6 ms·

> perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes. Probably similar

by itake 5y ago

> perfectly innocent photos on someone's phone of their own children They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes. Probably similar to PhotoDNA[0]. There can be false positives, but AFAIK the algorithms are not trying to identify naked children, but comparing 2 similar image hashes. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

barbazoo 5y ago
> They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes I didn't get that from the article, could you point to a source on this?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Images are submitted by over 1400 organizations[0] like the FBI and NCMEC, although the inner-workings of the database aren’t public and I can’t find a source or confirmation of every image actually being human-verified. The closest is how the "Child Victim Identification Program" helps identify victims in these images. 0: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/csam#:~:text=Electronic%20Service%20Provider%20(ESP)%20Reporting https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/csam#:~:text=Electroni... (ctrl-f "1,400")
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Of all of the discussion, my brain has only keyed in on the child porn aspect. It just now clicked that if a missing kid is in a photo (even if not porn), it could help ID the missing kid. Some runaway at the age of 13 gets photographed in a group of other kids just doing teenager things. So even if not running hashes against known porn, it could still be doing facial recognition. Wonder what kind of implications that would have for people in witness protection or battered spouses and other legitimately "disappeared" people.
    - the-dude 5y ago
      Think of the children will erode everything. It is magic.
      - wmeredith 5y ago
        Appeal to emotion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
- myrandomcomment 5y ago
  Directly said in the article: “Users’ photos, converted into a string of numbers through a process known as “hashing”, will be compared with those on a database of known images of child sexual abuse.”
  - rovr138 5y ago
    > The system has been trained on 200,000 sex abuse images collected by the US non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Also from the article. ‘Trained’ being important.
mhh__ 5y ago
I bet(or know...) the people who verify those images don't get paid anywhere near enough.
- usefulcat 5y ago
  I believe that US federal agents tasked with investigating these kinds of crimes typically only do so for a limited time.
- Spivak 5y ago
  The conventional wisdom for people integrating PhotoDNA is that false positives are vanishingly rare. If you run it against your data and you get a hit then you should call the FBI.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    It would be better if the false positive rate was known to be nonzero. And what, in this context, is "your data?" Is a photo on an iPhone Apple's data? I'd argue that the thing you should do if you get a hit is to delete your data, unless you want to spend enormous amounts of time and money defending yourself from prosecution by people who believe that false positives are vanishingly rare.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I'm talking from the perspective of a service-owner who handles user-generated content. You typically set up PhotoDNA on two parts of your infrastructure. You scan client-side and refuse uploads to prevent the images from getting on your servers in the first place and then you scan on the backend to catch anything that slipped through. You do the first part so you don't have to call the FBI. I really don't care about the semantics of data ownership. If Apple wants to scan photos you upload to iCloud so they don't run into a scandal years down the road that "iCloud is being used to distribute CP" then that's their call. And to the letter of the law you can't just delete the data if you found CP that one of your customers uploaded without running afoul of mandatory reporting laws.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xdennis 5y ago
It's still bad. I used to scrape pictures from many legal pornography sites. I still have hundreds of thousands of pictures. Since many are user uploaded, I imagine a small number could be real CP. Thank God, I don't use Apple. (I should probably delete them, since I've basically never used them... although they could be useful for one of those end-of-world Raspberry Pi builds: https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-quick-kit-one https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-quick-kit-one Edit: the non-bad ones, in case this gets misconstrued) Edit: I've deleted my archive.
- tracedddd 5y ago
  Yeah, might want to consider deleting them. That could turn into a nightmare.
- cududa 5y ago
  I’ve never once wanted GIF support on HN comments until this moment. Good god man what is wrong with you
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > Since many are user uploaded, I imagine a small number must be real CP. I mean, that is actually illegal. The problem here is the possession of child pornography.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- get52 5y ago
  No offence dennis but I gotta be a bit blunt here. If you're not trolling then you're being a fucking idiot, you could land serious prison time for having a shit ton of child porn on you. If you live in a country where it's illegal delete literally all of it of the hard drive, run DBAN on it, smash it to pieces with a hammer and then set the hard drive on fucking fire. Literally zero courts are gonna believe "It's just a dataset for if I want to train an AI on it later XD". You will get horsefucked in court
PenguinCoder 5y ago
Changing the size or file type of the image would easily change the hash.

