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In internal memo, Apple addresses concerns around new Photo scanning features
- TeeMassive 5y agoHere's how it will probably go wrong; because privacy abuses always sit on a slippery slope: Detect CP Detect child abuse Detect signs of child abuse Detect signs of abuse Detect signs of violent crime Detect violent crime Detect crimes Detect "crimes" People not believing me, then tell one example of a privacy encroaching policy that didn't expand its original scope of "think of the children" and "terrorism". The worst part is that they are probably doing it and abusing it and are now seeking a way to normalize their conduct.
- sneak 5y agoApple is already helping both the FBI and CCP illegally spy on their citizen-subjects. Most iCloud data in the US is stored unencrypted to aid the US national spying, and iCloud data in China is stored on CCP-accessible servers for the same reason. This is no different. Apple knows which way the wind blows.
- TeeMassive 5y agoThe difference now is that they couldn't be used officially and at least, in principle, three letters agencies had to go through a legal process for unmasking. Now there's a constant search warrant on your phone that can be used against you in a court of law.
- donw 5y agoI was unaware that “addresses” is synonymous with “totally ignores”.
- tannerwj 5y ago"the screeching voices of the minority" is how they refer to those who value privacy...
- bitexploder 5y agoThey really did write that. And fall back to “think about the children”. I know the word dystopian gets overused, but it really fits here. Wow.
- Jtsummers 5y agoIf by "They" you mean Apple, then they did not. As noted by jsnell, and properly attributed in the linked article, it was written by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
- threatofrain 5y agoIt's true that if you retweet someone else's message, then you are not the original author of the message. But Apple leadership vetted the letter and passed it around staff, hoping that their employees would find it as "incredibly motivating" as they did.
- Animats 5y agoWhich is not a government agency. It's to some extent a lobbying group.[1] [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=F204571&year=2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
- jsnell 5y agoTechnically that description was from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, not from anyone at Apple.
- pseudalopex 5y agoThe Apple VP did say the NCMEC note was incredibly motivating though. And he could have distanced himself from that part. Or told the NCMEC director he'd love to share her note with the staff if she removed the disrespect.
- hemloc_io 5y ago
- vineyardmike 5y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087335
- 1123581321 5y agoMarita Rodriguez seems more candid about the trade-off being made here, even though she downplays her opposition.
- fitblipper 5y agoTo me it is clear they are bowing to government pressure to add this feature. I cannot imagine any other reason they would go from drawing so much attention to privacy of their platform in their communication and general PR around the launch of the privacy labels in the app store to then make this change which is a clear violation of their user's privacy.
- gowld 5y agoA lot of people not in government are also fiercely opposed to raping children and are willing to compromise, and understand that Apple can already do whatever they want to your phone, so this specific thing isn't the straw that breaks the camel's back. All the "what if Apple turns evil one day" applies equally well to iOS without this feature.
- strogonoff 5y agoI believe a lot of the outrage brewing now against Apple’s CSAM scanning is misdirected, and might actually be hurting the larger cause. Most ordinary people, especially those who have kids, won’t have a problem with a well-implemented, E2E encryption compatible scheme that is legally limited to only apply to this type of material. If explained the hash collision issue, they’d reasonably point out that Apple does manual review before notifying law enforcement, so this rare eventuality is something they can live with. Meanwhile, in the other camp, many of the vocally outraged fail to understand that no E2E encryption breakage has to be taking place for this feature to work. What’s actually a problem is that earlier, back in 2019, Apple changed their ToS to allow pre-screening of generally any “potentially illegal” content[0]. This should trigger much wider audience, and for legitimate reasons (the phrasing is clearly unnecessarily broad, and opposing this does not undermine kids’ safety in any way), yet no one is talking about it to my knowledge. [0] https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-content/ https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apple-scans-uploaded-co...
- pseudalopex 5y agoIt isn't E2E when the middle can decrypt. Rare is an assumption.
- almostdigital 5y agoA system on my phone where it has a list of bad files and a threshold on how many of those files are allowed. If the threshold is reached Apple can read them. Both the bad files list and threshold is controlled by Apple and is explicitly designed to be un-auditable... Honestly I would have been fine with Apple scanning my all photos after they are uploaded to iCloud but this is deeply disturbing
- gowld 5y agoHow is this system, where Apple sees far less photos, worse? You can't audit anything Apple does on their servers.
- feross 5y agoNow that a fully built system for breaking end-to-end encryption is shipped directly in the OS, we're one configuration change away from massive scope creep. First terrorist content, then "misinformation", then political speech. Apple will be unable to resist government demands to use this preexisting backdoor with a different set of perceptual hashes.
- shuckles 5y agoDisabling end to end encryption is always “one configuration change” away, presumably by substituting keys. How closely do you keep track of which keys are used to encrypt Health data - which is end to end encrypted - versus photos - which are not?
- dannyw 5y agoIf Apple substitutes keys, then that is a detectable event (by jailbroken devices) and that would make news. This is Apple explicitly announcing they are actively backdooring all iOS and Mac devices, and using your CPU cycles to determine whether you should be reported to the government.
