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What are the ramifications that I "do not understand"? I will repeat: It is a very tame change. Were you frantic and delirious when a neural network first iden

What are the ramifications that I "do not understand"? I will repeat: It is a very tame change. Were you frantic and delirious when a neural network first identified a dog in your photos? Isn't that the slippery slope to it reporting you to the authorities for something bong shaped? Speaking of which, every bit of fear mongering relies upon a slippery slope fallacy. What is clearly a PR move is somehow actually the machinations of a massive surveillance network. Why? Why would Apple do that?

evrydayhustling 5y ago
> Why would Apple do that? Because it gets required to by the laws of countries responsible for most of their market? And because authoritarian regimes intentionally blur the lines between criminal and political surveillance over time, making it harder for companies to draw hard policy lines? Concern about this doesn't require any bond villains, it just requires well-intentioned pragmatists on one side and idealogical politicos on the other. FWIW, I think you have a point about the doom-saying. Countries with good judicial protections around privacy already use it as a backstop against dirty tricks where folks use one type of surveillance to require another. But it makes sense to wonder how those barriers will erode over time, and to worry about places where they don't exist.
- dwaite 5y ago
  In which case how is this a slippery slope? They didn’t do something and there was no legal mandate. Now they are required to do something to be able to operate in said company. Is the slippery slope that they can be in compliance faster?
robertlagrant 5y ago
> What is clearly a PR move I don't know what I think about the move, but I know this: intentions don't matter. Capabilities matter. If the current intention is benign, that means little.
syshum 5y ago
That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change. Apple’s changes would enable such screening, takedown, and reporting in its end-to-end messaging. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require the classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand the classifier be able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-diff...
- defaultname 5y ago
  We can carry every single element back to its inception and make identical arguments. That's the problem with slippery slopes. Apple - creates messaging platform. Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them all messages. Apple - creates encrypted messaging platform. Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them the keys and all messages Apple - Adds camera to device (GPS, microphone, accelerometer, step detection, etc) Slippery slope - governments can force them to record whenever the government demands and send a live stream to the government. Or send locations, or walking patterns, or conversations. Apple - makes operating system Slippery slope - Basically anything. There are so many ways I could go with this. Government can force them to make a messaging and photo system, add cameras to their devices, entice users to take and accumulate pictures, and do image hashing and report suspect photos. That's the problem with slippery slope arguments. They become meaningless rhetoric. Image perceptual hashing is literally a single person's work for two hours. If you really think the barrier between an oppressive government stomping on groups or not is whether Apple did a (poorly communicated) Child Safety PR move and implemented this trivial mechanism...the world is a lot more perilous and scary than you think.
  - syshum 5y ago
    That is because you are incorrectly using the the charge of the Slippery slope fallacy to hand wave away legitimate concerns by reducing them to an absurdity which is itself a logical fallacy The legitimate concerns here are not a slippery slop, they are real and self evidence born from countless examples through out history of these types of survelence systems being abused. EFF points to a coulple, other artiles point to other examples It takes a person an extremely dense person (or intellectually dishonest) to simply hand wave all of these concerns away as "well that is just a slippery slope so I can ignore you"

evrydayhustling 5y ago

> Why would Apple do that? Because it gets required to by the laws of countries responsible for most of their market? And because authoritarian regimes intentionally blur the lines between criminal and political surveillance over time, making it harder for companies to draw hard policy lines? Concern about this doesn't require any bond villains, it just requires well-intentioned pragmatists on one side and idealogical politicos on the other. FWIW, I think you have a point about the doom-saying. Countries with good judicial protections around privacy already use it as a backstop against dirty tricks where folks use one type of surveillance to require another. But it makes sense to wonder how those barriers will erode over time, and to worry about places where they don't exist.

dwaite 5y ago
In which case how is this a slippery slope? They didn’t do something and there was no legal mandate. Now they are required to do something to be able to operate in said company. Is the slippery slope that they can be in compliance faster?

robertlagrant 5y ago

> What is clearly a PR move I don't know what I think about the move, but I know this: intentions don't matter. Capabilities matter. If the current intention is benign, that means little.

syshum 5y ago

That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change. Apple’s changes would enable such screening, takedown, and reporting in its end-to-end messaging. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require the classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand the classifier be able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-diff...

defaultname 5y ago
We can carry every single element back to its inception and make identical arguments. That's the problem with slippery slopes. Apple - creates messaging platform. Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them all messages. Apple - creates encrypted messaging platform. Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them the keys and all messages Apple - Adds camera to device (GPS, microphone, accelerometer, step detection, etc) Slippery slope - governments can force them to record whenever the government demands and send a live stream to the government. Or send locations, or walking patterns, or conversations. Apple - makes operating system Slippery slope - Basically anything. There are so many ways I could go with this. Government can force them to make a messaging and photo system, add cameras to their devices, entice users to take and accumulate pictures, and do image hashing and report suspect photos. That's the problem with slippery slope arguments. They become meaningless rhetoric. Image perceptual hashing is literally a single person's work for two hours. If you really think the barrier between an oppressive government stomping on groups or not is whether Apple did a (poorly communicated) Child Safety PR move and implemented this trivial mechanism...the world is a lot more perilous and scary than you think.
- syshum 5y ago
  That is because you are incorrectly using the the charge of the Slippery slope fallacy to hand wave away legitimate concerns by reducing them to an absurdity which is itself a logical fallacy The legitimate concerns here are not a slippery slop, they are real and self evidence born from countless examples through out history of these types of survelence systems being abused. EFF points to a coulple, other artiles point to other examples It takes a person an extremely dense person (or intellectually dishonest) to simply hand wave all of these concerns away as "well that is just a slippery slope so I can ignore you"