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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

#831

Post by anchpop »

shakezula wrote: post #779
new_realist wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate on these magical methods.

They're not magical. They're just smart use of cryptography. Ashton Kutcher's foundation Thorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization) does a lot of work in this space. They have hashed content databases, they have suspected and watchlisted IP addresses, etc... I don't know why I'm being downvoted. This is an active area of cryptography research, and I've applied these types of content checks in real life.…

Checking the images you upload to icloud against a database of CSAM image hashes is what Apple is updating people’s phones to do. I actually don’t really see the issue and I don’t think the average consumer will care about this one bit. apple has always been able to see your icloud backups in plan text anyway

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

#832

Post by zekrioca »

alwillis wrote: post #494
js2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course that is true. I use iCloud Photos and find this terribly creepy. If Apple must scan my photos, I'd rather they do it on their servers. I could maybe understand the new implementation if Apple had announced they'd also be enabling E2E encryption of everything in iCloud, and explained it as "this is the only way we can prevent CSAM from being stored on our servers."

If Apple must scan my photos, I'd rather they do it on their servers. Scanning on their servers is much less privacy preserving for users but don't fret, Dropbox, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. already scan stored photos.

One can encrypt a picture before uploading it to the aforementioned services, and as such nothing would really happen. That’s not a possibility on pictures taken on iPhones that get uploaded to iCloud.

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

#833

Post by nextlevelwizard »

goldenkey wrote: post #806
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like purposefully misundertanding the situation. The hash match only escalates the matter to a human inspection. In no sane world is that inspection done physically. It means that if your picture approximitely matches a known abuse picture someone gets to view it to verify if it contains abuse or not and then potential legal actions can be taken. Police knocking down your door will only happen if you are f…

Could be as simple as you bathing your kid in the tub. Why cede power to arcanists?

For one I don't think you should be taking photos of your kids in the tub. No one is going to want to watch those. Secondly if you manage to capture same position on your kid and same angle as someone in an abuse picture there might be something wrong with your bathing routine.

This just feels like people constructing imaginary boogieman out of this

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

#834

Post by jjgreen »

ElFitz wrote: post #819
jjgreen wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

voluntary (adjective) done, made, or given willingly, without being forced or paid to do it (Cambridge) How is my will involved here?

Because you only have to express it for it to be respected. Which is the bare minimum if you want others to be able to even consider respecting it. The default choice being, in the absence of any information, the one that increases chances of survival of actually living humans doesn’t seem misguided to me. —— If you want compulsory and overreaching (although not necessarily bad. Got no opinion on that aspect) rules,…

Because you only have to express it for it to be respected.

... and if you do not know that an opt-out is required to not have your organs removed, then how can it be said that you have willingly contributed them. And if your organs are removed by default, without you actually willing that this be the case, then how can this practice be called "donation"?

So instead, shall we call it "organ retrieval", "organ harvesting" and so on? All rather ugly words. But when the words that accurately describe what you are doing appear ugly, instead of looking for words which inaccurately describe what you are doing, perhaps you should ask yourself if you should be doing what you are doing.

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

#835

Post by nottorp »

userbinator wrote: post #130
nottorp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how you should look at it. They have no business scanning the phones for anything, period. I'll refer you to the poem beginning with "First they came for the Jews...".

"First they came for the pedophiles..."

Yeah, and then they'll come for the gays or christians, depending on which group you feel closer to.

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

#836

Post by goldenkey »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #833
goldenkey wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be as simple as you bathing your kid in the tub. Why cede power to arcanists?

For one I don't think you should be taking photos of your kids in the tub. No one is going to want to watch those. Secondly if you manage to capture same position on your kid and same angle as someone in an abuse picture there might be something wrong with your bathing routine. This just feels like people constructing imaginary boogieman out of this

I both understand and acknowledge your position. I agree that this technology can do a lot of good if used for its intended purposes. However, it does strike me as a bit overarching.

The question really is, will it be used for intended purposes or will it become like roadside drug sniffing dogs? A common euphemism is "probable cause on 4 legs."

https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs...

If it is overly sensitive, or if Apple or the government expands the list to include much more than what it has initially been slated for, it's possible that the faux detections will be used for escalation and ultimately result in parallel constructions for crimes like drug possession.

To clarify - here's an arcane scenario. Authorities receive an alert and are given permission by Apple to look at all photos taken the same day as the photo in question. The photo in question is a false match but the rest of the photos that day are still inspected. The agents observe a photo of a bag of white powder, and use it to procure further investigations/warrants. The target is later arrested for possession once physical evidence is found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

I find the laws in this nation, particularly drug laws, to be quite obtuse. I don't think it is wise to give any additional enforcement capabilities to those that are continuing to deprive citizens of life and liberty over archaic drug laws.

I hate pedophiles and child abusers as much as anyone else should. I'd execute the abusers if we are being totally honest. It's just that this technology strikes me as a potentially Orwellian device.

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

#837

Post by skylurk »

It makes no sense to me to create technology that incentivizes the creation of fresh, unindexed CSAM.

Makes me wonder if the management at apple feels the current stock of CSAM content is getting stale? /s

At a technological level, this highlights the difference between perceptual hashing and image classification, which (ostensibly) can extrapolate from the training data. Regardless of how you feel about running this thing on your phone, the approach they chose has some significant perverse incentives.

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

#838

Post by tlholaday »

codedokode wrote: post #808
prophesi wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more from Schneier's book, but I would say the most import reason E2E encryption should be the default is that in the event of a data breach, nothing would be lost. If a company's servers are hacked, they'd have access to the symmetrical encryption keys, and therefore all of the data. It also ensures that the company can't be selling/sharing your data, as they don't have access to it in the first place. Edit:…

What are the advantages of having unencrypted cloud backups? The only advantage is that authoritarian governments can better control their citizens. Apple is playing on the side of dictators instead of protecting their users.

> What are the advantages of having unencrypted cloud backups?

Unsophisticated users who have lost or forgotten their passphrase can recover their data.

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

#839

Post by KeepFlying »

burkaman wrote: post #675
argvargc wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their TV scans every frame displayed and every word said if it sees anything the TV manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their blender has an array of chemical sensors in it, and if it detects a substance the manufacturer thinks is ill…

> Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? FYI most (all?) modern printers will refuse to print anything they think is counterfeit money, and will include a unique code traceable back to you in every printed document. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

I'm not a fan of this either but at least it doesn't call the police on me. It places a marker so that a human could track it back to be, sure, but that still requires me to actually try to do something illegal with something I've printed.

I still think it's BS that you can't scan money though and it very much an overreach. Your home printer isn't gonna make a convincing fake anyway.

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

#840

Post by chrisdhoover »

zepto wrote: post #760
somedude895 wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Selling dev consoles on ebay or drugs on the darkweb? We'll take the picture in the listing and find out who took it. Can't find any matches? This is too ineffective. We'll need Apple to store all hashes on all devices for 6 months. The slippery slope argument makes a LOT of sense.

Nope. This would be an illegal search under the 4th Amendment. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year...

Parallel construction is how rules are circumvented
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