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>About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or th

by slg 5y ago

>About this time, someone usually mocks "it's always about the kids, think about the kids." To those critics: They have not seen the scope of this problem or the long term impact. There is nearly a 1-to-1 relationship between people who deal in CP and people who abuse children. And they rarely victimize just one child. Nearly 1 in 10 children in the US will be sexually abused before the age of 18. I think we have seen "think of the kids" used as an excuse for so many things over the years that the pendulum has now swung so far that some of the tech community has begun to think we should do absolutely nothing about this problem. I have even seen people on HN in the last week that are so upset by the privacy implications of this that they start arguing that these images of abuse should be legal since trying to crack down is used as a motive to invade people's privacy. I don't know what the way forward is here, but we really shouldn't lose sight that there are real kids being hurt in all this. That is incredibly motivating for a lot of people. Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. That isn't going to be a winning argument among mainstream audiences. We need something better or it is only a matter of time until these type of systems are implemented everywhere.

zug_zug 5y ago
> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. Is it intangible? 18% of the world lives in China alone. That's more people than the "1/10 who are victims of child abuse*", and I'm sure that 18% will only grow as other authoritarian countries get more technologically advanced. I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. * Per a google search "A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows 1.6 % (sixteen out of one thousand) of children between the ages of 12-17 were victims of rape/sexual assault" which is a lot less than 10% figure you're citing. Non-sexual abuse wouldn't really have any bearing here, right?
- slg 5y ago
  >Is it intangible? 18% of the world lives in China alone. That's more people than the "1/10 who are victims of child abuse*", and I'm sure that 18% will only grow as other authoritarian countries get more technologically advanced. You didn't mention any tangible results here. How would this system by Apple make my life worse? Can you answer that without a slippery slope argument? >I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. Why does the causality matter? A correlation is enough that cracking down on this content will result in less abusers on the streets. >* Per a google search "A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows 1.6 % (sixteen out of one thousand) of children between the ages of 12-17 were victims of rape/sexual assault" which is a lot less than 10% figure you're citing. Non-sexual abuse wouldn't really have any bearing here, right? I wasn't the one citing that, but you are also citing an incomplete number since it excludes younger children.
  - zug_zug 5y ago
    >> You didn't mention any tangible results here. How would this system by Apple make my life worse? Can you answer that without a slippery slope argument? That's a weird goal-post. >> Why does the causality matter? A correlation is enough that cracking down on this content will result in less abusers on the streets. Obviously of the people who look at cp, a higher percentage of those will be actual child abusers. The question for everybody is -- does giving those people a fantasy outlet increase or actually reduce the number of kids who get assaulted. At the end of the day that's what matters. >> I wasn't the one citing that, but you are also citing an incomplete number since it excludes younger children. [EDIT: Mistake] Well you didn't cite anything at all, and were off by a shockingly large number. Please cite something or explain why you made up a number.
    - slg 5y ago
      >Well you didn't cite anything at all, and were off by a shockingly large number. Sorry, I am just baffled by your last point here. How can I be off by a shockingly large number when I didn't even cite a number?
- mlac 5y ago
  > I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. “Think of the Kids” damn well applies to the consumers of this content - by definition, there is a kid (or baby in some instances) involved in the CP. As a society, the United States draws the line at age 18 as the age of consent [the line has to be drawn somewhere and this is a fairly settled argument]. So by definition, in the United States, these are not consenting victims in the pictures. Demand drives creation. Getting rid of it on one of the largest potential viewing and sharing platforms is a move in the right direction in addressing the problem. What I haven’t seen from the tech community is the idea that this will be shut down if it goes too far or beyond this limited scope. Which I think it would be - people would get rid of iPhones if some of the other cases privacy advocates are talking about occur. And at that point they would have to scrap the program - so Apple is motivated to keep it limited in scope to something everyone can agree is abhorrent.