Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by Razengan » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:02 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #283

js2 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But with Apple's CSAM proposal is NOT possible to have an iPhone that Apple isn't continuously scanning. As currently implemented, iOS will only scan photos to be uploaded to iCloud Photos. If iCloud Photos is not enabled, then Apple isn't scanning the phone.

Woops, you're right, thanks for the correction. I think the issue is that, as Ben Thompson pointed out, the only thing preventing them from scanning other stuff now is just policy , not capability , and now that Pandora's box is open it's going to be much more difficult to resist when a government comes to them and says "we want you to scan messages for subversive content".

Woops, yet another example of uninformed outrage. People leading pitchfork parties without knowing the full story.

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

#542

Post by zarzavat » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:03 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #411

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, strongly. Let's say you're authoritarian government EvilGov. Before this announcement, if you went to Apple and said "we want you to push this spyware to your iPhones", Apple would and could have easily pushed back both in the court of public opinion and the court of law. Now though, Apple is already saying "We'll take this database of illegal image hashes provided by the government and use it to scan you…

Could they though? An authoritarian government could just as easily say "if you do not implement this feature, we will not allow you to operate in this country" and refuse to entertain legal challenges.

Authoritarian countries are the least of the worries. There's a large class of illegal imagery that is policed in democratic countries: copyrighted media. We are only two steps away from having your phone rat you to the MPAA because you downloaded a movie and stored it on your phone.

I can guarantee that some industry bigwigs are salivating at the prospect of this tech. Imagine youtube copyright strikes but local to your device.

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

#543

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:05 AM UTC

new_realist wrote: post #462

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, strongly. Let's say you're authoritarian government EvilGov. Before this announcement, if you went to Apple and said "we want you to push this spyware to your iPhones", Apple would and could have easily pushed back both in the court of public opinion and the court of law. Now though, Apple is already saying "We'll take this database of illegal image hashes provided by the government and use it to scan you…

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.

[deleted]

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

#544

Post by simion314 » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

zepto wrote: post #518

simion314 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the claim is that it is set to only detect people who are actually building a collection of CSAM From what I read the threshold is for a different purpose, ,the false positives are too many so to reduce the number of reports the threshold workaround is introduced, so is a hack to workaround the false positives and not a threshold to catch people with big collections.

I have seen both in comments from Apple. Certainly spokespeople have talked about wanting any reports to NCMEC to be actionable. I think a lot hinges on what you call a ‘false positive’. It could mean ‘an image that is not CSAM’ or it could mean ‘an account that has some apparent CSAM, but not enough to be evidence of anything’.

I think it is clear that Apple will have no choice, if they for sure find 1 CSAM image they can't say "it is just 1 img so it is not a big collection..." they have to send it to whoever to handle it.

What would help me with this kind of things would be more transparency, like to know the algorithm, the threshold, the real numbers of false positives, can the hashes be set per country or individual, can independent people look inside iOS and confirm that the code works as described...

What would also help is to know for sure hoe many children were saved by this kind of system,

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

#545

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

roody15 wrote: post #229

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#546

Post by spuz » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #537

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point is that with this technology, Apple can now please both the government and Apple users that want their data in the cloud to be fully encrypted.

First they enable this technology to prove to the government that they can still scan for bad stuff, then they enable true E2E. I don't know if this is really their motivation but it sounds plausible to me.

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

#547

Post by akiselev » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #522

akiselev wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What criteria do you use to evaluate whether a post takes a thread further into a flamewar or not? In what way did my reply make the rest of the discussion "shallower, more tedious, and nastier"? I felt that this sparked a lively (albeit short) debate about a blindspot that a great many readers seem to have. It took a six hour rollercoaster ride before flags killed it - not even a fair shake for anyone to vouch despi…

Two issues: 1. Your comment didn't add any information—it was just grandiose, inflammatory claims ("extreme mental gymnastics", "farce to begin with" and "blatantly obvious") 2. Replies like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28163531 are to be expected to such comments. This is the way that discussion degrades. (That was the top reply to your comment before I downweighted it, so the effect was a lot more obvious b…

