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Your position is to simply deny that child porn or predation is a serious problem. I outlined that this was one of the sides in the debate - I.e. you take posi

by zepto 5y ago

Your position is to simply deny that child porn or predation is a serious problem. I outlined that this was one of the sides in the debate - I.e. you take position 2, and have no empathy for position 1. The problem is that this is a political trap. You can’t win position 2 by painting technologists as uncaring or dismissive. ‘Think of the children’ works for a reason.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I don’t believe people sharing child porn on iPhones is a serious problem, no. Laptops, desktops, sure. My position is that this system has far more likely harm than potential good. It’s not worth it. It has nothing to do with not recognizing another side.
- zepto 5y ago
  Do you believe that sexual predators sharing images with children on iPhones is a problem? > It has nothing to do with not recognizing another side. It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. That seems like a reasonable belief that won’t help anyone with the problem of creeping surveillance.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Do you believe you can stop people from sharing imagines pre-determined to be exploitative and illegal by a central authority who has already logged and recorded the hash of that photo with children by deploying a universal scan system to all phones - when phones aren't a primary tool of trafficing illegal content? >It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. This is a juvenile attempt at a nobility argument. That you can do anything as long as the goal is noble. Just as I wrote first, anything if it’s “for the children”. This is how all sorts of abuses are carried out under the four horsemen.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > when phones aren't a primary tool of trafficing illegal content? Are they not? This is just an assumption you have made. It doesn’t matter what I think about it I asked: > Do you believe that sexual predators sharing images with children on iPhones is a problem? You haven’t answered. >>It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. > This is a juvenile attempt at a nobility argument. No it isn’t. It is an honest attempt to characterize your approach. It seems clear that you think the other sides priorities are wrong. That’s fine. I have to assume everyone thinks that. The point is that it doesn’t matter that you think they are wrong. You have already lost. The things you don’t want are already happening. My argument is that since that debate is lost, any attempt to restore privacy must accept that other people’s priorities are different. Simply trying to get the other side to change priorities when you are already losing doesn’t seem like a good approach.
danShumway 5y ago
> ‘Think of the children’ works for a reason. "Think of the children" will always work, no matter what the context is, no matter what the stats are, and no matter what we do. That does not mean that we should not care about the children, and it does not mean that we shouldn't care about blocking CSAM. We should care about these issues purely because we care about protecting children. If there are ways for us to reduce the problem without breaking infrastructure or taking away freedoms, we should take those steps. Similarly, we should also think about the children by protecting them from having their sexual/gender identities outed against their wishes, and by guaranteeing they grow up in a society that values privacy and freedom where they don't need to constantly feel like they're being watched. But while those moral concerns remain, the evergreen effectiveness of "think of the children" also means that compromising on this issue is not a political strategy. It's nothing, it will not ease up on any pressure on technologists, it will change nothing about the political debates that are currently happening. Because it hasn't: we've been having the same debates about encryption since encryption was invented, and I would challenge you to point at any advancement or compromise from encryption advocates as having lessened those debates or having appeased encryption critics. Your mistake here is assuming that anything that technologists can build will ever change those people's minds or make them ease up on calls to ban encryption. It won't. Reducing the real-world occurrences for irrational fears doesn't make those fears go away. If we reduce shark attacks on a beach by 90%, that won't make people with a phobia less frightened at the beach, because their fear is not based on real risk analysis or statistics or practical tradeoffs. Their fear is real, but it's also irrational. They're scared because they see the deep ocean and because Jaws traumatized them, and you can't fix that irrational fear by validating it. So in the real world we know that the majority of child abuse comes from people that children already know. We know the risks of outing minors to parents if they're on an LGBTQ+ spectrum. We know the broader privacy risks. We know that abusers (particularly close abusers) often try to hijack systems to monitor and spy on their victims. We would also in general like to see more stats about how serious the problem of CSAM actually is, and we'd like to know whether or not our existing tools are being used effectively so we can balance the potential benefits and risks of each proposal against each other. If somebody's not willing to engage with those points, then what makes you think that compromising on any other front will change what's going on in their head? You're saying it yourself, these people aren't motivated by statistics about abuse, they're frightened of the idea of abuse. They have an image in their head of predators using encryption, and that image is never going to go away no matter what the real-world stats do and no matter what solutions we propose. The central fear that encryption critics have is a fear of private communication. How can technologists compromise to address that fear? It doesn't matter what solutions we come up with or what the rate of CSAM drops to, those people are still going to be scared of the idea of privacy itself. Nobody in any political sphere has ever responded to "think of the children" with "we already thought of them enough." So the idea that compromising now will change anything about how that line is used in the future -- it just seems naive to me. Really, the problem here can't be solved by either technology or policy. It's cultural. As long as people are frightened of the idea of privacy and encryption, the problem will remain.