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Demand drives creation. Getting rid of it on one of the largest potential viewing and sharing platforms is a move in the right direction in addressing the problem. Yeah, that focus has worked really well in the "war on some drugs," hasn't it? I don't pretend to have all (or any good ones for that matter) the answers, but we know interdiction doesn't work. Those who are going to engage in non-consensual behavior (with anyone, not just children) are going to do so whether or not they can view and share records of their abuse. The current legal regime (in the US at least) creates a gaping hole where even if you don't know what you have (e.g., if someone sends you a child abuse photo without your knowledge or consent) you are guilty, as possession of child abuse images is a felony. That's wrong. I don't know what the right way is, but adding software to millions of devices searching locally for such stuff creates an environment where literally anyone can be thrown in jail for receiving an unsolicited email or text message. That's not the kind of world in which I want to live. Many years ago, I was visiting my brother and was taking photos of his two sons, at that time aged ~4.5 and ~2. I took an entire roll of my brother, his wife and their kids. In one photo, the two boys are sitting on a staircase, and the younger one (none of us noticed, as he wasn't potty trained and hated pants) wasn't wearing any pants. I took the film to a processor and got my prints in a couple of days. We all had a good laugh looking at the photos and realizing that my nephew wasn't wearing any pants. There wasn't, when the photos were taken, nor when they were viewed, any abuse or sexual motives involved. Were that to happen today, I would be sitting in a jail cell, looking at a lengthy prison sentence. And when done "repaying my debt to society" I'd be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life. Which is ridiculous on its face. Unless and until we reform these insane and inane laws, I can't support such programs. N.B.: I strongly believe that consent is never optional and those under the age of consent cannot do so. As such, there should absolutely be accountability and consequences for those who abuse others, including children.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  What tangible impact in the life of an everyday Chinese citizen are you expecting if Apple offered an E2EE messging and cloud backup service in China? And why do you think the Chinese government would not just ban it and criminalise anyone found using a device which connected to Apple's servers, rendering any benefits moot? (And why do you think it's morally right, or the responsibility of a foreign private company to try and force anything into China against their laws? Another commenter in a previous thread said the idea was for Apple to refuse to do business there - but that still leads to the question, how would that help anyone?)
- zepto 5y ago
  You can’t seriously be suffering that Apple not implementing these measures will somehow be good for privacy in China?
  - cvwright 5y ago
    The implication -- and I think it's a valid one -- is that this client-side mechanism will be very quickly co-opted to also alert on non-CSAM material. For example, Winnie the Pooh memes in China.
    - zepto 5y ago
      I think it’s not valid to claim that it will be quickly used for that purpose. However I absolutely agree that it could be used to detect non-CSAM images if Apple colludes with that use case. My point is that this is immaterial to what is going on in China. China is already an authoritarian surveillance state. Even without this, the state has access to the iCloud photo servers in China, so who knows what they are doing, with or without Apple’s cooperation.
      - Maakuth 5y ago
        You can label it collusion, but when Apple does it, it's going to call it _complying with local regulation_.
        zepto 5y ago
        It doesn’t matter what you label it. Hand wringing over making things worse in China is not a valid concern.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        I'm old enough to remember when the revelation that NSA is spying on everyone was a shock. Now people are seriously arguing that continuous searching through your entire life without any warrant or justification by opaque algorithms is fine. It only took what, 10 years?
kbenson 5y ago
> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects. It's unfortunate that some would choose to link their opposition to the idea with making the thing it's attempting to combat legal when it's something so abhorrent, but in general I think a push back on any erosion of our rights is a good and useful way for people to dedicate time and effort. While we shouldn't lose sight that there are real children in danger and that this should help, we also shouldn't lose sight that there is plenty of precedence that this could eventually lead to danger and problems for a great many other people, children included.
- slg 5y ago
