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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”

#461

Post by shapefrog »

FabHK wrote: post #243
shapefrog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If icloud backup works as advertised - it backs up your device. However, if we consider the slipery slope, under pressure from a shaddow government, the contents of your phone could have been uploaded to the CIA every day, including live recordings 24 hours a day.

Yes, but that has always been the case. It can upload to iCloud, it could also upload to the CIA. What has changed?

So why are people freaking out about a hash scanning system as an invasion of privacy when the grab anything from your phone contents feature has been there for 10+ years?

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

#463

Post by NoPicklez »

gonehome wrote: post #302
drenvuk wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Option #1 doesn’t really breach the ‘sanctity of device ownership’ because it only occurs if you’ve enabled iCloud photos on the device. I'm done. You'll rationalize anything.

To be fair - I think reasonable people can disagree on this. I don't think it's a rationalization to point out that it only occurs when the same baseline conditions are met (using the cloud). I think those constraints/specifics matter. I wouldn't be in favor of the policy if they were different (and I'm not even sure I'm in favor of it now). My personally preferred outcome would be e2ee by default for everything with…

I largely agree with your point fossuser.

I am also in favour of E2E by default for everything without any device or cloud based scanning. However, Apple doesn't want to be caught in having developed a service that enables for child exploitation. Doing nothing may have even more invasive requirements legally forced by government, so Apple is stuck with a dilemma. Also lets not forget that Apple should also not want child exploitation to occur and therefore also should do something.

The question I have for drenvuk is how else is Apple able to prevent or detect child exploitation and the storage or distribution of content such as this on Apple's services?

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

#464

Post by shapefrog »

acdha wrote: post #325
shapefrog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If icloud backup works as advertised - it backs up your device. However, if we consider the slipery slope, under pressure from a shaddow government, the contents of your phone could have been uploaded to the CIA every day, including live recordings 24 hours a day.

> the contents of your phone could have been uploaded to the CIA every day, including live recordings 24 hours a day. You’re describing new functionality which would have to be added in many places: in addition to building that service they have to turn off the recording indicators and prompts, coexist with other apps recording, not have recording pause playback in other apps like normal, masking data usage on both t…

But muah slippery slope.

Phone has functionality to backup its contents. Phone has functinality to record things. No new functionality needed.

Thus, they are backdoors built into the system with the ability to record everything and upload it to an authourtarian regime for the genocide of the human race.

But we all know the real evil here is using a hashing algorithm to check images you upload to their server for known kiddie porn.

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

#465

Post by systoll »

sa1 wrote: post #41
gonehome wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a podcast together called Dithering which is pretty good (but not free) - they're friends. I think John's article is better than Ben's, but they're both worth reading. Ben takes the view that unencrypted cloud is the better tradeoff - I'm not sure I agree. I'd rather have my stuff e2ee in the cloud. If the legal requirements around CSAM are the blocker then Apple's approach may be a way to thread the needle…

For me it's the worst of both worlds - e2ee has no meaning if the ends are permanently compromised - and there's no local vs cloud separation anymore which you can use to delineate what is under your own control - nothing's under your control.

> there's no local vs cloud separation anymore which you can use to delineate what is under your own control

If uploading a perceptual hash of a photo breaks 'local vs cloud separation', the uploading the whole photo in the clear surely does the same.

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

#466

Post by system2 »

fortenforge wrote: post #229
farmerstan wrote: post #219

Whoever controls the hash list controls your phone from now on. Period. End of sentence. Apple has not disclosed who gets to add new hashes to the list of CSAM hashes or what the process is to add new hashes. Do different countries have different hash lists? Because if the FBI or CIA or CCCP or KSA wants to arrest you, all they need to do is inject the hash of one of your photos into the “list” and you will be flagge…

There are numerous incorrect statements in your comment. First: Apple has disclosed who gets to curate the hash list. The answer is NCMEC and other child safety organizations. https://twitter.com/AlexMartin/status/1424703642913935374/ph... Apple states point-blank that they will refuse any demands to add non-CSAM content to the lists. Second: Why can't the FBI / CCCP inject a hash into the list. Here's a tweet thread…

Do you work for Apple or the government? You just sounded like a lawyer talking about similar but unrelated things to win the case.

