7 ms·

I've also implemented perceptual hashing algorithms for use in the real world. Article is correct, there really is no way to eliminate false positives while sti

• mjlee 5y ago
  > I'm sure I'm not the only person with naked pictures of my wife. I'm not completely convinced that says what you want it to.
  • enedil 5y ago
    Didn't she possibly have previous partners?
    • websites2023 5y ago
      Presumably she wasn’t his wife then. But also people have various arrangements so I’m not here to shame.
    • iratewizard 5y ago
      I don't even have nude photos of my wife. The only person who might would be the NSA contractor assigned to watch her.
      • x-shadowban 5y ago
        what function does the word "even" perform in this sentence?
        • iratewizard 5y ago
          It's used to emphasize the concept that if anyone would have nudes of my wife, it would be me, her husband. Here's another example of "even" used as an emphasizing word. >I don't know how to answer that. >Even I don't know how to answer that. Hope that helps you with your ESL tests!
          • jefftk 5y ago
            The parallel to the construction you used before would be "I don't even know how to answer that" which means something quite different from "Even I don't know how to answer that".
            • iratewizard 5y ago
              English is a pragmatic language, meaning word order is flexible. In my first sentence, the 'even' can go in both places while retaining the same meaning. Good luck with your ESL tests as well.
              • jefftk 5y ago
                > In my first sentence, the 'even' can go in both places while retaining the same meaning. I really don't think it can. Looking through examples of people using that construction [1] they are all being used to emphasize the speaker's lack of something, without any implication that if someone were to have one it would be the speaker. Do you see any examples of someone using it your way? > Good luck with your ESL tests as well. I don't know if it's apparent to you how condescending that sounds? But, for what it's worth, I'm a native speaker of English and have a degree in linguistics. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22i+don%27t+even+have%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22i+don%27t+even+have%22
                • iratewizard 5y ago
                  I can't even begin to explain how sad that is for you.
        • ksenzee 5y ago
          I believe it's meant to be "Even _I_ don't have..."
  • dwaltrip 5y ago
    The reasonable interpretation is that GP is saying many people may have private pictures of their partner.
• vineyardmike 5y ago
  > Do you really want a false positive to result in your intimate moments getting shared around some outsourced boiler room for laughs? these people also have no incentive to find you innocent for innocent photos. If they err on the side of false-negative, they might find themselves at the wrong end of a criminal search ("why didn't you catch this"), but if they false-positive they at worse ruin a random person's life.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    Even still this has to go to the FBI or other law enforcement agency, then it’s passed on to a prosecutor and finally a jury will evaluate. I have a tough time believing that false positives would slip through that many layers. That isn’t to say CASM scanning or any other type of drag net is OK. But I’m not concerned about a perceptual hash ruining someone’s life, just like I’m not concerned about a botched millimeter wave scan ruining someone’s life for weapons possession.
    • gambiting 5y ago
      >>I have a tough time believing that false positives would slip through that many layers. I don't, not in the slightest. Back in the days when Geek Squad had to report any suspicious images found during routine computer repairs, a guy got reported to the police for having child porn, arrested, fired from his job, named in the local newspaper as a pedophile, all before the prosecutor was actually persuaded by the defense attorney to look at these "disgusting pictures".....which turned out to be his own grand children in a pool. Of course he was immediately released but not before the damage to his life was done. >>But I’m not concerned about a perceptual hash ruining someone’s life I'm incredibly concerned about this, I don't see how you can not be.
      • zimpenfish 5y ago
        > Back in the days when Geek Squad had to report any suspicious images [...] which turned out to be his own grand children Do you have a link to sources for this case? I've had a look and can't see anything that matches right now.
• zimpenfish 5y ago
  > Do you really want a false positive to result in your intimate moments getting shared around some outsourced boiler room for laughs? You'd have to have several positive matches against the specific hashes of CSAM from NCMEC before they'd be flagged up for human review, right? Which presumably lowers the threshold of accidental false positives quite a bit?
• nine_k 5y ago
  Buy a subcompact camera. Never upload such photos to any cloud. Use your local NAS / external disk / your Linux laptop's encrypted hard drive. Unless you prefer to live dangerously, of course.
  • ohazi 5y ago
    Consumer NAS boxes like the ones from Synology or QNAP have "we update your box at our whim" cloud software running on them and are effectively subject to the same risks, even if you try to turn off all of the cloud options. I probably wouldn't include a NAS on this list unless you built it yourself. It looks like you've updated your comment to clarify Linux laptop's encrypted hard drive, and I agree with your line of thinking. Modern Windows and Mac OS are effectively cloud operating systems where more or less anything can be pushed at you at any time.