  >I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects. The encryption everywhere mindset of a lot of the tech community is changing the nature of the right to privacy. 50 years ago all these images would have been physical objects. They could have been found by the person developing the photos or the person making copies. They could have been found with a warrant. Now they are all hidden behind E2EE and a secure enclave. To a certain extent the proliferation of technology means people can have an even stronger degree of privacy today than was practical in the past. It is only natural for people to wonder if that shift has changed where the line should be.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    In the past these people would have been developing the pictures themselves, and handing them between each other either personally or in some hidden manner using public systems. Not only has communication become easier, so has surveillance. The only difference now is that it's easier for people not to be aware when their very personal privacy is invaded, and that it can be done to the whole populace at once.
mlac 5y ago
It’s not just thinking of the victims when they are kids - if they aren’t killed after the material is made, then they have issues for the rest of their life with a real cost to society. We’re talking a life-long impact from being abused in that stuff…
thegrimmest 5y ago
Any reach into privacy, even while "thinking of the kids" is an overreach. Police can't open your mail or search your house without a warrant. The same should apply to your packets and your devices. Why not police these groups with.. you know.. regular policing? Infiltrate, gather evidence, arrest. This strategy has worked for centuries to combat all manner of organized crime. I don't see why it's any different here.
- loves_mangoes 5y ago
  Devil's advocate: It may not be mostly big organized crime. It may be hard to fight, because it's not groups. It mostly comes from people close to the families, or the families themselves. Here's a relevant extract sourced from Wikipedia: "Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbours; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.[53] In over one-third of cases, the perpetrator is also a minor.[56]" Content warning: The WP article contains pictures of abused children.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    Sure, but the people sharing these images do so in organized groups, often referred to as "rings". I agree it would be very hard to catch a solitary perpetrator abusing children and not sharing the images. However since they would be creating novel images with new hashes, Apple's system wouldn't do much to help catch them would it?
    - loves_mangoes 5y ago
      Let me respond to the "novel images with new hashes" part. Apple's system doesn't use only cryptographic hashes, it seems designed to catch novel images too. There is concern that it will be inaccurate and have a much higher rate of false positive than the 1 in a trillion reported by Apple (as described in the, very thorough, article).
kfprt 5y ago
The laws regarding CSAM/CSA are not the problem, they are fine. The problem is that we are expected to give up our rights in the vague notion of 'protecting children' while the same authorities actively ignore ongoing CSA. The Sophie Long case is an excellent example where the police has no interest in investigating allegations of CSA. Why is it that resources are spent policing CSAM but not CSA? It is because it is about control and eroding our right to privacy.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I agree that our current legal and law enforcement system isn't up to speed with 21st century internet. And it has to be updated, because this kind of makes the internet a de-facto law less space, covering everything from stalking, harassment over fraud to contraband trafficking and CSAM. I don't think full scale surveillance is the way to go in free, democratic societies. It is the easiest one, so. Even more if surveillance can be outsourced to private, global tech companies. It saves the pain of passing laws. Talking about laws, those along with legal proceedings should be brought up to speed. If investigators, based on existing and potential new laws, convince a court to issue a warrant to surveil or search any of my devices, fine. Because then I have legal options to react to that. Having that surveillance incorporated into some opaque EULA from a company in US, a company that now can enforce its standards on stuff I do, is nothing I would have thought would be acceptable. Not that I am shocked it is, I just wonder why that stuff still surprises me when it happens. Going one step forward, if FANG manages to block right to repair laws it would be easy to block running non-approved OS on their devices. Which would than be possible to enforce by law. Welcome to STASI's wet dream.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    All of the 'bad things' you mention are already very illegal. Changing the laws in this case will only lead to tyranny. I cannot emphasize this enough, you cannot fix societal ills by simply making bad things illegal. Right to repair is of course crucial to free society.
    - hef19898 5y ago

