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> Guilty until proven innocent type of program But this software doesn’t make arrests? A comparison would be police asking for what cellphones were in an area.

> Guilty until proven innocent type of program But this software doesn’t make arrests? A comparison would be police asking for what cellphones were in an area. There should be a lot of due process that happens before anything comes of this. I imagine police won’t look into one photo, they would want to match more than one. I agree though, the scary part might be how to clear your name after an overreaction occurs, similar to the effect swatting has on innocents or other kinds of false accusations. But those would happen even without such a system - we’ve heard about such stories before. “Man held for child porn charges, but it turned out they were innocent,” - it doesn’t take this kind of system to have police look over your phone for evidence and find a different crime than expected. That all said… child porn is really, really terrible and I’m actually in favour of this. As a society, we can decide on what’s acceptable. As long as there’s due process and a presumption of innocence, I’m all in favour of making it harder for criminals to get away with crimes. I do agree though, all these systems might make it harder to catch perpetrators if it pushes them offline. But what other options do we have to stop these sort of crimes when the kids involved can’t or won’t speak up? I suppose the fundamental problem is that having more evidence doesn’t necessarily lead to justice if it paints a false picture.

shotta 5y ago
I see it as an unwarranted search, which makes me feel like the state views me as inherently guilty until innocence is proven by sifting through my photos.
- mlac 5y ago
  It’s not the state, it’s Apple. And they are making the decision that they do not want to put out a product that makes it easy for CP to be shared or viewed. As a huge player in the market this is great. This also limits the possible avenues for future exposure - if one has less ways to distribute or get CP or the overall amount of it is reduced, they may never get into it in the first place and the market for it will shrink. Thereby reducing the amount produced over time.
  - analyte123 5y ago
    According to the article, Apple is responding to government and law enforcement pressure to implement the scanning. The state is just laundering its desires through private corporations; there must be a word for this type of system.
  - marderfarker2 5y ago
    Today they say it’s for CP, tomorrow they will say it’s for pirated content, or anything deemed illegal by the government.
__blockcipher__ 5y ago
Apple will be scanning the photos on your phone and cross-referencing them against photoDNA for a government database. You don't see how that's not a huge potential for abuse right there? The government decides the images. And you best believe they're not going to release the images publicly to verify what's in the db, for [many] obvious reasons. This is a horrible idea, a massive regression in Apple (and therefore the broader industry's) stance on security/privacy, and the fact that you are dutifully swallowing the "child porn" justification is so incredibly concerning to me.
- shuckles 5y ago
  The article says Apple will have your phone generate safety vouchers for images you upload into iCloud, and when enough of those vouchers are for photos that match a government-supplied blacklist, they will access the photos you’ve given them. How is this worse than what Google Photos and Facebook already do?
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    You think Facebook and Google Photos should be the goal for privacy standards? You and I are practically in different universes then, philosophically. You're also being naive by swallowing the "it's only iCloud" justification. There is a clear intent to progress to scanning all local photos. After all, if photos must be match those of a government child abuse database, and any matches trigger manual review, what would an innocent person possibly have to hide? By that logic it'd be absurd to not scan just because it's only locally. After all, you're only catching bad guys! This is about protecting the children after all! /s I oppose government-supplied blacklists. Doubly so when we can't even see what's in the database, but I would oppose them either way.
