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One Bad Apple

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Re: One Bad Apple

#451
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hands on experience with, what I'd call at least attempted fraud, with crypto. Back when Sweden thought about state backed crypto, a lot of ads showed up where you could invest in that. I almost did, call centers used Austrian numbers. Not sure if there was even any coin behind that. I reported it to police, got a letter after a couple of months that the investigation led nowhere and was dropped, apparently Au…

There's a lot of dumb fraud. Being international of course makes everything harder. Usually the amount of investigation is related to how many people were scammed. People need to learn how to do due diligence because the definition of fraud can get vague at times. I think your example is a good case of due diligence, it couldn't hurt to blog about their fraud though.

People did write about it, that's how I found out so much so quickly. I didn't invest, but cake reasonably close. One could call it due diligence, but I can see how easy it is to fall for things like that. I got a lot more sceptical of these ads, even more so than before.

Re: One Bad Apple

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequences seem very simple - once this system is in place, it's only a matter of time until a state actor, be it China or US or Russia or pretty much anywhere goes to Apple and says "hey this hash matching algorithm you have there? If you want to keep operating in our country, you need to match hashes too, no, we won't tell you what they are and what they represent, but you have to report to our state agency w…

This is such a stupid fallacy and it comes up every time something like this is discussed. You don't know if anything is or will be abused you expect it because you expect your elected government to do so. The problem here is with you or your electors not with the technology itself. You want to fix the symptoms but not the problem. As usual.

How so? The UK's snooper's charter that compels ISPs to save your entire browsing history for a year was only meant to be used to catch pedophiles and terrorists, and now 17 different agencies have been given completely warrantless access to the database, including the UK's Food Standards Agency(??!?!?!?). People have already been fired for abusing access too, so it definitely happens too.

>>The problem here is with you or your electors not with the technology itself

No offense, but this is such a shitty answer, and it's always made by apologists for these incredibly invasive technologies. Like, please explain to me, in simple terms, how can I, an immigrant who doesn't even have the ability to vote, vote to make an American corporation do nor not do something. I'm super curious.

Re: One Bad Apple

#453
What assurances do we have that this system will not be used to flag "extremist content" i.e. memes and to send that information to law-enforcement in the future?

Re: One Bad Apple

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote sums it up perfectly : “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep ,his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval…

The consequences seem very simple - once this system is in place, it's only a matter of time until a state actor, be it China or US or Russia or pretty much anywhere goes to Apple and says "hey this hash matching algorithm you have there? If you want to keep operating in our country, you need to match hashes too, no, we won't tell you what they are and what they represent, but you have to report to our state agency w…

Completely agree. I have absolutely no doubt this technology will be abused. I bet it will be used to silence dissent, opposition and wrongthink more often than to protect children.

Re: One Bad Apple

#455
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law does not say that naked photos of (your or anyone else's) kids are inherently illegal, they have to actually be sexual in nature. But that depends on who looks at it. People have been arrested and (at least temporary) lost custody over their children because someone called the police over perfectly normal family photos. I remember one case a few years ago where someone had gotten into trouble because one ph…

As soon as it is used in a negative way beyond CSAM scanning, it will cause people to sell their phones and stop using apple products. If Apple starts using the tech to scan for religious material, there will be significant market and legal backlash. I think the fact that CSAM scanning will stop if they push it too far will keep them in check to only do CSAM scanning. Everyone can agree on using the tech for CSAM, bu…

Problem one is Apple doesn't know what they are scanning for.

This is by design and actually a good thing.

It becomes a problem because problem number 2:

No one is accountable if someone gets their life ruined over a mistake in this database.

I'd actually be somewhat less hostile to this idea if there was more regulatory oversight:

- laws that punishes police/officials if innocent people are harmed in any way

- mandatory technical audits as well as verification that for what it is used for: Apple keeps logs of all signatures that "matched"/triggered as well as raw files, these are provided to the court as part of any case that comes up. This way we could hopefully prevent most fishing expeditions - both wide and personalized ones - and also avoid any follow up parallel reconstructions.

I'm not saying I'd necessarily be OK with it but at that point there would be something to discuss.

