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> But when a backdoor is installed, the backdoor exists and history teaches that it’s only a matter of time before it’s also used by the bad guys and authoritar
by lamontcg 5y ago
> But when a backdoor is installed, the backdoor exists and history teaches that it’s only a matter of time before it’s also used by the bad guys and authoritarian regimes.
Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a minimum). Then you'll be stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare trying to prove your innocence where you've been accused by a quasi Governmental agency that hides its methods so the "bad guys" can't work around them.
It isn't just "authoritarian regimes" abusing it, it is the stochastic domestic terrorism that our own government currently carries out against its own citizens every time there's a beaurocratic fuckup in how it manages its monopoly on violence.
This is the "Apple/Google cancelled my account and I don't know why" problem combined with SWATing.
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoStochastic domestic terrorist is not a term I ever expected to read, but it seems very fitting for the “data-driven” (but generally poorly evaluated) future we find ourselves drifting into.
- dane-pgp 5y ago"Stochastic terrorism" has been a popular term for a while[0], but it usually refers to the actions carried out by individuals, not government agents. Ironically, though, the word "terrorism" itself originally referred to the actions of a tyrannical government against its own citizens[1], so perhaps the definition has come full circle. [0] https://www.dictionary.com/e/what-is-stochastic-terrorism/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/what-is-stochastic-terrorism/ [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-of-the-word-terrorism https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-of-the...
- chongli 5y agoThis really has been decades in the making, hasn’t it? Apple is only adding the latest piece of the puzzle. The seeds of everything you’ve described were planted years ago. How did we get here? How did everything become so politicized and polarized? How did law enforcement become so militarized? How did we as a society become so terrified and distrustful of our neighbours?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fossuser 5y agoThis is wrong - the iCloud check is against known CSAM hashes, the false positive rate is essentially zero.
- hhh 5y agoOne in one trillion chance per year, per the paper on the Apple site.
- fossuser 5y agoYeah, that’s essentially zero.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- patmcc 5y agoI see the 'one in one trillion' but it's a bit vague; I read it as '1 in trillion chance' per image. So when we have a billion iPhones in the wild taking 10 images a day...1 in a trillion chances happen every few months. Now, if that triggers some further review, maybe that's an acceptable false positive. If it triggers a SWAT team, I don't think it is.
- jeromegv 5y agoThey have also indicated that a single match won't be enough to trigger it, so an accidental match (being that 1 in a trillion person) is not enough.
- jhayward 5y agoI would like to bet Apple's market value against that number being correct in an adversarial context.
- paul_f 5y agoThis seems naive, there are always false positives
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mthoms 5y ago>Problem is that this scanning is necessarily fuzzy and there is going to be a false positive rate to it. And the way that you'll find out that you've tripped a false positive is that the SWAT team will knock your door down and kill your dog (at a minimum). Not true. Hash matches are to be human reviewed. So no, people won't get "swatted" accidentally as you allege. The other concerns people have been voicing are certainly valid though (IMHO).
- mikewarot 5y ago>Hash matches are to be human reviewed. Until it proves too expensive, then a different AI system will do it instead. I have zero faith that it'll be a fully competent, well trained, well rested, well paid person will actually be doing these reviews in the long run.
- mthoms 5y agoIf you actually think there is going to be a fully automated system dispatching police SWAT teams throughout the US without a manual (or judicial) review then.... I really don't know what to tell you.
- mikewarot 5y agoIt'll all be shadow-ban type stuff, your account will be turned off, without appeal, things of that nature.
- mthoms 5y agoThat's a different thread of comments. This one is about automated dispatching of SWAT teams.
- sithlord 5y agoGuess its hard to believe that their is a world outside of the United States. Already do whatever it takes to pin some BS on someone that opposes them and has them executed. This would be no different.