    - shuckles 5y ago
      What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business? I don’t appreciate you calling me naive. There isn’t clear intent to scanning all local photos. In fact, it seems like the system was deliberately designed to only work with photos that are being uploaded to iCloud.
curryst 5y ago
> But this software doesn’t make arrests? A comparison would be police asking for what cellphones were in an area. There should be a lot of due process that happens before anything comes of this. I imagine police won’t look into one photo, they would want to match more than one. I doubt they need, or want to match more than one. They'll use the reasoning that it only catches already-known child pornography, and that that person might have a whole cache of novel child pornography. Just look at the drug wars and how many people get arrested for trivial quantities of marijuana. And we hate child pornography way more than drugs. > As long as there’s due process and a presumption of innocence, I’m all in favour of making it harder for criminals to get away with crimes. The judicial system has a presumption of innocence. No one else does, or has any requirement to. The court of public opinion will ruin your life regardless of whether it's true or not. That would be far less concerning if active cases were sealed, and only published if the defendant was ruled guilty. > That all said… child porn is really, really terrible and I’m actually in favour of this. I have a slight disagreement with this. The production of child pornography is obviously abhorrent. This system does nothing to stop that though, because it can only flag already-known child pornography. This system stops the consumption of already produced and documented child pornography. While it's far outside my own interests, I can see some validity to the argument that consumption is of far less concern because it doesn't directly involve any abuse. The abuse has already happened, and no amount of tracking down pedophiles is going to reverse that. There are second order effects, like potentially reducing the demand for novel child pornography, though. Which leads me to this: > But what other options do we have to stop these sort of crimes when the kids involved can’t or won’t speak up? I would imagine this is far more likely to affect consumers than producers. In the drug market, stop and frisk is far more likely to net you users than producers or dealers. For one, there are more users than dealers/producers. For two, dealers, but particularly producers, are typically far more cautious than users. That's a long-winded way of saying again that this doesn't seem likely to do much in the way of stopping people from abusing children. But to directly answer your question: doing nothing is absolutely a valid option here. We do that for lots of bad things that happen when the costs of the solution are unbearable. It's what we're currently doing for famine in other parts of the world, which almost surely impacts more children than child pornography could even dream of doing. It's what we do for cars, which again, almost certainly impacts more children than child pornography does. We wait until we can find a method with benefits commensurate to its costs. A 2016 DoJ report said that since 2002, 10,500 victims have been located and identified by law enforcement. That's 750 per year. There are 74 million children under 18 in the US, so that's 0.001% of children per year. 10,500 people is only 200 people higher than died from "accidental suffocation and strangling in bed" over the same period according to the CDC. The scale of the problem is the same, so should we go ahead and let Amazon send pings to the police if your Alexa thinks your suffocating in bed too?
syshum 5y ago
So are you in Favor of installing Camera's in every room in your home, that you do not control, and that the police and review anytime? If in the US Do you like the concept behind 4th amendment? being free from unreasonable searches unless probable cause can be articulated that you have committed a crime? It is very scary how effect the "think of the children" narrative is to get people to willing give up their liberty

