6 ms·

I'm from Belarus. Honestly, I'm surprised Apple gives a shit. Now I'm worried that Apple can cooperate with local police in case they make inquiry. Am I safe?

I'm from Belarus. Honestly, I'm surprised Apple gives a shit. Now I'm worried that Apple can cooperate with local police in case they make inquiry. Am I safe? Here is the link to one group that uses ML to de-anonymize people: https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg

ghostcluster 6y ago
You've got to just hope that Apple realizes how bad this would blow up in their face if they worked with police in Belarus to identify democratic protestors, especially given their emphasis on "privacy" in their marketing.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I doubt anyone would care for longer than a week. The privacy angle is irrelevant to most of their customers.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Is privacy not the main way Apple is trying to market themselves against Google?
- cheph 6y ago
  I doubt Apple fanboys even know about Belarus, after all the media is pointing them everywhere but where actual tyranny, injustice and oppression occurs.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Weird usage of what’s happening in Belarus to seemingly try to minimize some domestic issue you don’t like?
    - cheph 6y ago
      Pray tell, what domestic issue that I don't like am I trying to minimize? And in answering that, try to not assume the only two places in the world that exists is Belarus and USA.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  How would it blow up in their face when Apple's customers don't care? Apple has handed over the entire operation of iCloud in China to a regime owned company, including all user data and keys (they did warn users that they were going to do that though). At the same time they do not permit side-loading, thereby handing complete control over what users are allowed to install on their devices to authoritarian regimes. This is not simply "complying with local laws" as they like to present it.
  - RotANobot 6y ago
    > Apple has handed over the entire operation of iCloud in China to a regime owned company, including all user data and keys (they did warn users that they were going to do that though). Woah. I don’t know how I missed this news for so long.
    - varjag 6y ago
      They offset that with PR over refusing cooperation with the FBI. A lot easier to be principled in the countries where the rule of law is followed.
      - hu3 6y ago
        And then Apple gave up on strongly encrypting user backups so govs can just ask nicely for iPhone users data anywhere in the world: https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encrypted-backups-google-hasnt https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encryp...
    - m0dest 6y ago
      This is unfortunately the only way to operate an online service in China. It’s standard practice (and a legal requirement) to hand off the ownership and control of Chinese servers to a separate Chinese company. Apple has been pretty transparent about this. One could argue that Apple should have just exited the Chinese market instead of letting the local government spy on their citizens. Google has taken that position.
  - 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hamilyon2 6y ago
  Android makers and telegram could make huge PR/marketing campaign out of this. I mean huge. Outdoor posters and slogans. TV shows. I mean, this is truly Orwellian stuff, but in real world. Old uncharismatic dictator recruits huge soulless machine of most powerful corporation in the world to rule small poor country. I know this is not entirely true, but people will love this.
- akudha 6y ago
  Why would this blow up in their face? Have you seen the lines outside Apple stores whenever they launch a new product? Apple customers do not care. There is a small minority of people who care (like people on this site) but I bet even they will continue to buy Apple products. We are talking about a mind bogglingly rich company with arrogance to match. Even if this gets them bad PR, it will be forgotten in a few minutes.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Not me. I feel like Apple has to actually compete with often times higher quality luxury products in 2020. No reason for me to buy any new Apple products and after this news, I won’t.
    - akudha 6y ago
      But you are in the minority. Also, what other alternatives do we have? Google, Amazon, Microsoft... all equally bad or worse. I can't think of any big tech company really standing up to authoritarian (or even democratic) governments, can you?
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I agree. But Google's phones are better (in my opinion), the only reason I bought an iPhone is for privacy reasons - if Apple is going to renege on that branding, then no reason not to go back to the better product. Apple was banking on privacy marketing as a competitive edge. I think that was a good strategy. Since they appear to be worse at executing on that strategy than I thought they would be, they are losing that segment of the market.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        Not a big one at all, but https://puri.sm https://puri.sm is trying to stand up.
baybal2 6y ago
> Here is the link to one group that uses ML to de-anonymize people: https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg Wonderful!
jlokier 6y ago