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- modeless 5y agoI don't understand the claim that this system improves their ability to detect anything. If it's really true that the system only works on data uploaded to icloud then apple could have easily just done all the scanning in the cloud, because icloud is not end-to-end encrypted. In that case, all this feature does is move the computational cost of scanning from Apple's datacenters to Apple's users, saving Apple money and costing users battery life. It doesn't change anything about how effective the scanning can be. Unless I misunderstand how it works.
- aoetalks 5y agoI must have the same misunderstanding. I don’t know why this has to be device side for iCloud photos..
- dannyw 5y agoBecause security researchers imply Apple eventually plan to turn this on for all local photos, even with icloud turned off.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoall local files is what I predict.
- ziml77 5y agoMaybe because they plan on enabling E2EE for iCloud. Of course that's not necessarily useful given that the set of images yours are being checked against is completely opaque.
- pseudalopex 5y agoPhotos are encrypted in Apple's technical summary.[1] [1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...
- modeless 5y ago
- pseudalopex 5y agoThe NCMEC director claimed "many thousands of sexually exploited victimized children will be rescued" because of this system. It can't detect new abuse images if I understand correctly. And don't most arrests happen after a victim talks to another adult? Or someone notices signs? Are many thousands of active child molesters discovered through scanning online photos?
- gowld 5y agoNCMEC is clearly lying (for one thing, CSAM users will stop using iPhone/iCloud for CSAM), but the theory is that someone who collects images is likely to (a) have some new not yet indexed images in the collection, which can be investigated, (b) might he abusing children. IMO posession of CSAM should be legal but heavily regulated, so that users who don't want to hurt children (probably will most of them) cooperate with authorities to investigate producer (child abusers), get connected to mental health care, and not be driven into a criminal underworld full of blackmail.
- pseudalopex 5y agoI'm skeptical most people who download child pornography are active child molesters. Or most active child molesters distribute evidence of their crimes. And wouldn't NCMEC collect new images from the most popular distribution points?
- geocar 5y agoThe NCEMC was created by a child abuser[1] and his victim whom he groomed, and they asked Apple to send them pictures of suspected abuse. Pictures they can’t use as evidence, or use to “discover” evidence due to fourth-amendment protections. [1]: In his book Tears of Rage, Walsh openly admits being in a relationship with 16-year-old Revé when Walsh was in his 20s and aware of the age of consent being 17 in New York. Critics of the Adam Walsh Act have pointed out that, had he been convicted, Walsh himself would have been subject to sex offender registration under the law which he aggressively promoted. “But you know, she had this way about her. She had a certain presence. And after a while I just got over how young she was. She was way more sophisticated than anybody in her high school and she always dated older guys.”
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- akamaka 5y agoAs a thought experiment, why not allow us to disable the scanning feature in our iPhone settings? The entire premise of this system is that the targeted users are ignorant of its existence. If we can be so sure they don't know it exists, then surely having an option to disable it would cause no difference in outcome. If the people in favor of this system don't like the idea of making it optional, perhaps that shows that the premise behind it is flawed.
- Hamuko 5y agoYou can disable it by turning off iCloud Photos. For now at least, who knows about the future since it's on-device and doesn't actually require you to upload anything.
- mlindner 5y agoThat's only for iCloud Photos, if you send a photo to a phone on a parental account, you have no control whether the image is uploaded to Apple.
- adrr 5y agoHow long till China asks Apple to scan iPhones of Chinese citizens for pro-democracy files and images? Apple can no longer claim it isn’t possible. How long till Apple gets a secret warrant from the FISA courts to scan for a certain file on all US iPhones? Apple can’t claim it isn’t possible. It could be happening now. We wouldn’t know because all we have is a list of hashes.
- yladiz 5y agoIf you sync with iCloud this already could happen, because photos are not end to end encrypted.
- kuratkull 5y agoIt's as if Apple has created the first gun in the world, a gun that can only shoot pedos, and Apple starts clicking the trigger in the face of everybody it can reach to see if the gun fires. Oh, the gun also does frequent updates to its pedo detector software.
- wslh 5y agoImagine an attack where bots send suspicious photos to every phone in the planet.
- bassman9000 5y agoThis 2021 swatting
- davidcbc 5y agoYou seem to be conflating the two systems. For the CSAM detection this wouldn't do anything at all because you aren't uploading it to iCloud. For the child iMessage system it would notify the parents, not law enforcement. It's nothing like swatting
- hippari 5y agoWait until they start scanning offline photos, because this is designed with the intention to.
- dijit 5y ago> For the CSAM detection this wouldn't do anything at all because you aren't uploading it to iCloud. The whole point of this change is that they will scan content "before" it hits iCloud. (the verbage says "before" as if there is going to certainly be an intent that it goes to iCloud but that's not a given at all, sounds like Apples marketing speak to "assume the sale" so to say). CSAM scanning of photos uploaded iCloud photos has already been in place for quite some time.
- casefields 5y agoTo get this quashed would be easy. Use a Pegasus-like software and throw some known CP images onto their phone. After Cook and co have this happened, they'll rethink this program real quick.
- sneak 5y agoThe CEOs of the largest corporations in the world have additional human-in-the-loop evaluation steps in the chain before swatting, unlike people like you and I.
