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WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

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Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#71

Post by kowlo »

hughrr wrote: post #6
zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

It’s too late either way. The fact that it even got this far through implementation says the vendor is not on my side. Not only that once capability is revealed it can be required by governments and manipulated under warrant. Particularly in some regimes, mine included, the vendor can be compelled to do something and not say anything. My comment doesn’t even cover how monumentally flawed the entire thing is either. S…

You may struggle to get the same functionality from a Nikon DSLR, but at least it has a better camera.

Are you switching from a laptop to a desktop machine? Do you have no use for the portability anymore?

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#72

Post by hutzlibu »

Fnoord wrote: post #61
hutzlibu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Might look into pinephone or something similar." Pinephone is my hope, too, but do not expect anything stable soon. That will take some time, probably years. It does not happen on its own, though, they need support now to make it a real alternative and not just a tinker toy.

There's like three major options if you want to run a FOSS smartphone, and I'll sum them up. Pinephone: Cheap. The device isn't very powerful. With people coming from an Apple device, that's a problem. Fairphone 3: Fair. The hardware isn't very powerful either, and the device is more expensive, but the product is better for the people who assembled it and the environment. Librem 5: Open. Even more expensive than Fair…

"Fairphone"

It is nice the the fairphone trys to be nice and fair, but I would rather have a focus of a actual open phone under my control and they do not deliver this (not to blame them, the issue is hard). Fixing the global exploitive economy is a different issue and trying to solve everything at once is not working usually.

"Librem 5"

How useful is a microphone killswitch, if there is no killswitch for the speakers, that can be used as a microphone, too? And it would be news to me, that it is now completely free of binary blobs and their claims always felt a little bit dishonest to me. I recently read a interview by the former CTO that confirms it

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...

I would go with the Pinephone. For now I have a stupid samsung phone with facebook app preinstalled and unremovable, but have not yet found the time to try lineage with it.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#73

Post by GeekyBear »

zpeti wrote: post #3

I really hope there is enough momentum to stop this. It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products. I haven't bought a new iphone for 4 years, I'm slowly trying to switch to a lightphone (non smartphone). My mac needs a change but I will probably switch to linux. It's absolutely ridiculous what apple has become. The exact opposite of what they used to represent, when I loved them. God rest Steve Jo…

>It's definitely the last straw for me in terms of apple products.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have all been scanning content for those same child porn images for darn near a decade now.

>The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.)

"There are two opportunities to look at content," when it's going into a cloud-storage account and when it's leaving, she said. "There is technology to do this," Grant added, pointing out that file signatures — unique hashes or fingerprints — could be used to confirm the nature of the files.

https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr...

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#74

Post by iamstupidsimple »

holstvoogd wrote: post #65

I'm so fucking tired of these asswipes from companies are a thousand times worse pretending they are better. They literally sell all your data to anyone who wants is, but noooo, apple bad! I'm not saying apple is some kind of bastion of privacy or whatever, but at least they are not selling my data to pay for their spyware vessels. To those 'experts': Get off you high horse and do better. Prove me wrong, go build a w…

> Go build a fucking app with out trying to steal my contact book. Fuck you

Not saying I agree. But people have tried, guess which social networks self-select out of survival?

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#75

Post by matheusmoreira »

siscia wrote: post #35

So I was ignorant on the issue and completely against the approach of Apple. Then HN taught me that any company storing images on their infrastructure in the US must report pedophilic images to the US government. At this point, the approach taken by Apple seems like the best one to me, if you don't want to store pictures in clear on your servers. What other technical approach are people advocating for? Another point…

Simple.

1. Encrypt everything.

2. Don't store images on your servers at all.

There's nothing to report if all you have is some encrypted blob. Alternatively, just don't consume any user data at all. Data is and should be a massive liability.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#76

Post by easton »

amelius wrote: post #16
hughrr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but they just refuse to service your updates without this enabled.

Even security updates?

Interestingly, iOS 15 is the first version of iOS in history to be optional if you want security updates. You will be able to choose if you want to go to iOS 15 and get the new features (including the CSAM prevention stuff), or you can stay on a security update only channel for iOS 14 (for a unknown period, but I'd guess until WWDC 2022? N-1 seems reasonable).

https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-15-preview/features/ (under settings)

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#77

Post by adambatkin »

ashildr wrote: post #62
ryanlol wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any company storing images on their infrastructure in the US must report pedophilic images to the US government Ones they know of… > What other technical approach are people advocating for? Apple already has a technical solution, encryption.

Encryption does not help, Apple still is responsible. If Apple intends to let the user store photos in iCloud (or send by imessage) encrypted, they either have to keep the keys, so they can decrypt and scan the photos or or to keep the user from uploading incriminating content. Apple found a third way: they will only get to reconstruct the keys if the user uploads too many pictures triggering alarms.

Source? I am not aware of a law in the US that requires Apple to actively scan images, or to store them unencrypted (or keep copies of the keys).

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#78

Post by matheusmoreira »

raspyberr wrote: post #23

I think it's sad that the "think of the children" argument has been (ab)used so much that people are becoming numb to it.

Yeah. It's gotten to the point I automatically assume anyone who uses children as an argument is acting in bad faith.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#79

Post by a254613e »

holstvoogd wrote: post #65

I'm so fucking tired of these asswipes from companies are a thousand times worse pretending they are better. They literally sell all your data to anyone who wants is, but noooo, apple bad! I'm not saying apple is some kind of bastion of privacy or whatever, but at least they are not selling my data to pay for their spyware vessels. To those 'experts': Get off you high horse and do better. Prove me wrong, go build a w…

> They literally sell all your data to anyone who wants is

Where/how can I buy all data for, let's say a dozen users, that facebook collects?

No wonder public is completely misinformed about how ad revenue based companies operate when even on HN blatant lies are highly upvoted.

Re: WhatsApp lead and other tech experts fire back at Apple’s Child Safety plan

#80

Post by traceroute66 »

I'm in two minds about this Apple news.

In one part, the pro-privacy part of me is of course aghast at the whole idea.

However...

If you "read the room", there have been increasing noises from the global political world in recent years, and perhaps especially in the US.

So if you think about it that way, it might be a case of Apple jumping before they were pushed.

I mean, let's face it, if you wait for the politicos to come up with a solution and force it through with legislation, they really would put in actual backdoors and encryption bans given half the chance.

I suspect others, such as WhatsApp, might begrudgingly follow in due course.

There's always GPG and a whole litany of other tools and apps for those who know what they are doing in terms of privacy.

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