok wrote: post #140
merpnderp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their neural hashing is new, and they claim has a one in a trillion collision rate. There are 1.5 trillion images created in the US and something like 100 million photos in the compared database. That's a heck of a lot of collisions. And that's just a single year, Apple will be comparing everyone's back catalog. A lot of innocent people are going to get caught up in this.

We’ll have to wait and see how good their neural hashing is, but just to clarify the 1 trillion number is the “probability of incorrectly flagging a given account” according to Apple’s white paper. I think some people think that’s the probability of a picture being incorrectly flagged, which would be more concerning given the 1.5 trillion images created in the US. Source: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_D…

How is it that you are going to "wait and see how good their neural hashing is"? Do you think there is going to be any shred of transparency about the operation of this system? It is completely unaccountable - starting with Apple and going on to NCMEC and the FBI.

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

#409

Post by [deleted] »

FabHK wrote: post #322
XorNot wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "visual derivative". Do you have any idea that means? Because I certainly don't - how could you possibly identify whether an image is CSAM without looking at something which is reasonably the same image? What is a visual derivative? Take that algorithm and run it over some normal images and show me what they look like. All of this is being aggressively talked around because everyone knows it's not going to stand up…

> Do you have any idea that means? No, I don't know what that means. Presumably it is some sort of thumbnail, maybe color inverted or something. > does Apple's implementation flag on any of those? Who knows - they're not going to refer to anything specific about how they got "1 in a trillion" I assume they've tested NeuralHash on big datasets of innocuous pictures, and gotten some sort of bound on the probability of…

[deleted]

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

#410

Post by stetrain »

farmerstan wrote: post #407
stetrain wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the worry is that a government can order Apple to do something, they could do that before or after this system was added just the same. Again I’m not in favor of this system but I think a lot of the criticism misses the mark.

Apple’s whole marketing scheme was that they protected privacy. That was their market differentiation. So no, it wasn’t like this before and this is why so many people like myself feel betrayed by Apple. This is what most of the outrage is about. The largest most profitable company in the world was selling their products saying they believed in privacy and now created a Trojan horse wrapped around CSAM that can be us…

If they were going to implement a government scanning tool it could be done much more simply. And they would if legally required, or turn down some of their largest markets.

This is a step too far (on-device vs in cloud) but all of the “but what if the govt…” is ridiculous because that happens anyway if the govt wants it.

Maybe we should change the government.

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