Re: One Bad Apple

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequences seem very simple - once this system is in place, it's only a matter of time until a state actor, be it China or US or Russia or pretty much anywhere goes to Apple and says "hey this hash matching algorithm you have there? If you want to keep operating in our country, you need to match hashes too, no, we won't tell you what they are and what they represent, but you have to report to our state agency w…

This is such a stupid fallacy and it comes up every time something like this is discussed. You don't know if anything is or will be abused you expect it because you expect your elected government to do so. The problem here is with you or your electors not with the technology itself. You want to fix the symptoms but not the problem. As usual.

> You don't know if anything is or will be abused

Actually I do. Governments abuse their powers all the time. They have done it before, are doing it right now and will continue to do it in the future. This is not fallacy, it is fact.

Here's an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

The only solution is to take their power away. No way to abuse power they don't have. We must make it technologically impossible for them to spy on us.

Re: One Bad Apple

#457
post #58
post #12

> 18 U.S.C. § 2258A is specific: the data can only be sent to NCMEC. (With 2258A, it is illegal for a service provider to turn over CP photos to the police or the FBI; you can only send it to NCMEC. Then NCMEC will contact the police or FBI.) What Apple has detailed is the intentional distribution (to Apple), collection (at Apple), and access (viewing at Apple) of material that they strongly have reason to believe is…

Why is it insane that the law places extremely tight controls on the legitimate distribution of CSAM?

What part of criminalizing the obvious course of action that everyone is taught to do (find evidence of illegal activity, give it to the police) makes any iota of sense to you?

Re: One Bad Apple

#458
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A plausible story of how our rights are in the way is always ready to hand. If we can't at some point draw a clear line and say no, that's it, stop -- then we have no rights. It's chisel, chisel, chisel, year after year, decade after decade. In America one of those lines is that your personal papers are private. Get a warrant. I don't have to justify this stand. I might choose to explain why it's a good stand, or I m…

>In America one of those lines is that your personal papers are private. Get a warrant. I don't have to justify this stand. I might choose to explain why it's a good stand, or I might not; it's on you to persuade us. Part of the problem is that these devices are encrypted so a warrant doesn't work on them. That is a big enough change that maybe people need to debate if the line is still in the right place.

That is a change worth considering, though it must be treated at the level of rights, not just a case-by-case utility calculus. At the same time, most other changes have been towards more surveillance and control: cameras everywhere, even in the sky; ubiquitous location tracking; rapidly improving AI to scale up these capabilities beyond what teams of humans could monitor; tracking of most payments; mass warrantless surveillance by spy agencies; God knows what else now, many years after the Snowden leaks. This talk you hear about the population "going dark" is... selective.

I think my vehemence last night might've obscured the point I wanted to make: what a right is supposed to be is a principle that overrides case-by-case utility analysis. I would agree that everything is open to questioning, including the right to privacy -- but as I see it, if you ask what's the object-level balance of utilities with respect to this particular proposal, explicitly dropping that larger context of privacy as a right (which was not arrived at for no reason) and denigrate that concern as science fiction, as a slippery-slope fallacy -- then that's a debate that should be rejected on its premise.

Re: One Bad Apple

#459
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can label it collusion, but when Apple does it, it's going to call it _complying with local regulation_.

It doesn’t matter what you label it. Hand wringing over making things worse in China is not a valid concern.

Fine, then let’s talk about other countries.

Does anyone seriously doubt that Germany will use this mechanism to ban Nazi imagery?

Then from there, it’s not a big leap to talk about controlling far right (or far left) memes in France or the UK.

More insidiously, suppose some politician in a western liberal democracy was caught with underage kids, and there were blackmail photos that leaked. Do you think those hashes wouldn’t instantly make their way onto this ban list?

Re: One Bad Apple

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a stupid fallacy and it comes up every time something like this is discussed. You don't know if anything is or will be abused you expect it because you expect your elected government to do so. The problem here is with you or your electors not with the technology itself. You want to fix the symptoms but not the problem. As usual.

> You don't know if anything is or will be abused Actually I do. Governments abuse their powers all the time. They have done it before, are doing it right now and will continue to do it in the future. This is not fallacy, it is fact. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT The only solution is to take their power away. No way to abuse power they don't have. We must make it technologically impossible…

That's the exact same fallacy you are proposing to fix a symptom and not the problem. You want to reign in the government YOU ARE ELECTING TO GOVERN you with technology instead of real political work. Either vote different or get into politics and fix yourself.

Your wikipedia link doesn't show anything regarding abuse of the governing body ALL of the examples are from private persons.

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