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

#467

Post by KronisLV »

ekianjo wrote: post #444

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? Am I going back to using Linux on the desktop (2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, remember), debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work? Oh come on. DOn't make it sound like it's that bad. Wifi is a solved problem for a long time now, and you can buy Lenovo, System76 or Tuxedo if you want to make sure 100% thi…

> The worst part is: how do I put my money where my mouth is? ..., debugging wifi drivers and tirelessly trying to make resume-from-suspend work?

Coincidentally, this is actually a good idea. Apart from using supported hardware (that others have checked actually works), contributing fixes for hardware that's not officially supported yet and hasn't been tested would benefit everyone in the future!

I remember having to dig through GitHub to find a repository that had the network drivers for my off-brand Chinese/Polish netbook (i'm somewhat poor and/or frugal) and they actually worked and turned a system that would otherwise not have any network connectivity into my daily driver for note taking. Now, the fact that i couldn't automate this lookup process and that there's nothing out there that lets you check for these drivers more easily (think something along the lines of https://appdb.winehq.org/ but for drivers) or maybe try multiple ones in a row, was disappointing because things felt needlessly hard. However, actually contributing or using the work of others isn't that much of a problem.

And, since the whole ecosystem is pretty much open, there's nothing actually keeping one from at least trying to address these problems for their particular configuration, apart from needing to learn how to do so. In a sense, working on open source is exactly putting your money where your mouth is, even if it's just alternative costs.

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

#468

Post by system2 »

robertoandred wrote: post #233
farmerstan wrote: post #219

Whoever controls the hash list controls your phone from now on. Period. End of sentence. Apple has not disclosed who gets to add new hashes to the list of CSAM hashes or what the process is to add new hashes. Do different countries have different hash lists? Because if the FBI or CIA or CCCP or KSA wants to arrest you, all they need to do is inject the hash of one of your photos into the “list” and you will be flagge…

What on earth? To clear up some of your false statements: - You need several hash matches to trigger a review - The reviewer can of course see what triggered the review (the visual derivative) - The reviewer would see that the matches are not CSAM, and instead of the report being sent on to the NCMEC it would instead start an investigation of why these innocuous images were matched in the first place - If the CIA or…

Apple is putting a backdoor in the phones to legitimately frame anyone they want. The commenter's claims are valid and in my opinion not limited those.

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

#469

Post by system2 »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #275

There is a great deal of misinformation and confusion on this topic. Here is a good interview with Apple's head of Privacy. https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...

The only information I care about is Apple is putting a trojan in my phone and check anything I do with my phone. That's where it is going. This is all messed up, no random bs article can change what's going on.

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

#470

Post by Grustaf »

stickfigure wrote: post #213
fortenforge wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people responding to this seem to not understand how perceptual hashing / PhotoDNA works. It's true that they're not cryptographic hashes, but the false positive rate is vanishingly small. Apple claims it's 1 in a trillion [1], but suppose that you don't believe them. Google and Facebook and Microsoft are all using PhotoDNA (or equivalent perceptual hashing schemes) right now. Have you heard of some massive i…

The false positive rate for any given image is not 1 in a trillion. Perceptual hashing just does not work like that. It also suffers from the birthday paradox problem - as the database expands, and the total number of pictures expands, collisions become more likely. The parent poster does make the mistake of assuming that other pictures of kids will likely cause false positives. Anything could trigger a false positiv…

> The false positive rate for any given image is not 1 in a trillion

What's relevant is the overall false positive rate. If they require 6 matches for example, it's enough for each match to have a 1% false positive rate in order to get 1 in trillion overall.

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