by zepto 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

I don’t believe people sharing child porn on iPhones is a serious problem, no. Laptops, desktops, sure. My position is that this system has far more likely harm than potential good. It’s not worth it. It has nothing to do with not recognizing another side.

zepto 5y ago
Do you believe that sexual predators sharing images with children on iPhones is a problem? > It has nothing to do with not recognizing another side. It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. That seems like a reasonable belief that won’t help anyone with the problem of creeping surveillance.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Do you believe you can stop people from sharing imagines pre-determined to be exploitative and illegal by a central authority who has already logged and recorded the hash of that photo with children by deploying a universal scan system to all phones - when phones aren't a primary tool of trafficing illegal content? >It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. This is a juvenile attempt at a nobility argument. That you can do anything as long as the goal is noble. Just as I wrote first, anything if it’s “for the children”. This is how all sorts of abuses are carried out under the four horsemen.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > when phones aren't a primary tool of trafficing illegal content? Are they not? This is just an assumption you have made. It doesn’t matter what I think about it I asked: > Do you believe that sexual predators sharing images with children on iPhones is a problem? You haven’t answered. >>It seems like you are simply stating that the other side’s priorities are wrong. > This is a juvenile attempt at a nobility argument. No it isn’t. It is an honest attempt to characterize your approach. It seems clear that you think the other sides priorities are wrong. That’s fine. I have to assume everyone thinks that. The point is that it doesn’t matter that you think they are wrong. You have already lost. The things you don’t want are already happening. My argument is that since that debate is lost, any attempt to restore privacy must accept that other people’s priorities are different. Simply trying to get the other side to change priorities when you are already losing doesn’t seem like a good approach.

danShumway 5y ago

> ‘Think of the children’ works for a reason. "Think of the children" will always work, no matter what the context is, no matter what the stats are, and no matter what we do. That does not mean that we should not care about the children, and it does not mean that we shouldn't care about blocking CSAM. We should care about these issues purely because we care about protecting children. If there are ways for us to reduce the problem without breaking infrastructure or taking away freedoms, we should take those steps. Similarly, we should also think about the children by protecting them from having their sexual/gender identities outed against their wishes, and by guaranteeing they grow up in a society that values privacy and freedom where they don't need to constantly feel like they're being watched. But while those moral concerns remain, the evergreen effectiveness of "think of the children" also means that compromising on this issue is not a political strategy. It's nothing, it will not ease up on any pressure on technologists, it will change nothing about the political debates that are currently happening. Because it hasn't: we've been having the same debates about encryption since encryption was invented, and I would challenge you to point at any advancement or compromise from encryption advocates as having lessened those debates or having appeased encryption critics. Your mistake here is assuming that anything that technologists can build will ever change those people's minds or make them ease up on calls to ban encryption. It won't. Reducing the real-world occurrences for irrational fears doesn't make those fears go away. If we reduce shark attacks on a beach by 90%, that won't make people with a phobia less frightened at the beach, because their fear is not based on real risk analysis or statistics or practical tradeoffs. Their fear is real, but it's also irrational. They're scared because they see the deep ocean and because Jaws traumatized them, and you can't fix that irrational fear by validating it. So in the real world we know that the majority of child abuse comes from people that children already know. We know the risks of outing minors to parents if they're on an LGBTQ+ spectrum. We know the broader privacy risks. We know that abusers (particularly close abusers) often try to hijack systems to monitor and spy on their victims. We would also in general like to see more stats about how serious the problem of CSAM actually is, and we'd like to know whether or not our existing tools are being used effectively so we can balance the potential benefits and risks of each proposal against each other. If somebody's not willing to engage with those points, then what makes you think that compromising on any other front will change what's going on in their head? You're saying it yourself, these people aren't motivated by statistics about abuse, they're frightened of the idea of abuse. They have an image in their head of predators using encryption, and that image is never going to go away no matter what the real-world stats do and no matter what solutions we propose. The central fear that encryption critics have is a fear of private communication. How can technologists compromise to address that fear? It doesn't matter what solutions we come up with or what the rate of CSAM drops to, those people are still going to be scared of the idea of privacy itself. Nobody in any political sphere has ever responded to "think of the children" with "we already thought of them enough." So the idea that compromising now will change anything about how that line is used in the future -- it just seems naive to me. Really, the problem here can't be solved by either technology or policy. It's cultural. As long as people are frightened of the idea of privacy and encryption, the problem will remain.