Looking at the video, on the one hand, I can see why that could be a sort of public service against the most egregious of brutal policing. On the other hand... that AI/ML looks like it has immense potential for wrongful identification. "AI hallucinating" the wrong person's face into the scene using totally convincing feature interpolation. In a high stakes scene where people feel the need to fight back, it's not hard to imagine such false positives ruining an innocent person's life. Edit: If the other comment about people being killed as a result of identification videos is true, "ruining" only scratches the surface. Getting people killed due to an algorithm false positive would be a terrible thing to facilitate. We are talking about an algorithm where the "recognise face" part is known to make errors as well as subject to many kinds of bias (and that's even without a mask); and the "project the face into the video part" is optimised for making the most convincing deep fakes. Especially in the most high stakes scenes, somebody will inevitably convince themselves or others that the interpolated face is really the person who was there behind that mask. Heck, even experts misjudge pattern-matching evidence: https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/the-prosecutors-fallacy https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/the-prosecutors-fallacy "The Prosecutor’s Fallacy is most often associated with miscarriages of justice."
- john_minsk 6y ago
  Noone was killed. They are safe. We have peaceful protests. Noone even using something like a bat and we don't have weapons in the arms of regular people
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Fair enough. Based on news I completely agree with you. I found no evidence online of any Belarus police being killed or even harmed. (I'd edit my GP message to clarify that if I could but the time limit has passed.) In referring to identified people being killed I contemplated a worst case scenario, following up on comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 "in Hong Kong similar channels were used to kill police" and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737546 "possibly leading to innocent people being lynched or killed by the mob because almost no one will verify whether that someone was really to blame". However, a bit of Googling later and I haven't found any confirmation that any police in Hong Kong were killed either. Perhaps the HN commenter was a bit overzealous to say so. Only death threats to them... and their children (which is pretty bad in its way). Meanwhile, the same Googling revealed a lot about Belarus: Shooting protestors with live ammo, horrendous abuse, medical abuse, torture, and some death; it sounds pretty bad there. I can see why doxxing them is compelling and perhaps moral. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/belarus-systematic-beatings-torture-protesters https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/belarus-systematic-beati... Some police resigning in disgust too. That's good to hear. The possibility of innocents getting harmed due to false identification remains though. Those AI face recognition and deep fake reconstruction techniques really are prone to errors that look convincing. I hope the committed doxxers have high standards of review and understanding, and are able to correct mistakes. I've read enough stories about innocents being attacked and sometimes killed in the past due to an angry vigilante group's lack of care that I think it's a genuine concern if AI-assisted doxxing ever escalates to violence. I found this article about Hong Kong interesting for how doxxing and counter-doxxing are evolving: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hong-Kong-protesters-are-naming-and-shaming-police-officers https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hong-Kong-protesters-are-nam... > "There is power in being able to name those who have wronged you. Doxxing may not be good practice -- the pro-democracy camp has the moral high ground right now -- but few condemn it while the police operate with impunity. Right now, the police doxxing channel on Telegram has more than 242,000 subscribers. As a comparison, the movement's fact-check channel has 60,000." > "Unsurprisingly, the police have found ways to hide their identities. Since late June, their helmets have had one-way-mirror privacy film adhered to what were see-through visors. Almost none wear their warrant cards or produce them when requested, even under circumstances where force regulations compel them to."
jacquesm 6y ago
Strength to you, these are very difficult times and the same tech that can help you can just as easily be used against you. Apple is very much in the wrong here but dollars tend to be more important than principles so I hope that this will end well. Be careful!
madushan1000 6y ago
Well, just like apple can auto remove applications that were pushed out from their app store, they certainly can install new application signed with privileged entitlements on your phone that can spy on you without you even knowing. Remember that when apple advertises that "built for security" garbage on you. At least with most androids you can unlock the bootloader and install something like linageos and remove google services to stop their ability to spy on you.
urza 6y ago
Curious why dont you use Signal? Is Telegram more convinient? If so, in what aspects? Signal has group chats that are fully end to end encrypted so that noone can demand to take something down because noone is able to see inside the chat (except participants). https://signal.org https://signal.org

