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The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

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Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#71

Post by gonehome »

sa1 wrote: post #59
gonehome wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end isn't really compromised with their described implementation. The only thing sent is the hash and signature and that's only if there are enough matches to pass some threshold. I don't really view that as 'permanently compromised' - at least not in any way more serious that Apple's current capabilities to compromise a device. I think e2ee still has meaning here - it'd prevent Apple from being able to see your…

Yeah, and as argued in one of the blog posts - that's just a policy decision - not a capability decision - malleable to authoritarian countries' requests.

Yes - and I agree that that's where the risk lies.

Though I'd argue the risk has kind of always lied there given companies can ship updates to phones. You could maybe argue it'd be harder to legally compel them to do so, but I'm not sure there's much to that.

The modern 'megacorp' centralized software and distribution we have is dependent on policy for the most part.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#72

Post by jamesu »

lawkwok wrote: post #28
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not true. Apple is using a similarity based hash, so if the NCMEC database contains a picture that's similar to one that you have, it could produce a match even if it's not the same. Apple says this isn't an issue, because a person will look at your picture(yes, a random person somewhere will look at the pictures of your newborn) and judge whether they are pictures of child abuse or not. If this unknown pe…

Keep in mind, this manual review only happens after Apple’s system detects multiple occurrences of matches. Until that point, no human is alerted of matches nor does anyone see how many matches there have been. In a TechCrunch interview Apple said that they are going after larger targets that are worth NCMEC’s time.

"Multiple occurrences of matches" could have definitely been an issue for a friend of mine. When they took a picture, they'd often go for the "blitz the subject with the camera" approach, then never ended up deleting all the bad pictures because they had hoarding tendencies.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#73

Post by gonehome »

amelius wrote: post #68
gonehome wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end isn't really compromised with their described implementation. The only thing sent is the hash and signature and that's only if there are enough matches to pass some threshold. I don't really view that as 'permanently compromised' - at least not in any way more serious that Apple's current capabilities to compromise a device. I think e2ee still has meaning here - it'd prevent Apple from being able to see your…

> The only thing sent is the hash and signature and that's if there are enough matches to pass some threshold. Not true. If there are enough matches, someone at Apple will have a look at your pictures. Even if they are innocent.

I think the one thumbnail of the matching hash? Just to make sure there isn't a (they argue one in a trillion, but I don't know if I buy that) false positive.

That's if there is enough matches to trigger the threshold in the first place, otherwise nothing is sent (even if there are matches below that threshold).

Alternatively this is running on all unencrypted photos you have in iCloud and all matches are known immediately. Is that preferable?

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#74

Post by bastardoperator »

gonehome wrote: post #6
querez wrote: post #2

I have a newborn at home, and like every other parent, we take thousands of pictures and videos of our newest family member. We took pictures of the very first baby-bath. So now I have pictures of a naked baby on my phone. Does that mean that pictures of my newborn baby will be uploaded to Apple for further analysis, potentially stored for indefinite time, shared with law enforcement?

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

Like this part?

"The Messages feature is specifically only for children in a shared iCloud family account. If you’re an adult, nothing is changing with regard to any photos you send or receive through Messages. And if you’re a parent with children whom the feature could apply to, you’ll need to explicitly opt in to enable the feature. It will not turn on automatically when your devices are updated to iOS 15."

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#76

Post by sa1 »

gonehome wrote: post #71
sa1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and as argued in one of the blog posts - that's just a policy decision - not a capability decision - malleable to authoritarian countries' requests.

Yes - and I agree that that's where the risk lies. Though I'd argue the risk has kind of always lied there given companies can ship updates to phones. You could maybe argue it'd be harder to legally compel them to do so, but I'm not sure there's much to that. The modern 'megacorp' centralized software and distribution we have is dependent on policy for the most part.

Yup, we can agree on that.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#77

Post by zionic »

baal80spam wrote: post #4
querez wrote: post #2

I have a newborn at home, and like every other parent, we take thousands of pictures and videos of our newest family member. We took pictures of the very first baby-bath. So now I have pictures of a naked baby on my phone. Does that mean that pictures of my newborn baby will be uploaded to Apple for further analysis, potentially stored for indefinite time, shared with law enforcement?

No, it doesn't work like that.

Yes it does, it uses fuzzy perceptual hashes not crypto hashes.

So if your innocent baby pic looks similar enough to a previously tagged child abuse image then YES, it will flag you and send a copy to the feds.

And before you correct me, the Apple employee will see a picture of your naked baby and hit “forward to NCMEC”, which… upon investigation is actually just the feds

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#78

Post by dathinab »

Spooky23 wrote: post #29
gonehome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

The EFF wrote a really shitty hit piece deliberately confused the parental management function with the matching against hashes of illegal images. Two different things. From there, a bazillion hot takes followed.

Two different things which are sold as one package by Apple.

Two different things which both are known to be prone to all kind of miss-detection.

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#79

Post by belorn »

slownews45 wrote: post #13
gonehome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reading this, which is basically the only good reporting I've seen on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia... There are legitimate things to be concerned about, but 99% of internet discussion on this topic is junk.

Even HN reporting / article linking / comments have been surprisingly low quality and seem to fulminate and declaim with surprisingly little interesting conversation and tons of super big assertions. Linked articles and comments have said apple's brand is now destroyed, that apple is committing child porn felonies somehow with this (the logical jumps and twisting to get to these claims are very far from strong plausi…

The encryption on the hash DB has very little to do with recreating images. It is pretty trivial to make sure that it is mathematical impossible to do (just not enough bytes, and hash collisions means there is an infinitive large number of false positives).

My own guess is that the encryption is there so that people won't have access to an up-to-date database to test against. People who want to intentionally create false positive could abuse it, and sites that distribute images could alter images to automatic bypass the check. There is also always the "risk" that some security research may look at the database and find false positives from the original source and make bad press, as they have done with block lists (who can forget the bonsai tree website that got classified as child porn).

Re: The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

#80

Post by amelius »

gonehome wrote: post #73
amelius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing sent is the hash and signature and that's if there are enough matches to pass some threshold. Not true. If there are enough matches, someone at Apple will have a look at your pictures. Even if they are innocent.

I think the one thumbnail of the matching hash? Just to make sure there isn't a (they argue one in a trillion, but I don't know if I buy that) false positive. That's if there is enough matches to trigger the threshold in the first place, otherwise nothing is sent (even if there are matches below that threshold). Alternatively this is running on all unencrypted photos you have in iCloud and all matches are known immed…

> I think the one thumbnail of the matching hash?

So it is sending pictures? That makes your argument quite a bit weaker.

> Is that preferable?

Nope, E2EE without compromises is preferable.

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