- swamp40 5y agoThe phone could nag you mercilessly about any disturbing pictures on your phone, without notifying any outside authorities. That would accomplish 50-75% of their goals.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoWould it? I thought their strategy is similar to Valve's anti-cheat - Tell the offenders absolutely nothing up until you snap shut on them. The consequences between cheating in pub Counter-Strike are obviously less serious, but Valve does let people cheat for a while and then bin people into "ban waves" (last I heard, anyway) to try to throw off the trail and prevent cheaters from figuring out exactly which actions got them in trouble. It's also similar to the concept of hellbanning trolls from a forum. They won't comply with kind messaging, they'll just instantly shed their accounts. So don't let them know they're banned. There is a whole (even more fraught) conversation about how to get pedophiles in touch with psychiatrists before they commit any crimes, but telling them "pst, I'm onto you" peacefully probably isn't the way.
- Someone1234 5y agoApple's mistake is that they seemingly believe there is pushback because people misunderstand how it works. The reality is more nuanced: People understand exactly how it works, and how it works is that it is turn-key onboard spyware, that Apple pinky-swears isn't being used wrong today. For example if the scope/mission expands (e.g. foreign governments), suddenly you've created a drag-net for whatever "badness" is of interest in whatever today's moral panic is (e.g. terrorism after 9/11). Plus perceptual hashing, by its very design, is created to be less precise than traditional cryptographic hashing. A cryptographic hash + file size combo is unlikely to have a false positive within our lifetime (and it has been used successful by multiple companies to combat CP). The interesting thing about a perceptual hash is that the closer the source material is to the banned material in terms of actual content (e.g. nudity), the more likely for a false positive. Therefore, if Apple does mess up via false-positive and manually review your material, it is more likely to be sensitive private materials (involving consenting adult(s), not CP) because that is what the perceptual hashes are looking for similarities to. PS - If you think this concept cannot happen in a Western country, see the UK's internet filters as a textbook example. Originally started to fight CP, and now used to fight a ton of other stuff too with more proposals every year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kingdom#Planned_programmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
- sneak 5y ago> Apple's mistake is that they seemingly believe there is pushback because people misunderstand how it works. The reality is more nuanced: People understand exactly how it works, and how it works is that it is turn-key onboard spyware, that Apple pinky-swears isn't being used wrong today. It's not a mistake. It's gaslighting.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoSometimes the slippery slope is not a fallacy, but the natural consequence of seeking more control. This feature can be horribly misused in the future, for example, to find people who have sent/received/downloaded Tiannanmen pictures, because instant messaging pictures can be automatically added to your albums. You can't trust a feature whose only impediment from being abused in the future is such pinky promise.
- neatze 5y agoTo me, my biggest issue with scanning user data is accountability and transparency; Who will audit false passive cases including reasons for unlocking data ? How false positive cases will be investigated and by whom ? (in case it was intentional data unlocking, eg. corporate espionage) How "victims" of false positive cases will be notified ?
- silverpepsi 5y agoI've often wondered why with the prevalence of Echo, Google Assistant, and engines that recognize what copywritten song you're using in a YouTube video... They haven't extended the code on our phones to listen for the sound signature of anyone watching a well-known child abuse video. Surely if they use the microphone they can get a lot more positives. Instead of just catching people who watched it on the phone directly they'll pick up all those who watched it on an old TV or highly secure Linux rig like Tails (but that inadvertently left their phone near the speaker). I'm sure the government has tens of thousands of hours of audio and will gladly supply the sound signatures. Think I should submit my idea to Apple??!
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoAssuming that "CSAM" is a euphemism for "CP", then... Isn't it pretty rare for people to watch porn with the sound on? Speaking as a frequent consumer of legal and ethical porn, I almost never turn the sound on. It's easier to contain leaks of light than of sound. You can cast that net, I just doubt it'll catch many fish.
- Sebguer 5y agoIt's not a euphemism, it's the terminology that doesn't fetishize it by calling it porn.
- worlek 5y agoThe real children abuser here is Marita Rodriguez. Abusing the suffering of children for her own political and financial benefits. Hiding behind the shield of abused children to not be held accountable for her claims and actions. Intentionally using tragedies to bully, shame, and silence legitimate concerns. Marita Rodriguez, here's a huge middle finger to you that will be held up until you prove that you've saved a single fucking child.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago> Today marks the official public unveiling of Expanded Protections for China, and I wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for all of your hard work over the last few years. We would not have reached this milestone without your tireless dedication and resiliency. > Keeping China safe is such an important mission. In true Apple fashion, pursuing this goal has required deep cross-functional commitment, spanning Engineering, GA, HI, Legal, Product Marketing, PR and the CCP. What we announced today is the product of this incredible collaboration, one that delivers tools to protect China, but also maintain Apple’s deep commitment to user privacy. > We’ve seen many positive responses today. We know some people have misunderstandings, and more than a few are worried about the implications, but we will continue to explain and detail the features so people understand what we’ve built. And while a lot of hard work lays ahead to deliver the features in the next few months, I wanted to share this note that we received today from NCMEC. I found it incredibly motivating, and hope that you will as well. > I am proud to work at Xinjiang with such an amazing team. Thank you!