    • derefr 5y ago
      With Synology's DSM, at least, there's no "firmware" per se; it's just a regular Linux install that you have sudo(1) privileges on, so you can just SSH in and modify the OS as you please (e.g. removing/disabling the update service.)
    • cm2187 5y ago
      At least you can deny the NAS access to the WAN by blocking it on the router or not configuring the right gateway.
    • moogly 5y ago
      Synology [...] have "we update your box at our whim" You can turn off auto-updates on the Synology devices I own at least (1815+, 1817+).
• jjtheblunt 5y ago
  Why would other people have a naked picture of your wife?
  • pdpi 5y ago
    GP’s wife presumably had a personal life before being in a relationship with GP. It’s just as reasonable that her prior partners have her photos as it is for GP to have them.
  • giantrobot 5y ago
    She's a comely lass. I can't recommend her pictures enough.
  • jjtheblunt 5y ago
    (joke)
  • dwaltrip 5y ago
    Others have pictures of their wife, not GP's wife.
• zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  Rookie mistake. Three rules to live by: 1) Always pay your taxes 2) Don’t talk to the police 3) Don’t take photographs with your clothes off
  • jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I might amend #2 a bit to read "Be friends with the police" as that has historically been more beneficial to those who are.
    • mattnewton 5y ago
      Lots of people have believed that they were friends with the police and were actually being manipulated into metaphorically hanging themselves- some of them innocent. Counterargument, why you should not talk to the police (In the US): https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
    • digi59404 5y ago
      The point that being friends with police will be beneficial to you - Means there's a scenario where the inverse is also true. Not being friends with police is used to your detriment. Police Officers exist in a career field that is riddled with incidents of Tunnel Vision. The sibling comment posts a video about not talking to police from a law professor. I'd heed that advice.
      • l33t2328 5y ago
        That law professor clearly never talked his way out of a speeding ticket.
  • slapfrog 5y ago
    > 2) Don’t talk to the police 2b) Don't buy phones that talk to the police.
• planb 5y ago
  I fully agree with you. But while scrolling to next comment, a question came to my mind: Would it really bother me if some person that does not known my name, has never met me in real life and never will is looking at my pictures without me ever knowing about it? To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd care. Because for all I know, that might be happening right now...
• 7373737373 5y ago
  I, too, have worked on similar detection technology using state of the art neural networks. There is no way there won't be false positives, I suspect many, many more than true positives. It is very likely that as a result of this, thousands of innocent people will have their most private of images viewed by unaccountable strangers, will be wrongly suspected or even tried and sentenced. This includes children, teenagers, transsexuals, parents and other groups this is allegedly supposed to protect. The willful ignorance and even pride by the politicians and managers who directed and voted for these measures to be taken disgusts me to the core. They have no idea what they are doing and if they do they are simply plain evil. It's a (in my mind entirely unconstitutional) slippery slope that can lead to further telecommunications privacy and human rights abuses and limits freedom of expression by its chilling effect. Devices should exclusively act in the interest of their owners.
  • nonbirithm 5y ago
    Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Apple have scanned data stored on their servers for CSAM for over a decade already. The difference is that Apple is moving the scan on-device. Has there been any report of even a single person who's been a victim of a PhotoDNA false positive in those ten years? I'm not trying to wave away the concerns about on-device privacy, but I'd want evidence that a such significant scale of wrongful conviction is plausible as a result of Apple's change. I can believe that a couple of false positives would inevitably occur assuming Apple has good intentions (which is not a given), but I'm not seeing how thousands could be wrongfully prosecuted unless Apple weren't using the system like they state they will. At least in the US, I'm not seeing how a conviction can be made on the basis of a perceptual hash alone without the actual CSAM. The courts would still need the actual evidence to prosecute people. Getting people arrested on a doctored meme that causes a hash collision would at most waste the court's time, and it would only damage the credibility of perceptual hashing systems in future cases. Also, thousands of PhotoDNA false positives being reported in public court cases would only cause Apple's reputation to collapse. They seem to have enough confidence that such an extreme false positive rate is not possible to the point of implementing this change. And I don't see how just moving the hashing workload to the device fundamentally changes the actual hashing mechanism and increases the chance of wrongful conviction over the current status quo of serverside scanning (assuming that it only applies to images uploaded to iCloud, which could change of course). The proper time to be outraged at the wrongful conviction problem was ten years ago, when the major tech companies started to adopt PhotoDNA. On the other hand, if we're talking about what the CCP might do, I would completely agree.
• avnigo 5y ago
  I would want absolute transparency as to which of my photos have been exposed to the human review process and found to be false positives. Somehow I doubt we would ever get such transparency, even though it would be the right thing to do in such a situation.