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EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

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Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#81

Post by nullc »

jliptzin wrote: post #69
azinman2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this really was such a problem, then as I said, we’d have been getting reports of this over the past 10+ years it’s already been in place at big cloud providers. So where is all of this ruining of peoples lives by uploading CP on their devices? Also if you’re a gov actor trying to frame someone, why bother with a pre-image when you could put the real images on it? None of that is new today — all that’s new is Appl…

What do you mean? People are arrested all the time for having CP on their machines, I see it in the news frequently. Impossible to know how many of them could have just been framed, no one is giving the benefit of the doubt to an accused pedo. And it never goes to trial due to the possibility of enormous prison sentences. If you’re innocent would you risk 100 years in federal prison going to trial or plead guilty and…

Many people seem to miss that the automated scanning makes framing much more effective.

Say I sneak (psedo-)child porn onto your device. How do I get authorities to search you without potentially implicating myself? An anonymous tipline call is not likely to actually trigger a search.

With automated mass scanning that problem is solved: All users will be searched.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#82

Post by dannyobrien »

tpush wrote: post #18

> [...] and the parental notification system is a shift away from strong end-to-end encryption. That particular statement doesn't make much sense to me. The parental notification system is just a frontend action (one of many, like link previews and such). What does that have to do with iMessage's encryption? I can see an argument about a shift away from privacy (though it only pertains to minors under 13 receiving se…

They went into this in more detail in 2019: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/why-adding-client-side...

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#83

Post by mlosgoodat »

slownews45 wrote: post #46
mlosgoodat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the human element to this story was “cat gifs”, you might have a point. The human element here is “world governments and multinational corps beholden to nobody want to insert the first of possibly many back doors into your emotional life” Sit down. You’re just looking for attention for your ability to notice a basic pattern.

I find it very ironic that the people complaining about "suppressing news" or "violation of rights" are writing comments along the lines of sit down and shut up.

“Person on internet can perform basic arithmetic, demonstrates by counting instances of repeat content.” is a headline that:

1) we’ve seen over and over

2) adds little to the context at hand

You’re not wrong. You’re late to the game spotting patterns of reposting (it happens deal with it for yourself) and undermining the context (putting it on others to do better by your expectations.)

You have a body and mind that can be trained to find and reflect on more interesting patterns and ideas. Have at it. Don’t bemoan all of reality not conforming to your current state of cognitive awareness

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#84

Post by shuckles »

vimacs2 wrote: post #67
shuckles wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFF would probably argue that technologies like safe browsing are also a shift away from E2E encryption. They were strongly against email spam protection in the 90s for this reason.

Framing the EFF's position as being against browser safety or spam protection is disingenuous.

I didn’t say they were against either. I said their opposition to iMessage parental control features as a change to E2E encryption translates directly to other messages client safety features that may reveal the content of communication to a third party. (Nobody in the discourse seems to take their FUD about iMessage seriously, given that the focus has largely been on known CSAM detection.)

In particular, you can be concerned about E2E encryption being compromised while still believing parents should have some transparency over whether their kids are receiving explicit images. Not clear EFF offers a solution that meets both, but I did not say they are opposed to the latter.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#85

Post by shuckles »

aaomidi wrote: post #61
shuckles wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFF would probably argue that technologies like safe browsing are also a shift away from E2E encryption. They were strongly against email spam protection in the 90s for this reason.

You mean when they said blanket banning email lists is bad and shouldn't be done? Because yeah that's still true.

That was in the 2000s and a different issue and not opposed on privacy grounds. There they argued they were defending freedom of speech. In the 90s the argument was against early probabilistic models.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#86

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

azinman2 wrote: post #64
lamontcg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had SWAT teams for a long time before SWATing became popular. The publicity that this has gotten is only going to increase the chances that all these services start getting abused. And who is to say that it hasn't happened already and been entirely successful, but nobody believed the victim.

So you think we’re going to see a rise in people uploading CP to others cloud providers?

I'm honestly surprised that's not a much more common way of griefing (either specific or random targets) or disabling accounts to deny a victim access to their e-mail after an attacker has gotten access, used it to reset passwords, and is now abusing the linked accounts (with the added benefit that the victim may be too busy being arrested to deal with the fraud).

Probably because the group that has/is willing to handle CSAM is small enough that it doesn't overlap much the other groups (e.g. account hijackers, or people who want to grief a specific person and have the necessary technical skills and the patience to actually pull it off). For criminals it may not be worth the extra heat it would bring, but from what I've heard about 4chan, I'm surprised there is not a bigger overlap among "for the lulz" griefers.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#87

Post by azinman2 »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #73
azinman2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the FBI can’t just add the hashes to the db. That’s why it’s the intersection of two dbs in two jurisdictions… to prevent exactly that kind of attack. Then they need to pass a human reviewer as well.

Five Eyes

It hasn't been announced yet who else's db will be used. If it's not a 'five eyes' member... then what?

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#88

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

soziawa wrote: post #20

This is based on pure speculation, but could it be that Apple believes the covid tracking functionality has shifted power from governments to Apple? Many governments (e.g. Germany) wanted location instead of token based tracking with central storage of location pretty much up until the point where Apple and Google said that it won't happen . This is based on my perception of Germany tech media coverage of the issue.

> the covid tracking functionality has shifted power from governments to Apple?

IMO this is off topic, but I think it absolutely has done that, and has demonstrated it. I'm surprised governments haven't screamed about it more loudly, but maybe they didn't want to do that in an example where they were clearly on the wrong side (pushing for privacy-violating approaches).

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#89

Post by Dylan16807 »

slownews45 wrote: post #46
mlosgoodat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the human element to this story was “cat gifs”, you might have a point. The human element here is “world governments and multinational corps beholden to nobody want to insert the first of possibly many back doors into your emotional life” Sit down. You’re just looking for attention for your ability to notice a basic pattern.

I find it very ironic that the people complaining about "suppressing news" or "violation of rights" are writing comments along the lines of sit down and shut up.

They're not telling you to stop any meaningful discussion about the issues.

Re: EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning

#90

Post by azinman2 »

sennight wrote: post #71
azinman2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that isn’t true. This is only photos uploaded to iCloud.

Why would you lie about something so easily disproven? "Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching..." https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

Lie? I don't take kindly to such words, because you're ascribing malicious intent where there is none. Please check your tone... HN comments are about assuming the best in everyone.

This is only applying to photos uploaded to iCloud. Every single thing talks exactly about that, including the technical details: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

The hash matching is occurring on device, but only for iCloud photo images:

> Before an image is stored in iCloud Photos, an on-device matching process is performed for that image against the database of known CSAM hashes. This matching process is powered by a cryptographic technology called private set intersection, which determines whether there is a match without revealing the result. The device creates a cryptographic safety voucher that encodes the match result. It also encrypts the image’s NeuralHash and a visual derivative. This voucher is uploaded to iCloud Photos along with the image.

Read that PDF. You'll see everything in it is designed for iCloud photos only.

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