- midev 5y agoThis isn't the argument you think it is. If you need to replace words and change the context of the discussion, I'm going to assume you don't have any valid criticism. I would refrain from posting, as arguments like this only trivialize the problem.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kabdib 5y agoThey could do this with text, too. Look for "insurrection" or other keywords in notes, or emails. Report users with lots of hits to the authorities. It's a slippery slope.
- jtsiskin 5y agoHow will this catch anyone? Won’t the people (or definitely the very worst of them) who this feature is intended to catch just stop using iPhone now? So in the end, is the effort really worth it?
- dd36 5y agoWon’t predators simply learn not use iPhones?
- saurik 5y agoTo be fair, this sounds like something they would consider to be a strong branding position, and is totally something they would point out constantly? "Folks who want to be sexual preditors can buy an Android phone" (a slight modification of Steve Jobs saying "Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.").
- tengbretson 5y agoI honestly don't get the uproar here. This is opt-in, so how is it any more outrageous than existing MDM software that people opt-in to for work reasons which are way more invasive?
- dannyw 5y agoits not opt in
- mensetmanusman 5y agoEvery tool starts as opt-in before being mandated.
- bambax 5y agoIf it's opt-in it's entirely useless for its stated goal, because why would the bad guys choose to subject themselves to such scrutiny???!? So the very fact that it is opt-in means it doesn't even try to "protect the children"; it just uses the children argument to promote the idea of total control, which will be then used for a host of other purposes.
- rantwasp 5y agothe CSAM part is not opt-in. technically you could not update to ios 15 or disable icloud, but it's not opt-in by any means.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoIt's not opt in. Please do more reading on it. Because of a technical "limit" currently you can turn off icloud photos and get out of the worst of it but then you also handicap your device and one of the reasons people buy into the apple platform in the first place.
- RavlaAlvar 5y agoI really don’t understand why apple is doing this. What point are they trying to score and from whom ? Do they think implementing a spyware in iPhone would boost sales? Or does it bring revenue from charging government agency to use this feature? I just don’t get it.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoMy take is they believe they are fighting a good fight. I don't justify this move, but I can see why they are pushed so hard to do it.
- mpalmer 5y agoCould be throwing a bone to politicians who say E2E encryption protects criminals. Not saying I agree, but I could see this being a compromise on Apple's part.
- RavlaAlvar 5y agoThey can’t be this stupid, right? They should know this has huge security implications. I can’t see how it can be justified for some political brownie point.
- mpalmer 5y agoThis is wholly speculation, but their view could be that they have two bad options to choose from, and they chose the option that didn't involve congressional hearings and public pressure to make changes that could be even more anti-privacy. Again, pure speculation and really the most generous means of explaining this controversial decision.
- chrononaut 5y ago> They should know this has huge security implications. I've missed where this has security implications. Did you mean privacy implications?
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- neolog 5y ago> because of you many thousands of sexually exploited victimized children will be rescued How does that work?
- rubatuga 5y agoThey just pulled that number out of their ass.
- eurasiantiger 5y agoTheir CEO has a track record of doing just that. Funnily enough the NCMEC started bringing in serious cash after some such statements and the CEO’s compensation is firmly in the six figures.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoFor anyone that has read “The Circle”, this should feel like life imitating art. The antagonist company in that book repeatedly “finds” child pornography on inconvenient people to exert ever-growing control over society.
- harikb 5y agoRecommended reading prior to this one is the 2016 public letter from Apple [1] where Apple makes a similar slippery-slope argument on FBI's request. 1. https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ Regarding the slippery-slope argument in this context though, it isn't the same. if Apple really wanted to silently transition from CP to Gov/Politics surveillance, they could have just released this feature without any announcement. I mean, if they wanted to be evil. Shouldn't we have thought about this eventuality before putting all our pictures in the cloud?
- jasonlfunk 5y agoIf we pretend for a minute, which may not be hard, that Apple isn't trying to "think of the children" - this feature seems like a good step to protect themselves from the legal implications of having CP on their servers. I don't know what all the ramifications would be, but I imagine that if a CP ring was discovered using iCloud as a storage medium, Apple could get in a some big trouble.
- gruez 5y ago>Apple could get in a some big trouble. On what basis? Is there precedence for this?
- kyriakos 5y agoIts like saying Western Digital will get in trouble cause they make hard drives and they can be used to store questionable images.
- stjohnswarts 5y agothere's nothing stopping them from scanning on their servers, google and dropbox already do it.
- rudian 5y agoLet’s not confuse the 2 parts that Apple is implementing; - one is parental control, it’s upon request, uses ML, it’s “local” (that is, it’s sent to the parent) - the other one is plain hash matching, which does not “save the children” but rather is “catch the viewer” — exclusively. This has no impact on the abuse of the CSAM subjects because it only matches publicly-known content. I don’t know why NCMEC is excited since stopping the viewer does not stop the abuse; This does not affect them. Conspirationally speaking, it almost feels like things aren’t the way they’re described and Apple will in fact ML to detect new content and report that. The threshold thing doesn’t even make sense otherwise. One known CSAM picture should be enough to trigger the report, but it sounds like they want better accuracy for ML detection.
