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One Bad Apple

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Re: One Bad Apple

#471

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…

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.

Why doesn't anyone ever question their intent to protect children? There is no such intent. When they do protect children, these are the sorts of observations of what happens when the state has 100% control over children:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...

Why does the state, when they treat children like this, get to proceed on "more" child protection to protect children? Are we totally mad? Any effort to protect children is always a de facto effort to deliver more children into this system, and the state system is much worse than being abused in society (never mind that someone found there's actually more abuse in foster care than with abusive parents! Therefore even if you assume social services is always right ... they never protect kids against social services itself. Therefore you can reasonably assume that a kid that is getting abused will be forced into a worse situation by state "help")?

I mean if you want to protect children, obviously the first step is to fix the child protection system that everybody knows is badly broken (you constantly hear stories about schools sabotaging research into abusive parents to protect the child against social services, covering for the child, lying about attendance or even wounds, ..., because they know social services will be much worse for the child).

There's states where the corrections department provides better care (and definitely better educational instruction) for children than social services do. And yes: that is most definitely NOT because the corrections department provides quality instruction. It's just MUCH worse with social services.

They cover themselves by showing the worst possible situations in society "demonstrating the need to intervene". And you won't hear them talk about how they treat children ... because frankly everyone knows.

Reality is that research keeps finding the same thing: a child that gets abused at home ... is being treated better (gets a better future, better schools, better treatment, yes really, more to read, ...) than children "protected" from abuse by the state:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.97.5.1583

(and that's ignoring that reasons for placement are almost never that the child is unsafe. The number 1 reason is non-cooperation with mental health and/or social care by either one of the parents or the child themselves. There is not even an allegation that the child is unsafe and needs protection. Proof is never provided, because for child protection there is no required standard of proof in law)

And we're to believe that people who refuse to fix child services ... want extra power "to protect children"? How is this reasonable at all? They have proven they have no interest whatsoever in protecting children, as the cost cutting proves time and time again.

Re: One Bad Apple

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Your wikipedia link doesn't show anything regarding abuse of the governing body ALL of the examples are from private persons. Have you even like....read the page they linked? "Siobhan Gorman (2013-08-23). "NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests". Washington Wire. The Wallstreet Journal. " Are NSA Officers "private persons" now? They are government employees, they were abusing the power they were given while employed by…

Wow if you can't distinguish between rogue agents and an institutional abuse of power there is nothing left to argue.

If you really think that an NSA employee abusing their access is just a "private person" then yeah, I guess there is nothing left to argue. I guess it must be nice sleeping well at night not worrying about this stuff, right?

Re: One Bad Apple

#473

NCMEC has essentially shows that they have zero regard for privacy and called all privacy activists "screeching voices of the minority". At the same time, they're at the center point of a highly opaque, entrenched (often legally mandated) censorhip infrastructure that can and will get accounts shut down irrecoverably and possibly people's homes raided, on questionable data: In one of the previous discussions, I've se…

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

> About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or the long term impact.

The exploitation of children is a real and heartbreaking ongoing tragedy that forever harms millions of those we most owe protection.

It's because this is so tragic that we in the world of privacy have grown skeptical. The Four Horsemen, invoked consistently around the world to mount assaults against privacy, are child abuse, terrorism, drugs, and money laundering.

Once privacy is defeated, none of those real, compelling, pressing problems get better (well, except money laundering). Lives are not improved. People are not rescued. Well-meaning advocates just move on to the next thing the foes of privacy point them at. Surely it will work this time!

Your heart is in the right place. You have devoted no small part of your time and energy to a deep and genuine blooming of compassion and empathy. It's just perhaps worth considering that others of us might have good reason to be skeptical.

Re: One Bad Apple

#474

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.

The thing is tools like this will only make it harder to fix the problem.

Re: One Bad Apple

#475

NCMEC has essentially shows that they have zero regard for privacy and called all privacy activists "screeching voices of the minority". At the same time, they're at the center point of a highly opaque, entrenched (often legally mandated) censorhip infrastructure that can and will get accounts shut down irrecoverably and possibly people's homes raided, on questionable data: In one of the previous discussions, I've se…

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

> Why haven't I made my whitepaper about PhotoDNA public? In my view, who would it help? It would help bad guys avoid detection and it will help malcontents manufacture false-positives. The paper won't help NCMEC, ICACs, or related law enforcement. It won't help victims.

It would help those victims who are falsely accused of having child porn on the phone because of a bug.

It would also help those people who is going to be detained because PhotoDNA will be used by dictatorial states to find incriminating material on their phone just as they used Pegasus to spy on journalists, political opponents, etc.

Re: One Bad Apple

#476

NCMEC has essentially shows that they have zero regard for privacy and called all privacy activists "screeching voices of the minority". At the same time, they're at the center point of a highly opaque, entrenched (often legally mandated) censorhip infrastructure that can and will get accounts shut down irrecoverably and possibly people's homes raided, on questionable data: In one of the previous discussions, I've se…

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

> About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or the long term impact.

I'd say it's the other way around. If freedom dies this time, it might die for good, followed by an "eternity" of totalitarianism. All violence that occured in human history so far combined is nothing compared to what is at stake.

> Free thought requires free media. Free media requires free technology. We require ethical treatment when we go to read, to write, to listen and to watch. Those are the hallmarks of our politics. We need to keep those politics until we die. Because if we don’t, something else will die. Something so precious that many, many of our fathers and mothers gave their life for it. Something so precious, that we understood it to define what it meant to be human; it will die.

-- Eben Moglen

Re: One Bad Apple

#477
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it, but then you failed to back it up with anything other than your fears.

What reason do we have to trust that the NSA won't knock on the door of apple and ask for a small expansion, as a matter of national security + here is your NDA outlining that any canary tampering will result in jail time? It's a closed system so we would have no way of knowing.

Sure, but that has nothing to do with this mechanism or this discussion.

They could have done that at any time in the past, and could do so in future.

‘NSA could force Apple to do something in secret’ is an evergreen fear just like ‘think of the children’. Such comments get added to every thread about Apple and privacy or security.

Re: One Bad Apple

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

> The paper won't help NCMEC, ICACs, or related law enforcement. It won't help victims. But it will help all of society by preventing a backdoor from gaining a foothold. If the technology is shown to be ineffective it will help pressure Apple to remove this super dangerous tool. Once a technical capability is there, governments will force Apple to use it for compliance. It won’t be long before pictures of Winnie the…

OP knows that, and is acting accordingly.

They enjoy being “unquestionable”/above being audited.

Re: One Bad Apple

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. I'm the author. I've worked with different parts of NCMEC for years. (I built the initial FotoForensics service in a few days. Before I wrote the first line of code, I was in phone calls with NCMEC about my reporting requirements.) Over time, this relationship grew. Some years, I was in face-to-f…

> someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." Yes, let's think about the kids, please. I certainly don't want my children to grow up in an authoritarian surveillance state...

Exactly, we can’t save the children by giving them a dystopia to grow up in.

Re: One Bad Apple

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also only scans images uploaded to icloud

It does that on the device. All it takes is enabling it by default, instead of triggering the scan prior to upload, and add more hashes to flag. The result would be a total loss of privacy, basically Apple is privatising mass surveillance with that. Without oversight, no matter how small, or accountability.

How would this let them scan the text of your signal messages or even your iMessages?

How would this let them search for a subversive PDF?

It wouldn’t. This is just fearmongering.

> The result would be a total loss of privacy, basically Apple is privatising mass surveillance with that. Without oversight, no matter how small, or accountability.

You are talking about an imagined system someone could build in the future, not the system Apple has put in place.

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