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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

#531

Post by xiphias2 »

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…

,,Netflix could very clearly see the writing on the wall, that the DVD-by-mail business needed to morph into a streaming business.''

I don't argue with your point, but actually Reed Hastings originally created Netflix the DVD rental company so that he could turn it into a movie streaming company. He had to wait for internet to be fast enough. His interview with Reid Hoffman is pretty cool:

https://youtu.be/jYhP08uuffs

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

#532

Post by loyukfai »

nl wrote: post #474
brandon272 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wants to be the government who shuts down Apple? These are politicians we are talking about.

Who wants to be the government that bans Winnie the Pooh? Ohh... oops.

Chinese Apple users already have their data treated differently.

Any chance this is already operational there?

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

#533

Post by sillysaurusx »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #255
roody15 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, it seems like Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption,“ … except they still have not mentioned anything about E2E encryption… and they currently don’t encrypt icloud backups. You would think apple would get ahead of this story and mention … or maybe they don’t have any E2E plans at all.

This blog post got a lot of commentary on HN a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28118350 . iMessages are already E2E encrypted, but you are correct, iCloud backups are decryptable with a warrant (and that was reportedly added at the FBI's request). But I agree with Ben Thompson's point in that blog post, that it's OK to not have strong, unbreakable encryption be the default, and that it's still p…

> But with Apple's CSAM proposal is NOT possible to have an iPhone that Apple isn't continuously scanning.

This is mistaken. If you turn off iCloud sync, Apple isn't continuously scanning your phone.

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

#534

Post by hughrr »

systemvoltage wrote: post #316
hughrr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ham radio? That doesn’t make sense. There’s no privacy there by law. It is by nature a completely non anonymous medium. Not only that if a country shuts down its comms the hams are all on a nice list for their shit to be confiscated. Im not a ham because of some romanticised dystopia avoidance. It’s just fun to make things that you can talk to people on :)

Ham Radio does not depend on internet backbone. In the extreme, you can communicate across the world with a few basic electronic components which can be built at home. Sure, government can listen to it but it's trivial to encrypt (illegal on Ham bands) if you're oppressed by the government. > nice list for their shit to be confiscated. I am not sure if this would go well in the USA.

It’d go really well for the government. You’d just end up with a lot of dead hams. Disorganised morons with AR15’s vs professional army. I know who wins that one.

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

#535

Post by Grustaf »

kragen wrote: post #475
new_realist wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarian governments have never needed preexisting technical gizmos in order to abuse their citizens. Look at what Russia and the Nazis did with no magic tech at all. Privacy stems from valuing human rights, not easily disproven lies about it being difficult to actually implement the spying.

On the contrary, the reason Stalin and Hitler could enact repressive measures unprecedented in human history was precisely new technological developments like the telephone, the battle tank, and IBM cards. Bad people will never value human rights; getting privacy from bad people requires you to make it actually difficult to implement the spying, rather than just lie about it. That's why the slogan says, "cypherpunks…

No, they could enact repressive measures because they had almost absolute power. The form that oppression took would obviously rely on the then current technology, but the fundamental enabler of oppression was power, not technology.

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

#536

Post by feanaro »

zepto wrote: post #198
jmull wrote: post #167

I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. I’m not even talking about any “slippery slope” scenarios and I’ll never have any of the material they are looking for. And right or wrong, I don’t really fear a false identification, so this isn’t about a worry that they will actually turn me in. I just don’t want them scanning my phone for the purpose of tur…

This is the most honest take on this that I’ve seen. The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense, nor does the risk of false positives. But the idea of being suspected even in this abstract way, because of something other people do , is at the very least distasteful, bordering on offensive.

I agree with this take, but the slippery slope arguments do make sense, as exemplified by any spying technology ever. Once a capability exists, it's too enticing not to continue expanding the scope.

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

#537

Post by heavyset_go »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #402
heavyset_go wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This seems like an incredible reach to me.

Why? It's already been well-reported that Apple makes a teeny fraction of the NCMEC reports that other large cloud providers make, and that the reason they hold the keys to iCloud backups was from some requests/pressure from the FBI.

Because the government doesn't just care about CSAM, they care about terrorism, drug and human trafficking, gangs etc. Scanning for CSAM won't change the government's opposition to E2EE, and Apple knows this because, according to their transparency reports, they respond with customers' data to NSL and FISA data requests about 60,000 times a year.

Occam's razor also says they aren't playing 11th dimensional chess, and that they just fucked up.

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

#538

Post by mlindner »

> A fundamental problem with Apple's new plan on scanning child abuse images, critics said, is that the company is making cautious policy decisions that it can be forced to change, now that the capability is there, in exactly the same way it warned would happen if it broke into the terrorism suspect's phone.

This is the most important part that seems to be missing in every denial that Apple won't work with governments to spy on various types of content. _It's not Apple's choice to make._ They have no control over whether they're forced to or not.

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

#539

Post by feanaro »

zepto wrote: post #484
thevagrant wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say the slippery slope take doesn't make sense. It is perfectly possible that had no one cried out about this change then the next change would have been: Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks."

> Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks." How do you know this hasn’t already happened? What does it have to do with the CSAM technology?

How do you know the invisible pink unicorn doesn't exist? You don't, but going after the known bad things is the most effective action you can take. You certainly don't ignore known bad things just because there may be even worse unknown things.

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

#540

Post by tuatoru »

jmull wrote: post #167

I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. I’m not even talking about any “slippery slope” scenarios and I’ll never have any of the material they are looking for. And right or wrong, I don’t really fear a false identification, so this isn’t about a worry that they will actually turn me in. I just don’t want them scanning my phone for the purpose of tur…

> I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police.

Yes. This is called vigilantism.[1] Apple is proposing to become a vigilante.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism

"Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority."

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