- Lammy 5y ago> I don’t know why NCMEC is excited since stopping the viewer does not stop the abuse, this does not affect them. They get to keep their jobs :)
- ummonk 5y ago'the other one is plain hash matching, which does not “save the children” but rather is “catch the viewer” — exclusively. This has no impact on the abuse of the CSAM subjects because it only matches publicly-known content.' Are you claiming victims of child sexual abuse wouldn't care if images of the abuse are circulating freely and being viewed with impunity by pedophiles?
- dmitrygr 5y agoI was planning to switch to iPhone this year. I no longer am. I do not want any device that would turn me in to police. For any reason. That is just not okay. To start with, because software has bugs. To end with, because principles matter.
- stjohnswarts 5y agodon't do it, i did it last year and bought a top end mini and new iphone. They burned this bridge though, I guess it's back to Android and using adb to degoogle it and use open source apps to replace the google apps
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoUnfortunalty if our experience from the past with such events teaches us anything, it's that a minority of us will stop using apple products (or keep not doing it) but the rest of the world will quickly forget and carry on as usual. Worse, if your decision to not use an iphone makes others people life slightly anoying for 2 seconds a week, many will bash on you. As a FOSS user with no FB nor whatsapp account that ask to avoid photos to be taken of him with smartphones, I can tell you I pay regularly the price the price for what I think is doing the right thing. It's just easier to let the abuse go on. And we have other fights in life. I didnt pick up smoking (pot of cigarets), stopped drinking alcohol, became vegetarian. They all come with social challenges. Add then you have your familly, job, health and goals that needs your care, attention and time. At some point you just want to say "screw them", create your own bubble of freedom and let them enjoy their distopia. Except we kind of live in it, don't we? I'm usually an upbeat person but these types of event arrive in a never ending stream, and today I feel tired.
- baq 5y agoThere is no viable option if you want a quality smartphone. Androids spy on you already. Apple will be spying on you. The dark side of economies of scale.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoWe are not here by accident. Those are symptoms of a public that doesn't care. We have been explaining the consequences of each choice for techs during the last 20 years. I've had the talk with my friends and familly many times. Very patiently. Very nicely. Nobody cares. It's just an annoyance for them. And it requires an enormous more amounr of energy to live your live this way than not caring. Even more if you gotta explain. And so here we are.
- cryptonector 5y agoHow would the public demonstrate caring about this?
- babesh 5y agoApple is the best venue for the government to get you used to your local data spied upon. Boil the frog. I do wonder what China and other countries will do. Will this system be under the control of US authorities?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI believe we'll just be the testing ground. Apple has no doubt to capitulate and use this for China so they can track down Pooh memes and similar anti-Chinese content for thought crimes against the party.
- tumblewit 5y agoThis reminds me of 'Reflections on Trusting Trust'. The headline is so relevant here > To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- joshuawithers 5y agoThere's a whole lotta neckbeards in here worried about their CSAM collections being found.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoWhat will happen if this catches someone like Hunter Biden? Hypothetically speaking. Though he's kind of famous on 4chan. Will apple have an exemption list for the elite. Because this could bring down elected governments if its actually applied equally.
- babesh 5y agoChuck Schumer: “You take on the intelligence community? They have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you” There must be tremendous amounts of dirt on most powerful people but it rarely sees the light of day and how it is obtained is never revealed?
- Animats 5y agoTake a close look at the way this works. If there are enough hash matches, Apple apparently gets to look at all the pictures on the phone. The description says "threshold reached, all content visible and unlocked". "All", not "Matched". Matches can be forced from the outside, by sending pictures to the phone. They don't even have to be from the known-bad image set. Using an adversarial system to try to create hash matches might allow generating innocuous pictures which trigger a phone dump. Expect a toolset for doing that to be developed. Although it may take a while for word of it to leak out. This has applications for entrapment, swatting, political retribution, etc.
- zimpenfish 5y ago> If there are enough hash matches, Apple apparently gets to look at all the pictures on the phone. Not according to the technical summary PDF they released[1], "Only those images that have a voucher that corresponds to a true CSAM match can have their vouchers’ data decrypted [...] Even if the device-generated inner encryption key for the account is reconstructed based on the above process, the image information inside the safety voucher for non-matches is still protected by the outer layer of encryption" [1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...
- 0xy 5y agoThis is spin by Apple, driven by ignorance or deliberately misleading statements. NCMEC's database contains images that are not CSAM, not illegal and are not even borderline (grey area). The fact there is a match in NCMEC's database does not mean the content is CSAM. It does not even mean it's illegal. In fact, it doesn't even mean there's a single person in the picture frame. And no, this is not theoretical. NCMEC's database is this much of a mess today. In fact, given there's a threshold at all I'm pushed into believing that Apple know the database is faulty.
- zimpenfish 5y ago> NCMEC's database contains images that are not CSAM, not illegal and are not even borderline (grey area). Got a handy link about this? A quick search doesn't show anything obvious. > This is spin by Apple, driven by ignorance or deliberately misleading statements. The claim was that Apple got access to all the pictures on the phone which isn't correct according to their technical summary. Nothing to do with the validity of NCMEC hashes.