ghostcluster 6y ago

You've got to just hope that Apple realizes how bad this would blow up in their face if they worked with police in Belarus to identify democratic protestors, especially given their emphasis on "privacy" in their marketing.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Unfortunately, I doubt anyone would care for longer than a week. The privacy angle is irrelevant to most of their customers.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Is privacy not the main way Apple is trying to market themselves against Google?
cheph 6y ago
I doubt Apple fanboys even know about Belarus, after all the media is pointing them everywhere but where actual tyranny, injustice and oppression occurs.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Weird usage of what’s happening in Belarus to seemingly try to minimize some domestic issue you don’t like?
  - cheph 6y ago
    Pray tell, what domestic issue that I don't like am I trying to minimize? And in answering that, try to not assume the only two places in the world that exists is Belarus and USA.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
How would it blow up in their face when Apple's customers don't care? Apple has handed over the entire operation of iCloud in China to a regime owned company, including all user data and keys (they did warn users that they were going to do that though). At the same time they do not permit side-loading, thereby handing complete control over what users are allowed to install on their devices to authoritarian regimes. This is not simply "complying with local laws" as they like to present it.
- RotANobot 6y ago
  > Apple has handed over the entire operation of iCloud in China to a regime owned company, including all user data and keys (they did warn users that they were going to do that though). Woah. I don’t know how I missed this news for so long.
  - varjag 6y ago
    They offset that with PR over refusing cooperation with the FBI. A lot easier to be principled in the countries where the rule of law is followed.
    - hu3 6y ago
      And then Apple gave up on strongly encrypting user backups so govs can just ask nicely for iPhone users data anywhere in the world: https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encrypted-backups-google-hasnt https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encryp...
  - m0dest 6y ago
    This is unfortunately the only way to operate an online service in China. It’s standard practice (and a legal requirement) to hand off the ownership and control of Chinese servers to a separate Chinese company. Apple has been pretty transparent about this. One could argue that Apple should have just exited the Chinese market instead of letting the local government spy on their citizens. Google has taken that position.
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hamilyon2 6y ago
Android makers and telegram could make huge PR/marketing campaign out of this. I mean huge. Outdoor posters and slogans. TV shows. I mean, this is truly Orwellian stuff, but in real world. Old uncharismatic dictator recruits huge soulless machine of most powerful corporation in the world to rule small poor country. I know this is not entirely true, but people will love this.
akudha 6y ago
Why would this blow up in their face? Have you seen the lines outside Apple stores whenever they launch a new product? Apple customers do not care. There is a small minority of people who care (like people on this site) but I bet even they will continue to buy Apple products. We are talking about a mind bogglingly rich company with arrogance to match. Even if this gets them bad PR, it will be forgotten in a few minutes.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Not me. I feel like Apple has to actually compete with often times higher quality luxury products in 2020. No reason for me to buy any new Apple products and after this news, I won’t.
  - akudha 6y ago
    But you are in the minority. Also, what other alternatives do we have? Google, Amazon, Microsoft... all equally bad or worse. I can't think of any big tech company really standing up to authoritarian (or even democratic) governments, can you?
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I agree. But Google's phones are better (in my opinion), the only reason I bought an iPhone is for privacy reasons - if Apple is going to renege on that branding, then no reason not to go back to the better product. Apple was banking on privacy marketing as a competitive edge. I think that was a good strategy. Since they appear to be worse at executing on that strategy than I thought they would be, they are losing that segment of the market.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Not a big one at all, but https://puri.sm https://puri.sm is trying to stand up.

baybal2 6y ago

> Here is the link to one group that uses ML to de-anonymize people: https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg Wonderful!

