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One Bad Apple

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Re: One Bad Apple

#71

Post by defaultname »

cmsj wrote: post #55
defaultname wrote: post #8

Good article, however- "Due to how Apple handles cryptography (for your privacy), it is very hard (if not impossible) for them to access content in your iCloud account. Your content is encrypted in their cloud, and they don't have access. If Apple wants to crack down on CSAM, then they have to do it on your Apple device" I do not believe this is true. Maybe one day it will be true and Apple is planning for it, but ri…

I think that section was rewritten, it currently reads: > [Revised; thanks CW!] Apple's iCloud service encrypts all data, but Apple has the decryption keys and can use them if there is a warrant. However, nothing in the iCloud terms of service grants Apple access to your pictures for use in research projects, such as developing a CSAM scanner. (Apple can deploy new beta features, but Apple cannot arbitrarily use your…

Indeed, for three years or so Apple's privacy policy has specifically had this in it-

"Security and Fraud Prevention. To protect individuals, employees, and Apple and for loss prevention and to prevent fraud, including to protect individuals, employees, and Apple for the benefit of all our users, and prescreening or scanning uploaded content for potentially illegal content, including child sexual exploitation material."

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

Under "Apple's Use of Personal Data". They had that in there since at least 2019.

Add that an Apple executive told congress two years ago that Apple scans iCloud data for CSAM.

Re: One Bad Apple

#72

Post by netr0ute »

cmsj wrote: post #66
netr0ute wrote: post #14

To help fight back against false positives, why not just repeatedly trigger the code that sends the data to NCMEC (per the article's claimed legal requirements) and create a DoS attack?

That code is not accessible to us. The report to NCMEC would be generated by Apple after they have manually reviewed the derived images included in the security vouchers your device submitted after it analysed your photos.

> That code is not accessible to us.

Not to tools like IDA and Ghidra

Re: One Bad Apple

#73

Post by initplus »

cmsj wrote: post #58
Dah00n wrote: post #12

> 18 U.S.C. § 2258A is specific: the data can only be sent to NCMEC. (With 2258A, it is illegal for a service provider to turn over CP photos to the police or the FBI; you can only send it to NCMEC. Then NCMEC will contact the police or FBI.) What Apple has detailed is the intentional distribution (to Apple), collection (at Apple), and access (viewing at Apple) of material that they strongly have reason to believe is…

Why is it insane that the law places extremely tight controls on the legitimate distribution of CSAM?

Well the trouble is that it makes developing detection nearly impossible.

And the line where the law is crossed is fuzzy. Say you use an AI classifier, at what accuracy is validating the results of that AI a crime? 50.000001%?

Re: One Bad Apple

#74

Post by kook_throwaway »

Klonoar wrote: post #57

I appreciate just about everything about this post, but this part keeps getting lost in everything I see written about it: >As noted, Apple says that they will scan your Apple device for CSAM material. If they find something that they think matches, then they will send it to Apple. The problem is that you don't know which pictures will be sent to Apple. It's iCloud Photos. Apple has explicitly said it's iCloud photos…

The entire technical infrastructure to scan your entire device for arbitrary content is being built and deployed.

The only change necessary to scan other files is changing a path and that's configuration that could even be silently done per-device.

Re: One Bad Apple

#76

Post by caeril »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #65

I think Apple may have really screwed the pooch with this move. They're going to catch hell for being able to take images from your device without warning or consent, and, they'll catch hell if they remove it. Worse, they've also opened the door to government censorship of images and content and propped that door wide open.

Yes, they screwed the pooch with us, representing:

1. The few who care about privacy.

2. That's about it. Maybe 1% if you're being generous. ( And subtract the portion of that 1% on this site who DO care about privacy but are being compensated $400k/yr by Apple and with Bay Area rents being what they are, they shouldn't rock the boat, and they really need to make good on their Tesla Roadster reservation. )

But go ask your mother-in-law, your dad, or any random normie friend. They're fighting PedoBear! And if they expand this further, well, they're fighting terrorists! And if they expand even further, well, I have nothing to hide! Do you?

feh ~/memes/dennis_nedry_see_nobody_cares.gif

Re: One Bad Apple

#77

Post by xucheng »

heavyset_go wrote: post #50
tdonovic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Apple (its employees) aren't actually viewing the images, nor transmitting them. They mention somewhere that it's a low res proxy of the image, or something similar.

> They mention somewhere that it's a low res proxy of the image, or something similar. Perceptual hashes are just integer/byte encodings of images that were scaled down and had some transformations applied to them. If you convert a hash into an array of pixels and reverse the transformations, you'll get some of the original image that was scaled down and hashed.

And if you then apply DLSS, you may even get the original image.

Re: One Bad Apple

#78

Post by buraktamturk »

whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #49
msandford wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the law have a moderation carve out? There are plenty of laws that have what's called 'strict liability' where your intent doesn't matter. I'm not suggesting that this is absolutely positively a situation where strict liability exists and that moderation isn't allowed. But the idea that "hey we're trying to do the right thing here" will be honored in court is....not obvious.

If we investigated this author if they do in fact run a photo service we would inevitably find that unless they are incompetent they have to moderate content, either blind or based on flags. So if apple is going to jail for child porn because they moderate / report content after flagging (this is normally actually required to do - report it), then this article writer should be going to jail as well - I guarantee his…

Well there is a difference as stated on the article that they don't expect to see CP or CSAM and says "We are not 'knowingly' seeing it since it makes up less than 0.06% of the uploads ... We do not intentionally look for CP."

Whereas Apple is moderating the suspected images so they intentionally look for CP (which, according to the author and his lawyer, is a crime).

Re: One Bad Apple

#79

Post by jtc331 »

shuckles wrote: post #16
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it: When you choose to upload your images to iCloud (which currently happens without end-to-end encryption), your phone generates some form of encrypted ticket. In the future, the images will be encrypted, with a backdoor key encoded in the tickets. If Apple receives enough images that were considered a match, the tickets become decryptable (I think I saw Shamir's Secret Sharing mentioned for this ste…

These are not “claims.” The process by which they get access to only the safety vouchers for images matching CSAM is private set intersection and comes with a cryptographic proof. In no step of the proposal does Apple access the images you store in iCloud. All access is through the associated data in the safety voucher. This design allows Apple to switch iCloud storage to end to end encrypted with no protocol changes…

What good is end to end encryption if the OS is prebuilt with a method of breaking that encryption? This is definitional backdooring, and you’re back to trusting Apple’s goodwill (and/or willingness to resist governments) to keep your data safe (I.e., not add new decryptable triggers).

Not having backdoors is a hard requirement for end to end encryption offering privacy guarantees.

Re: One Bad Apple

#80

Post by ksec »

>Think of it this way: Your landlord owns your property, but in the United States, he cannot enter any time he wants. In order to enter, the landlord must have permission, give prior notice, or have cause. Any other reason is trespassing. Moreover, if the landlord takes anything, then it's theft. Apple's license agreement says that they own the operating system, but that doesn't give them permission to search whenever they want or to take content.

Yes. That is an analogy only with Apple's software but not hardware. In Apple's view they are selling you the experience. So they are more like Hotels, You dont own the hotel room, the bed, the TV or anything inside that room. And in a Hotel, they can do Room Cleaning anytime they want.

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