shotta 5y ago

I see it as an unwarranted search, which makes me feel like the state views me as inherently guilty until innocence is proven by sifting through my photos.

mlac 5y ago
It’s not the state, it’s Apple. And they are making the decision that they do not want to put out a product that makes it easy for CP to be shared or viewed. As a huge player in the market this is great. This also limits the possible avenues for future exposure - if one has less ways to distribute or get CP or the overall amount of it is reduced, they may never get into it in the first place and the market for it will shrink. Thereby reducing the amount produced over time.
- analyte123 5y ago
  According to the article, Apple is responding to government and law enforcement pressure to implement the scanning. The state is just laundering its desires through private corporations; there must be a word for this type of system.
- marderfarker2 5y ago
  Today they say it’s for CP, tomorrow they will say it’s for pirated content, or anything deemed illegal by the government.

__blockcipher__ 5y ago

Apple will be scanning the photos on your phone and cross-referencing them against photoDNA for a government database. You don't see how that's not a huge potential for abuse right there? The government decides the images. And you best believe they're not going to release the images publicly to verify what's in the db, for [many] obvious reasons. This is a horrible idea, a massive regression in Apple (and therefore the broader industry's) stance on security/privacy, and the fact that you are dutifully swallowing the "child porn" justification is so incredibly concerning to me.

shuckles 5y ago
The article says Apple will have your phone generate safety vouchers for images you upload into iCloud, and when enough of those vouchers are for photos that match a government-supplied blacklist, they will access the photos you’ve given them. How is this worse than what Google Photos and Facebook already do?
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  You think Facebook and Google Photos should be the goal for privacy standards? You and I are practically in different universes then, philosophically. You're also being naive by swallowing the "it's only iCloud" justification. There is a clear intent to progress to scanning all local photos. After all, if photos must be match those of a government child abuse database, and any matches trigger manual review, what would an innocent person possibly have to hide? By that logic it'd be absurd to not scan just because it's only locally. After all, you're only catching bad guys! This is about protecting the children after all! /s I oppose government-supplied blacklists. Doubly so when we can't even see what's in the database, but I would oppose them either way.
  - shuckles 5y ago
    What advice would you give Apple if they’re faced with a legitimate government asking it to comply with the laws they have instituted in the society Apple wants to do business? I don’t appreciate you calling me naive. There isn’t clear intent to scanning all local photos. In fact, it seems like the system was deliberately designed to only work with photos that are being uploaded to iCloud.

curryst 5y ago

> But this software doesn’t make arrests? A comparison would be police asking for what cellphones were in an area. There should be a lot of due process that happens before anything comes of this. I imagine police won’t look into one photo, they would want to match more than one. I doubt they need, or want to match more than one. They'll use the reasoning that it only catches already-known child pornography, and that that person might have a whole cache of novel child pornography. Just look at the drug wars and how many people get arrested for trivial quantities of marijuana. And we hate child pornography way more than drugs. > As long as there’s due process and a presumption of innocence, I’m all in favour of making it harder for criminals to get away with crimes. The judicial system has a presumption of innocence. No one else does, or has any requirement to. The court of public opinion will ruin your life regardless of whether it's true or not. That would be far less concerning if active cases were sealed, and only published if the defendant was ruled guilty. > That all said… child porn is really, really terrible and I’m actually in favour of this. I have a slight disagreement with this. The production of child pornography is obviously abhorrent. This system does nothing to stop that though, because it can only flag already-known child pornography. This system stops the consumption of already produced and documented child pornography. While it's far outside my own interests, I can see some validity to the argument that consumption is of far less concern because it doesn't directly involve any abuse. The abuse has already happened, and no amount of tracking down pedophiles is going to reverse that. There are second order effects, like potentially reducing the demand for novel child pornography, though. Which leads me to this: > But what other options do we have to stop these sort of crimes when the kids involved can’t or won’t speak up? I would imagine this is far more likely to affect consumers than producers. In the drug market, stop and frisk is far more likely to net you users than producers or dealers. For one, there are more users than dealers/producers. For two, dealers, but particularly producers, are typically far more cautious than users. That's a long-winded way of saying again that this doesn't seem likely to do much in the way of stopping people from abusing children. But to directly answer your question: doing nothing is absolutely a valid option here. We do that for lots of bad things that happen when the costs of the solution are unbearable. It's what we're currently doing for famine in other parts of the world, which almost surely impacts more children than child pornography could even dream of doing. It's what we do for cars, which again, almost certainly impacts more children than child pornography does. We wait until we can find a method with benefits commensurate to its costs. A 2016 DoJ report said that since 2002, 10,500 victims have been located and identified by law enforcement. That's 750 per year. There are 74 million children under 18 in the US, so that's 0.001% of children per year. 10,500 people is only 200 people higher than died from "accidental suffocation and strangling in bed" over the same period according to the CDC. The scale of the problem is the same, so should we go ahead and let Amazon send pings to the police if your Alexa thinks your suffocating in bed too?

syshum 5y ago

So are you in Favor of installing Camera's in every room in your home, that you do not control, and that the police and review anytime? If in the US Do you like the concept behind 4th amendment? being free from unreasonable searches unless probable cause can be articulated that you have committed a crime? It is very scary how effect the "think of the children" narrative is to get people to willing give up their liberty