jlokier 6y ago

Looking at the video, on the one hand, I can see why that could be a sort of public service against the most egregious of brutal policing. On the other hand... that AI/ML looks like it has immense potential for wrongful identification. "AI hallucinating" the wrong person's face into the scene using totally convincing feature interpolation. In a high stakes scene where people feel the need to fight back, it's not hard to imagine such false positives ruining an innocent person's life. Edit: If the other comment about people being killed as a result of identification videos is true, "ruining" only scratches the surface. Getting people killed due to an algorithm false positive would be a terrible thing to facilitate. We are talking about an algorithm where the "recognise face" part is known to make errors as well as subject to many kinds of bias (and that's even without a mask); and the "project the face into the video part" is optimised for making the most convincing deep fakes. Especially in the most high stakes scenes, somebody will inevitably convince themselves or others that the interpolated face is really the person who was there behind that mask. Heck, even experts misjudge pattern-matching evidence: https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/the-prosecutors-fallacy https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/the-prosecutors-fallacy "The Prosecutor’s Fallacy is most often associated with miscarriages of justice."

john_minsk 6y ago
Noone was killed. They are safe. We have peaceful protests. Noone even using something like a bat and we don't have weapons in the arms of regular people
- jlokier 6y ago
  Fair enough. Based on news I completely agree with you. I found no evidence online of any Belarus police being killed or even harmed. (I'd edit my GP message to clarify that if I could but the time limit has passed.) In referring to identified people being killed I contemplated a worst case scenario, following up on comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 "in Hong Kong similar channels were used to kill police" and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737546 "possibly leading to innocent people being lynched or killed by the mob because almost no one will verify whether that someone was really to blame". However, a bit of Googling later and I haven't found any confirmation that any police in Hong Kong were killed either. Perhaps the HN commenter was a bit overzealous to say so. Only death threats to them... and their children (which is pretty bad in its way). Meanwhile, the same Googling revealed a lot about Belarus: Shooting protestors with live ammo, horrendous abuse, medical abuse, torture, and some death; it sounds pretty bad there. I can see why doxxing them is compelling and perhaps moral. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/belarus-systematic-beatings-torture-protesters https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/belarus-systematic-beati... Some police resigning in disgust too. That's good to hear. The possibility of innocents getting harmed due to false identification remains though. Those AI face recognition and deep fake reconstruction techniques really are prone to errors that look convincing. I hope the committed doxxers have high standards of review and understanding, and are able to correct mistakes. I've read enough stories about innocents being attacked and sometimes killed in the past due to an angry vigilante group's lack of care that I think it's a genuine concern if AI-assisted doxxing ever escalates to violence. I found this article about Hong Kong interesting for how doxxing and counter-doxxing are evolving: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hong-Kong-protesters-are-naming-and-shaming-police-officers https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hong-Kong-protesters-are-nam... > "There is power in being able to name those who have wronged you. Doxxing may not be good practice -- the pro-democracy camp has the moral high ground right now -- but few condemn it while the police operate with impunity. Right now, the police doxxing channel on Telegram has more than 242,000 subscribers. As a comparison, the movement's fact-check channel has 60,000." > "Unsurprisingly, the police have found ways to hide their identities. Since late June, their helmets have had one-way-mirror privacy film adhered to what were see-through visors. Almost none wear their warrant cards or produce them when requested, even under circumstances where force regulations compel them to."

jacquesm 6y ago

Strength to you, these are very difficult times and the same tech that can help you can just as easily be used against you. Apple is very much in the wrong here but dollars tend to be more important than principles so I hope that this will end well. Be careful!

madushan1000 6y ago

Well, just like apple can auto remove applications that were pushed out from their app store, they certainly can install new application signed with privileged entitlements on your phone that can spy on you without you even knowing. Remember that when apple advertises that "built for security" garbage on you. At least with most androids you can unlock the bootloader and install something like linageos and remove google services to stop their ability to spy on you.

urza 6y ago

Curious why dont you use Signal? Is Telegram more convinient? If so, in what aspects? Signal has group chats that are fully end to end encrypted so that noone can demand to take something down because noone is able to see inside the chat (except participants). https://signal.org https://signal.org