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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

#621

Post by thombee »

Componica wrote: post #19
travoc wrote: post #7

Can someone explain how Apple being coaxed or coerced into searching all of our personal devices for illegal files by federal law enforcement is not an unconstitutional warrantless search?

It's most likely a demand by China so that they can create an infrastructure to locate political dissidents. Oh look, a Winnie the Pooh Xi meme ended up in your gallery/inbox. Why is there a knock at the door? I'm pretty sure thats the real reason.

Why then release this feature in the US? Why not just release it in China and avoid all this negative press? Bad take is bad

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

#622

Post by thombee »

sethammons wrote: post #134
azinman2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is engaging in this activity of their own free will for sake of their own commercial gain What's the commercial gain?

More access to markets subject to totalitarian regimes

Why can't they provide this feature to these regimes? Why do they implement it in the USA then? Seems like a roundabout way to go about it lol

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

#623

Post by feanaro »

Svoka wrote: post #619
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…

From what I understand, Apple does not want to scan your phone. They want to have end-to-end encryption and store your photos encrypted. This is why they scan before sending them encrypted. They won't scan anything which you would not put in the cloud anyway. This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Probably too clever for j…

> This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers.

Correction: Anything in the shady government-supplied database, pushed through a private corporation, not CP. The official purpose today is CP (well, CSAM, which is already more vague than CP), but the distinction is important. Also, not only to prevent storing that content on their servers, but to report you to the authorities.

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

#624

Post by mdoms »

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…

> there's no easy way to explain it and still defend Apple's Privacy narrative, wihout doing extreme mental gymnastics.

> > Apple really wanted to preserve "end-to-end" encryption, but they needed to do something to address the CSAM issue

There we are.

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

#625

Post by isaac21259 »

Svoka wrote: post #619
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…

From what I understand, Apple does not want to scan your phone. They want to have end-to-end encryption and store your photos encrypted. This is why they scan before sending them encrypted. They won't scan anything which you would not put in the cloud anyway. This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Probably too clever for j…

What? Scanning your phone is exactly what Apple is doing. They say they won't scan anything not put on the cloud but you have no control over that and it is subject to change at anytime. They've already weakened their systems at the request of the government so it wouldn't be at all unexpected for them to scan photos not uploaded to the cloud. End-to-end encryption is completely useless if you have spyware installed on one of those ends.

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

#626

Post by TriStateFarmer »

hereme888 wrote: post #620
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…

G

You have misunderstood the entire tech story.

Apple are scanning the images only when they are uploaded to iCloud, because they don't want the CSAM pictures on their servers.

And you're not alone. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc are full of shouting angry people who haven't understood the story at all.

It's almost became a Rorschach test between those who understand technology and those who like to shout at things.

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

#627

Post by marticode »

the_other wrote: post #616
marticode wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple privacy focus was always opportunistic: they couldn't get a foothold into online advertising so they decided to make that weakness a selling point instead. They'll ditch privacy in a second if they can sell you enough ads, just as they ditched privacy for Chinese customers when the Chinese government asked them to.

> Apple privacy focus was always opportunistic: they couldn't get a foothold into online advertising so they decided to make that weakness a selling point instead. You could spin that the other way: Apple’s foray into advertising was opportunistic, but didn’t sit with their focus on privacy. You’d need internal memos to prove it went either way.

You could, but it seems more likely that a mega corporation gave up on a huge market because it failed to succeed there rather than moral principles. It's not like Apple has showed a lot of moral standing when dealing with the CCP, or isn't ruthlessly crushing competition when it gets the chance.

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

#628

Post by sbr464 »

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…

Franz Kafka.

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

#629

Post by mdoms »

zepto wrote: post #358
zionic wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false information, the scanning system is highly generalized to finding any type of photo via fuzzy matched perceptual hashes. It can target a pride flag just as easily as CP.

No, what you have said is bullshit. The perceptual hashes are not generalized. They do not match ‘child porn’ or ‘pride flag’. They match specific photos from a database. You might argue that that database could contain a specific photo of a pride flag. You would be right, but there are safeguards against that. The system will not trigger with just one match. A set of multiple images must match. So no, the system won…

This is pure speculation.
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