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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

#701

Post by trauco »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #255
roody15 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This blog post got a lot of commentary on HN a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28118350 . iMessages are already E2E encrypted, but you are correct, iCloud backups are decryptable with a warrant (and that was reportedly added at the FBI's request). But I agree with Ben Thompson's point in that blog post, that it's OK to not have strong, unbreakable encryption be the default, and that it's still p…

"iMessages are already E2E encrypted,"

Unless you use iCloud Backup for iMessage, in which case Apple holds the keys to decrypt them.

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

#702

Post by ransom1538 »

tuatoru wrote: post #540
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…

> I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. Yes. This is called vigilantism.[1] Apple is proposing to become a vigilante. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism "Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority."

Exactly this.

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

#703

Post by amelius »

ransom1538 wrote: post #702
tuatoru wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. Yes. This is called vigilantism.[1] Apple is proposing to become a vigilante. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism "Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority."

Exactly this.

Except governments applaud it, so, no.

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

#704

Post by spuz »

pseudalopex wrote: post #681
spuz wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant true E2E encryption. Unless I'm missing something in your comment.

Apple's system allows the middle to decrypt certain images or "visual derivatives" at least. True E2E doesn't.

I'm suggesting that the client-side CSAM scanning technology could allow Apple to turn on true E2E encryption and still satisfy the government's requirement to report on CSAM which as you point out is not something that Apple currently implements.

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

#705

Post by zepto »

pritambaral wrote: post #668
zepto wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but neither is the CSAM code being used to detect anything but CSAM. If a bit can be flipped to make the CSAM detector go evil, surely it can be flipped to make photo search go evil, or spotlight start reporting files that match keywords for that matter. There is nothing special about this CSAM detector except that it’s narrower and harder to repurpose than most of the rest of the system.

> ... to make photo search go evil, or spotlight start reporting files that match keywords for that matter. As your immediate parent has already said: there isn't any process by which an image of a hotdog will be sent to someone else without my knowledge. Neither "photo search" nor "spotlight" report anything to third parties currently.

No, but a ‘bit flip’ could make them do so just as easily as a ‘bit flip’ could make the CSAM detector do something nefarious.

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

#706

Post by zepto »

simion314 wrote: post #544
zepto wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

> 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.

This is a misunderstanding of how it works. The threshold has to be met before a detection occurs. Unless the threshold is met Apple doesn’t get to know about any images.

As for independent auditing and transparent statistics, I fully agree.

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

#707

Post by zepto »

mdoms wrote: post #629
zepto wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not one line of it is speculation. This is taken from Apple’s public docs.

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

#708

Post by augstein »

I‘m still baffled by this whole issue.

Snooping around on users devices, goes against anything regarding privacy they seemed to stand for. It makes me sick to think this might even be legal. It is also sad they completely ignore any valid concerns about this intrusion.

Whats the next step if we as a society accept this behavior? Homepod listening in, until hashes of conversation snippets match some prehashed terms and sounds potentially related to child abuse and then alerting the authorities?

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

#709

Post by zepto »

cf499 wrote: post #606
zepto wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"(...) but there are safeguards against that." Hah! Nice one :D

Apple have described the safeguards. If you want to claim they are lying, by all means do so.

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

#710

Post by zepto »

dannyw wrote: post #583
zepto wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you know it’s not just a fingerprint. Did you notice the parts about the safety vouchers and the visual derivatives?

Yes, I did. You do realise that CSAM is just a policy control, and there is literally nothing technical from Apple adding non-CSAM content to the same policy and systems? I feel like you may not have actually read the paper in depth. The paper clearly shows this is a generalised solution for detecting content that perceptually matches a database. The "what" is CSAM today, but nothing about the technicals require it t…

You are ignoring how the parts of the technology are used to separate responsibilities.

> Apple can literally change it overnight to detect copyrighted content, or Snowden documents, or whatever.

No, Apple doesn’t run the database. NCMEC does.

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