by itake 5y ago

barbazoo 5y ago

> They are using a library of human verified images to compare the hashes I didn't get that from the article, could you point to a source on this?

judge2020 5y ago
Images are submitted by over 1400 organizations[0] like the FBI and NCMEC, although the inner-workings of the database aren’t public and I can’t find a source or confirmation of every image actually being human-verified. The closest is how the "Child Victim Identification Program" helps identify victims in these images. 0: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/csam#:~:text=Electronic%20Service%20Provider%20(ESP)%20Reporting https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/csam#:~:text=Electroni... (ctrl-f "1,400")
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 5y ago
  Of all of the discussion, my brain has only keyed in on the child porn aspect. It just now clicked that if a missing kid is in a photo (even if not porn), it could help ID the missing kid. Some runaway at the age of 13 gets photographed in a group of other kids just doing teenager things. So even if not running hashes against known porn, it could still be doing facial recognition. Wonder what kind of implications that would have for people in witness protection or battered spouses and other legitimately "disappeared" people.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Think of the children will erode everything. It is magic.
    - wmeredith 5y ago
      Appeal to emotion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
myrandomcomment 5y ago
Directly said in the article: “Users’ photos, converted into a string of numbers through a process known as “hashing”, will be compared with those on a database of known images of child sexual abuse.”
- rovr138 5y ago
  > The system has been trained on 200,000 sex abuse images collected by the US non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Also from the article. ‘Trained’ being important.

mhh__ 5y ago

I bet(or know...) the people who verify those images don't get paid anywhere near enough.

usefulcat 5y ago
I believe that US federal agents tasked with investigating these kinds of crimes typically only do so for a limited time.
Spivak 5y ago
The conventional wisdom for people integrating PhotoDNA is that false positives are vanishingly rare. If you run it against your data and you get a hit then you should call the FBI.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  It would be better if the false positive rate was known to be nonzero. And what, in this context, is "your data?" Is a photo on an iPhone Apple's data? I'd argue that the thing you should do if you get a hit is to delete your data, unless you want to spend enormous amounts of time and money defending yourself from prosecution by people who believe that false positives are vanishingly rare.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I'm talking from the perspective of a service-owner who handles user-generated content. You typically set up PhotoDNA on two parts of your infrastructure. You scan client-side and refuse uploads to prevent the images from getting on your servers in the first place and then you scan on the backend to catch anything that slipped through. You do the first part so you don't have to call the FBI. I really don't care about the semantics of data ownership. If Apple wants to scan photos you upload to iCloud so they don't run into a scandal years down the road that "iCloud is being used to distribute CP" then that's their call. And to the letter of the law you can't just delete the data if you found CP that one of your customers uploaded without running afoul of mandatory reporting laws.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xdennis 5y ago

It's still bad. I used to scrape pictures from many legal pornography sites. I still have hundreds of thousands of pictures. Since many are user uploaded, I imagine a small number could be real CP. Thank God, I don't use Apple. (I should probably delete them, since I've basically never used them... although they could be useful for one of those end-of-world Raspberry Pi builds: https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-quick-kit-one https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-quick-kit-one Edit: the non-bad ones, in case this gets misconstrued) Edit: I've deleted my archive.

tracedddd 5y ago
Yeah, might want to consider deleting them. That could turn into a nightmare.
cududa 5y ago
I’ve never once wanted GIF support on HN comments until this moment. Good god man what is wrong with you
UncleMeat 5y ago
> Since many are user uploaded, I imagine a small number must be real CP. I mean, that is actually illegal. The problem here is the possession of child pornography.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
get52 5y ago
No offence dennis but I gotta be a bit blunt here. If you're not trolling then you're being a fucking idiot, you could land serious prison time for having a shit ton of child porn on you. If you live in a country where it's illegal delete literally all of it of the hard drive, run DBAN on it, smash it to pieces with a hammer and then set the hard drive on fucking fire. Literally zero courts are gonna believe "It's just a dataset for if I want to train an AI on it later XD". You will get horsefucked in court

PenguinCoder 5y ago

Changing the size or file type of the image would easily change the hash.