> 1. Your comment didn't add any information—it was just grandiose, inflammatory claims ("extreme mental gymnastics", "farce to begin with" and "blatantly obvious")

"Extreme metal gymnastics" was the only inflammatory claim and it was the same language used by the person I was replying to. "Farce" has no more charitable a synonym [1] and "to begin with" does not make it any more or less inflammatory. "Blatantly obvious" - really? It was. Plenty of replies agree based on the merits of the argument. This isn't a flamewar

> 2. Replies like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28163531 are to be expected to such comments. This is the way that discussion degrades. (That was the top reply to your comment before I downweighted it, so the effect was a lot more obvious before that.)

People get defensive sometimes, so what? Take the charitable interpretation. (and this is a deflection - I was asking about my comment).

"Please stop insulting... Don't act superior..." - how in the world did that get flagged!? How does this level of genuine politeness degrade the discussion?

"No one thinks you're any smarter by saying "I told you so"." - ...really? By HN snark standards thats praise.

> 3. This entire subthread is way more generic than the better parts of the discussion. That's to be expected from inflammatory comments that don't add information. Generic threads are much more predictable and much less interesting than specific ones: ...

That's a self fulfilling judgement (see above).

Worst case I'm guilty of extreme snark. Call it a coping mechanism.

[1] https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/farce https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/facade

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

#548

Post by nbzso » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

Can you imagine the beautiful New World we are building under the wise leadership of corporations and politicians motivated by unstoppable greed, control and power?

Can you imagine "the screeching voices of minorities with critical thinking"?

The big picture of hyperconnected future in which automated systems will decide your fate is in place and it's running well. It is not perfect. Yet. But it will be. Soon.

You will find a way to cope. As usual. As a collective. As a "exemplary citizen with nothing to hide".

"A blood black nothingness began to spin. Began to spin. Let's move on to system. System."

The system will grow. Powered by emotional reasoning created by the social engineers, paid well to package and sell "The New Faith" for the masses.

You are not consumers anymore. You are not the product anymore. You are the fuel. Your thoughts and dreams, emotions and work are the blood of the system. You will be consumed.

"Do you get pleasure out of being a part of the system? System. Have they created you to be a part of the system? System."

Yes. The pleasure of collective truism. In the name of the "common good" - the big, the bold and the brave brush, build to remove any form of suspicion or oversight.

"A blood black nothingness. A system of cells. Within cells interlinked. Interlinked"

Wake up, Neo...

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

#549

Post by mlindner » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

inkyoto wrote: post #201

nitrogen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With server-side scanning, the separation is clear In all these threads everyone is coming close to the crux of the issue, but I want to restate it in clearer terms: There is a sacrosanct line between "public" and "private," "mine" and "yours." That line cannot be crossed by Western governments without a warrant. Cloud computing has deliberately blurred this line over time. This on-device scanning implementation blow…

> There is a sacrosanct line between "public" and "private," "mine" and "yours." That line cannot be crossed by Western governments without a warrant. This is a self-delusion, I am afraid. The line has been crossed more than once, and it will be crossed again. UK and Australian governments are just two prime examples of waving terrorism and pedobear banners as a pretext to get invasive with each new legislation, and…

In the US however this division remains, even if it has been lost elsewhere. (This loss is one of the reasons I have had to never want to live in the UK nor Australia.)

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

#550

Post by spuz » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

Unklejoe wrote: post #362

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That would be the best case scenario, but then why wouldn’t they come out and say that? They could have announced this all in one shot and saved themselves a lot of blowback. I believe they have to understand that, which makes me think the theory of them planning to add E2E may not be true.

They would not talk about this in their public messaging because it would require them to admit that their privacy policies are influenced not just by their own company morals but also by the government.

They would have to say something like "We know some users want to fully encrypt their cloud data. We also want to encrypt their data. But the government won't allow us to do it until we protect their interests in stopping child abuse and terrorism". That would contradict their marketing image of having their interests being aligned with their users'.