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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

#91

Post by gbrown »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #74
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?

Well, there was that priest who got outed through data brokers recently…

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

#92

Post by hutzlibu »

dahfizz wrote: post #89
hutzlibu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 speaker…

> if there is no killswitch for the speakers, that can be used as a microphone, too? I know that physically / electronically, a speaker is a microphone, but is there any way for someone to actually record sound through the speakers on the librem? There is a lot more to a microphone than just the diaphragm...

Not easy probably, but likely doable, when someone think it is worth the effort. When the goal is security, because you feel (rightfully or not) targeted by state level intelligence, false sense of security can be dangerous:

https://www.hackread.com/hackers-steal-data-air-gapped-pcs-m...

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

#93

Post by saddlerustle »

cascom wrote: post #90
a254613e wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/catholic-priest-...

Thats not facebook. Some scummy companies do sell user data, but facebook does not and never has.

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

#94

Post by EveYoung »

viktorcode wrote: post #43
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…

The problem I have with this approach is that it introduces on-device scan for images. All what is needed to adopt it to scan for different kind of images is to connect it to different database, say, Winnie the Pooh memes featuring CCP chairman, and boom, jailed dissenters. And ability to scan all images is but a minor firmware update away. Server scanning makes it clear that the company running the servers has acces…

But Apple only plans to scan photos that are synced with iCloud, don't they? So you could just switch to an E2E encrypted alternative and drop iCloud completely.

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

#95

Post by dnh44 »

studentrob wrote: post #86
traceroute66 wrote: post #80

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…

> 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. They've tried to do this for decades and have failed. If they're going to do it then let it be on record. Let's see how voters like it.

Well, they could always try putting pressure on the tech giants in other places via other means in order to get them to acquiesce to these sorts of anti-privacy measures. Maybe via things like anti-trust measures which seem to be popular.

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

#96

Post by Notanothertoo »

nyuszika7h wrote: post #88
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…

I find it laughable whenever someone says "this is the last straw" because it just shows how incredibly misinformed they are. Yes, backdooring E2E encryption in general is a bad idea. However, consider two things: * iCloud Photos was never E2E encrypted in the first place. They already can scan your photos all they want server-side, and they have been scanning for CSAM since 2019, while Google has been scanning for i…

Exactly. This has all been done for 10 years in various forms.

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

#97

Post by unionpivo »

traceroute66 wrote: post #80

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…

This is worse.

If they ban encryption tech sector will kick up enough noise that even non tech people will at least notice.

This way, it essentially opens a backdoor. Changing this from scanning hashes of pictures stored locally, to scanning for arbitrary things stored locally probably is not monumental task ( next in line probably hate speech ).

And once you have that capability it's hard to argue to governments that you cant let them scan the content of either particular phone, or all of the phones, for whatever they want, which could be: .*

This way, the message to non techies will be, we are protecting children, but bunch of online weirdos and maybe pedophiles don't want us too.

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

#98

Post by tinus_hn »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #36
tchalla wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't use iCloud Photo Library or sync photos to the iCloud, none of this will apply to you. https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initia...

If this technology is that easily circumvented then why is there an expectation that it will be effective at all?

The theory would be that many people are stupid. Of course we only know about criminals who get caught and that tends to be because they made a mistake, so it looks like most criminals are stupid.

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

#99

Post by asutekku »

starfallg wrote: post #39
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…

>What other technical approach are people advocating for? Reduce user data stored in cloud data centres as much as possible. This is the approach taken by Whatsapp, so not surprised they are the ones most vocal against it. And at the risk of appearing to be supportive of a Facebook product, I think this is the right way to take computing. We don't need a central place to put stuff or to do compute when we can do it o…

How would you do it? With whatsapp you have the file on messaging partner’s phone. People do not want to share their images over a peer network with random people.

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

#100

Post by jensensbutton »

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…

You sound like someone lashing out after having their faith challenged. You're even making things up to make yourself feel better about your choices.

Calm down. People challenging Apple to do better only benefits you.

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