- kgarten 5y agoWondering If this implementation is related to the chat control effort in the EU: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/?lang=en https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/?la... Just installing graheneos on a pixel, writing this from my Librem 14 (got it after the M1, the phoning home of apple apps, the new lockdown of kernel extensions). Goodbye Apple.
- hef19898 5y agoNow that I think about it, is there any good, viable alternative for Windows 10 on a new ThinkPad? One that ideally is able to run MS Office (or at least Excel...)? Any recommendations regarding decent, and ideally user friendly, Linux versions?
- dijit 5y agoI mean, the fact that our world exists on the back of proprietary formats (thus locking us into software) should be a bigger deal. "It should run microsoft office" is a difficult problem to solve and only serves to deeply entrench the big players. I'm aware that I've had this same criteria myself for choosing a new device (because: pragmatism) but I've come to just "accept" it. If I look a bit further away and remove my implicit acceptance of the status quo: I'm actually quite horrified that we're so tied to one company and what _it_ decides to support. If the next versions of Microsoft Office didnt work on apple devices at all: what would the world do? Run Windows exclusively due to pragmatism is my initial assumption.
- hef19898 5y agoYeah, that's why I "choose" Windows and Office 365 for my own company. Now that this is over, and I have a new set of employer owned hardware for work, I can get rid of that for my private life. Hence Linux and I guess, LibreOffice. Once I have time I'll also quit Google's Android on my Pixel. I need time for that so, good thing is most of Steam works on Linux just fine. I'll do some digging first so if Linux on my X1 Extreme works just fine. I am not motivated enough to solve driver issues...
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- djanogo 5y agoApple PR at work, watch out for these media contacts trying to cover for Apple, previously daringapplebar and now this.
- yason 5y agoReads more like a public relations piece in disguise of an "internal memo". Maybe it was designed to be "leaked", and so quickly?
- endisneigh 5y agoUnless you’re using open source software that’s been audited there’s really no way to prevent this from eventually happening. New legislation in a given country could be passed forcing a Apple to do this. Someone who cares about such things would self store their own data IMO
- yawaworht1978 5y agoThis makes me think, how do we know for sure that apple can't keylog WhatsApp or other e2e correspondence? Is it obvious in some open source code like signal or are there other hacks to prove/disprove this as a user?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI suspect currently they do nothing, however in the long run they control everything on their devices so there's no reason to think they can't do the same thing to signal, whatsapp or telegram.
- Dagonfly 5y agoWhat I came to realize on a broader scale (1) is that none of these automated system provide any disclosure or transparency. Neither for true nor false positives. In Computer Security we are required to provide responsible disclosure when the privacy of users was (potentially) violated. When law enforcement has a search warrant for my place, I can at least notice that an intrusion happened and in many countries I can request the warrant. Here, a false positive never gets any of the "Five Ws" answered: Who used this system (which government agency / company)? Why was I (mistakenly) flagged? Which particular piece of my data triggered the system? When did the system phone home? What is the intended purpose of this system? And most importantly: What parts of my privacy were violated? Who had access to those, and how was the infringement of my rights remedied? We have hardware fuses, trustzones and so on. It must be possible to have a auditable and tamper-proof system that triggers once such a system calls home and then discloses the "breach" to the user after X days. If the public had access to that information and transparency reports about the success rate vs. false positivity rate, then society could evaluate the system is adequate. I'd wager many would question the "save the children" argument if they regularly heard about false positives and egregious access to private photos by law enforcement. Many there are barely any false positives, I'd personally support a CSAM in that case. As it stands we won't know. (1) Other less invasive system (Youtube strikes, many social media bans) also share the laid out concerns.
- smsm42 5y agoThe part where "threshold reached, all content visible and unlocked" is what worries me. That means, any content can be visible and unlocked to anybody, and the only barrier is some threshold where Apple pinky-swears it would never look unless it is passed. We all know how well it works with NSA wiretapping, and even if Apple right now is sincerely committed to hold their promise, they could decide otherwise - or being forced to - at any point in the future. Once there's a door and there's a key, they key will be used to open the door, and it will be used for any future purpose the key owner wants to.
- kuratkull 5y agoIt's as if Apple has created the first gun in the world, a gun that can only shoot pedos, and Apple starts clicking the trigger in the face of everybody it can reach to see if the gun fires. Oh, the gun also does frequent updates to its pedo detector software.
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- webreac 5y agoI think it is our role to educate our relatives on this subject: any text that refer to child pornography or similar "save our children" shall immediately trigger the idea association: "written by a Nazi posing as a sheep to reduce out freedom". Shoot! Goldwin's law strikes again!
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoIsn't this covered by the 4th Amendment? The fact that Apple is doing it and not US.GOV is irrelevant, because the explicit intent is to check for content-deemed-illegal on a personal device and Apple is clearly just a cutout. Worse - unless the "perceptual hash" tech is better than anyone suspects, most of the images flagged will be personal images of consenting adults. So Apple - and possibly US.GOV - ends up with a huge collection of intimate photos of many of its users. Plus everyone's porn stash. I'm finding it very hard to understand why no one at Apple realised this would be a PR disaster.
- sneak 5y agoApple already has that data via iCloud Photos, on by default on every iPhone. It's not e2e and Apple can already read all of it. They turn over this data for over 30,000 users each year to the USG without a warrant, per their own transparency report.
- intricatedetail 5y agoThey first create this PR how they care about privacy. Then when the message settles in, they do exactly opposite. Someone at Apple read 48 Laws of Power too many times.
- aaronmdjones 5y agoI'm seeing lots of news and pushback about the iCloud scanning stuff, but not a lot of news about the iMessage scanning and sharing stuff. I'm not a parent, thankfully; but if I were, I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable with the idea of other parents seeing my child naked. Even if I don't sign my child's account up for this scanning thing, the recipient could well be, and they won't be warned about that before sending it. This is an abusive parent's wet dream waiting to happen, and it disgusts me. Minors should be free to explore their sexuality with their peers. It's how we grow as people. EDIT: Upon further thought; how is this NOT illegal? How else can this be framed than "Apple knowingly and willingly assists in the dissemination of child pornography into the hands of adults"?
- rnjesus 5y agothe imessage scanning is just to provide on-device warnings and blurring of photos that are suspected of being inappropriate. nothing is transmitted off the phone — parents are only given a notification (and only if their child is under 13, and only then if the child sends or replies to nude photos after being warned by the system)
- aaronmdjones 5y agoNot according to [1]. > Apple’s second main new feature is two kinds of notifications based on scanning photos sent or received by iMessage. > To implement these notifications, Apple will be rolling out an on-device machine learning classifier designed to detect “sexually explicit images”. > According to Apple, these features will be limited (at launch) to U.S. users under 18 who have been enrolled in a Family Account. > In these new processes, if an account held by a child under 13 wishes to send an image that the on-device machine learning classifier determines is a sexually explicit image, a notification will pop up, telling the under-13 child that their parent will be notified of this content. > If the under-13 child still chooses to send the content, they have to accept that the “parent” will be notified, and the image will be irrevocably saved to the parental controls section of their phone for the parent to view later. [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...
- rendaw 5y agoThis is basically like Apple putting a video camera in everyone's bedroom, and saying that the camera will only upload video if they detect a criminal's face.
- laichzeit0 5y agoWhat I don’t get is why Apple feels the need to dig through my or anyone’s photos for any reason whatsoever? Like, who is asking for this crap? Is there some legal obligation for Apple to do this? It feels like a “feature” that no one asked for or wants.
- john_minsk 5y agoQuestion to tech savvy population of HN: If I browse internet and accidentally load a page with all images from this CSAM database => are these images automatically saved somewhere on my filesystem on iOS? So if this software was scanning not only iCloud but all images on my phone I would be reported automatically? Hypothetical question.
- DavideNL 5y agoFirst of all, i feel that saying “people don’t understand” is insulting. Second, the fact that everyone is now a suspect by default (instead of targeting specific individuals), is a very concerning development. Just imagine Tim Cook retiring and being replaced by someone like Donald Trump. All the tools are now in place to start misuse. On the other hand, it seems they did built a great tool, preserving privacy while still scanning Photos locally. I just feel it’s wrong to use this on all (innocent) people.
- sneak 5y agoThe tools are already in place for misuse. iPhones autoupdate by default, so Apple can push new malicious privacy-invading software to your device at any time without your intervention. Each update, even if done manually, re-enables autoupdate, requiring that you go turn it off. Apple is really into being able to run whatever code they want on your device without your intervention.
- DavideNL 5y agoSure, but by that reasoning, any system that has updates is by definition 100% insecure, and nothing else matters anymore… The world is not just black and white.
- sneak 5y agoUnattended autoupdate is indeed insecure, as the Solarwinds hack nicely illustrated. When the vendor can execute arbitrary code on your machine without intervention, that's effectively a backdoor of any/all kinds.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoCould somebody go to https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni... and then replace - "National Center for Missing and Exploited Children“ with „the new Trump administration“ - „child pornography“ with „LGBT content“ to see what 2025 might look like? (use „the new Clinton administration“ and „images of guns“ if you are conservative)
- beermonster 5y ago"We know that the days to come will be filled with the screeching voices of the minority." Nice one Apple. Hopefully they're not referring to the minority that buy their products as a result of them being marketed with privacy and security as setting them aside from their competitors. Here is a list [1] of at least some of the 'minority' WhatsApp have also fired back at them [2]. [1] https://appleprivacyletter.com/ https://appleprivacyletter.com/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/6/22613365/apple-icloud-csam-scanning-whatsapp-surveillance-reactions https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/6/22613365/apple-icloud-csam...
- meibo 5y agoGood one, calling their paying customers that bought into the ecosystem on the promise of privacy the "screeching minority" :) Was about to get an iPad Pro for work, will not get an iPad Pro ever.
- crawsome 5y agoThis article is propaganda
- tvirosi 5y agoWeird that the heads of apple seem to have redefined 'in true apple fashion' from just integrating well across the hardware and software layer to being about every part of the organization working well together (engineers and lawyers)
- jiggawatts 5y agoEveryone, just relax. It's fine. The Apple corporation is just entering your home on a regular basis and rifling through your photo album. This is perfectly normal, because you might have pictures of 15 year old girls. Which you took when you were 16. But you're 18 now, so if you've upset the wrong people you can be locked up for life. Be glad you're not just quietly taken out the back and shot, like in some other countries. We're more civilised here, you see? We just put you on a list. You can go about the rest of your life. It'll be a bit... shit, but at least you'll get to regret angering the rich and powerful.
- bishoprook2 5y agoYou know, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I mostly see a bunch of disingenuous logic from the pro-surveillance forces. Being able to uniquely identify a picture via a hash and having a copy of that same picture at The Borg is essentially the same as sending a copy, it's a form of image compression. Much hand-waving results as to the actual rules for pushing the data upstream, but that's just a detail..and a definable one at that. It's probably best to view Apple products as privacy oriented to corporations not named 'Apple', but transparent to governments. That's probably enough for most people.
- ranguna 5y agoWould it be possible to generate a handful of pictures that match a few hashes (but not actually real matches) and just do a mass forward to everyone? WhatsApp, signal, email, slack, everywhere. Everyone would get flagged, mean that this tool is pointless.
- rubyist5eva 5y agoDon't need government fascism when you have corporate fascists doing the dirty work for them under the guise of liberty.
- flemhans 5y agoYou can write Marita Rodriguez on mrodriguez@ncmec.org if you have any concerns or questions about the collaboration between the entities.
- HugoDaniel 5y agoWhen will Nike and Tesla also offer protections against costumers that use their products to commit infractions such as CP?
- gwilikers 5y ago> I know it’s been a long day and that many of you probably haven’t slept in 24 hours. We know that the days to come will be filled with the screeching voices of the minority. > Our commitment to lift up kids who have lived through the most unimaginable abuse and victimizations will be stronger. Ah, yes, everyone that is vocally concerned about this is either misinformed or irrationally “screeching.” We, of course, are righteous defenders of children. Tighten those blinders, Team Apple!
- vogon_laureate 5y agoI can see all the arguments and concerns people have and the strong opposition from the tech community. What I’m not seeing enough of is a focus on the actual problem Apple is purporting to address (whatever your views may be on their implementation). If anything I’m seeing some very worrying minimisation and dismissals of the problem of CP, child trafficking and abuse and other privacy and ethics related issues such as counter-terrorism. What’s the privacy and ethically aware solution to these problems?
- HugoDaniel 5y agoLets ask Casio, since 1989 that they sell the F-91W [0]. When will they also start ratting on their costumers? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism
- mirkules 5y ago“Think of the Children” and “terrorism” are two of the most used excuses for overreach, usually reserved for governments, but apparently for some companies too now. Why is it Apple’s business to stop crime, regardless of severity or type? How does “solving crime” help them sell devices? The more conspiratorial-minded individuals might actually suspect some government collusion in this, because it makes no financial sense otherwise to do this. Nobody is dismissing CP (or terrorism). Simply put, it’s not Apple’s problem to solve.
- fortran77 5y agoIt's odd that a "private" organization, the "National Center for Missing and Exploited Children" gets access to your photos first, before law enforcement. Why would we trust law enforcement to a posse of private citizens (albeit with a congressional charter)?
- krapp 5y ago>Why would we trust law enforcement to a posse of private citizens (albeit with a congressional charter)? What they're doing isn't law enforcement. Charging people with crimes, arresting them and throwing them in jail is law enforcement.
- fortran77 5y agoHow do they get an exemption from the "strict liability" of possession of illegal images?
- erdos4d 5y agoI'm seeing this migrate to leaked documents, pirated material, and tracking who shares material of interest very soon.
- hallzy 5y agoLet's propose Amazon announced all Alexa devices would start scanning everything it hears for illegal activity. This new feature has the same security semantics as Apple's CSAM detection: on device hashing using a government controlled audio database of known illegal activity, violations are only reported once a threshold is met, etc. Would you be comfortable with this? Would you be comfortable with a company searching our physical lives in the way Apple intends to search our digital lives? How are these 2 things any different?
- rsync 5y agoJust an aside as we all discuss iCloud storage of photos, etc. ... I don't back up anything to iCloud. Instead, I connect my iPhone to my laptop and run the excellent "iExplorer" utility from Macroplant[1]. This allows me to browse my iPhone like a filesystem and copy off all of the photos/videos to a directory where I can then rsync them to my local fileserver. You can also dump iMessages and notes and all of those other thing but I just export photos ... [1] https://macroplant.com/iexplorer https://macroplant.com/iexplorer
- happynacho 5y agoDissmiss fits better than "addresses". >We know that the days to come will be filled with the screeching voices of the minority. aka "We are Apple and can't do no wrong and they are just haters"
- r00tanon 5y agoSuper easy way to convince Apple they might want to re-think things. Buy something other than Apple products, starting with the iPhone.
- whatever1 5y agoAt the very minimum Apple has to disclose monthly the full list of items that it checks against (I guess it will be country specific). We do have international institutions and media that can handle this.