by slg 5y ago

zug_zug 5y ago

> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. Is it intangible? 18% of the world lives in China alone. That's more people than the "1/10 who are victims of child abuse*", and I'm sure that 18% will only grow as other authoritarian countries get more technologically advanced. I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. * Per a google search "A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows 1.6 % (sixteen out of one thousand) of children between the ages of 12-17 were victims of rape/sexual assault" which is a lot less than 10% figure you're citing. Non-sexual abuse wouldn't really have any bearing here, right?

slg 5y ago
>Is it intangible? 18% of the world lives in China alone. That's more people than the "1/10 who are victims of child abuse*", and I'm sure that 18% will only grow as other authoritarian countries get more technologically advanced. You didn't mention any tangible results here. How would this system by Apple make my life worse? Can you answer that without a slippery slope argument? >I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. Why does the causality matter? A correlation is enough that cracking down on this content will result in less abusers on the streets. >* Per a google search "A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows 1.6 % (sixteen out of one thousand) of children between the ages of 12-17 were victims of rape/sexual assault" which is a lot less than 10% figure you're citing. Non-sexual abuse wouldn't really have any bearing here, right? I wasn't the one citing that, but you are also citing an incomplete number since it excludes younger children.
- zug_zug 5y ago
  >> You didn't mention any tangible results here. How would this system by Apple make my life worse? Can you answer that without a slippery slope argument? That's a weird goal-post. >> Why does the causality matter? A correlation is enough that cracking down on this content will result in less abusers on the streets. Obviously of the people who look at cp, a higher percentage of those will be actual child abusers. The question for everybody is -- does giving those people a fantasy outlet increase or actually reduce the number of kids who get assaulted. At the end of the day that's what matters. >> I wasn't the one citing that, but you are also citing an incomplete number since it excludes younger children. [EDIT: Mistake] Well you didn't cite anything at all, and were off by a shockingly large number. Please cite something or explain why you made up a number.
  - slg 5y ago
    >Well you didn't cite anything at all, and were off by a shockingly large number. Sorry, I am just baffled by your last point here. How can I be off by a shockingly large number when I didn't even cite a number?
mlac 5y ago
> I think "Think of the kids" applies very well to the CREATORS of pornography. Per wikipedia, there isn't any conclusive causal relationship between viewing CP and assaulting children. “Think of the Kids” damn well applies to the consumers of this content - by definition, there is a kid (or baby in some instances) involved in the CP. As a society, the United States draws the line at age 18 as the age of consent [the line has to be drawn somewhere and this is a fairly settled argument]. So by definition, in the United States, these are not consenting victims in the pictures. Demand drives creation. Getting rid of it on one of the largest potential viewing and sharing platforms is a move in the right direction in addressing the problem. What I haven’t seen from the tech community is the idea that this will be shut down if it goes too far or beyond this limited scope. Which I think it would be - people would get rid of iPhones if some of the other cases privacy advocates are talking about occur. And at that point they would have to scrap the program - so Apple is motivated to keep it limited in scope to something everyone can agree is abhorrent.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Demand drives creation. Getting rid of it on one of the largest potential viewing and sharing platforms is a move in the right direction in addressing the problem. Yeah, that focus has worked really well in the "war on some drugs," hasn't it? I don't pretend to have all (or any good ones for that matter) the answers, but we know interdiction doesn't work. Those who are going to engage in non-consensual behavior (with anyone, not just children) are going to do so whether or not they can view and share records of their abuse. The current legal regime (in the US at least) creates a gaping hole where even if you don't know what you have (e.g., if someone sends you a child abuse photo without your knowledge or consent) you are guilty, as possession of child abuse images is a felony. That's wrong. I don't know what the right way is, but adding software to millions of devices searching locally for such stuff creates an environment where literally anyone can be thrown in jail for receiving an unsolicited email or text message. That's not the kind of world in which I want to live. Many years ago, I was visiting my brother and was taking photos of his two sons, at that time aged ~4.5 and ~2. I took an entire roll of my brother, his wife and their kids. In one photo, the two boys are sitting on a staircase, and the younger one (none of us noticed, as he wasn't potty trained and hated pants) wasn't wearing any pants. I took the film to a processor and got my prints in a couple of days. We all had a good laugh looking at the photos and realizing that my nephew wasn't wearing any pants. There wasn't, when the photos were taken, nor when they were viewed, any abuse or sexual motives involved. Were that to happen today, I would be sitting in a jail cell, looking at a lengthy prison sentence. And when done "repaying my debt to society" I'd be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life. Which is ridiculous on its face. Unless and until we reform these insane and inane laws, I can't support such programs. N.B.: I strongly believe that consent is never optional and those under the age of consent cannot do so. As such, there should absolutely be accountability and consequences for those who abuse others, including children.
jodrellblank 5y ago
What tangible impact in the life of an everyday Chinese citizen are you expecting if Apple offered an E2EE messging and cloud backup service in China? And why do you think the Chinese government would not just ban it and criminalise anyone found using a device which connected to Apple's servers, rendering any benefits moot? (And why do you think it's morally right, or the responsibility of a foreign private company to try and force anything into China against their laws? Another commenter in a previous thread said the idea was for Apple to refuse to do business there - but that still leads to the question, how would that help anyone?)
zepto 5y ago
You can’t seriously be suffering that Apple not implementing these measures will somehow be good for privacy in China?
- cvwright 5y ago
  The implication -- and I think it's a valid one -- is that this client-side mechanism will be very quickly co-opted to also alert on non-CSAM material. For example, Winnie the Pooh memes in China.
  - zepto 5y ago
    I think it’s not valid to claim that it will be quickly used for that purpose. However I absolutely agree that it could be used to detect non-CSAM images if Apple colludes with that use case. My point is that this is immaterial to what is going on in China. China is already an authoritarian surveillance state. Even without this, the state has access to the iCloud photo servers in China, so who knows what they are doing, with or without Apple’s cooperation.
    - Maakuth 5y ago
      You can label it collusion, but when Apple does it, it's going to call it _complying with local regulation_.
      - zepto 5y ago
        It doesn’t matter what you label it. Hand wringing over making things worse in China is not a valid concern.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        I'm old enough to remember when the revelation that NSA is spying on everyone was a shock. Now people are seriously arguing that continuous searching through your entire life without any warrant or justification by opaque algorithms is fine. It only took what, 10 years?

kbenson 5y ago

> Too often the tech community's response is that the intangible concept of privacy is more important than the tangible issue of child abuse. I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects. It's unfortunate that some would choose to link their opposition to the idea with making the thing it's attempting to combat legal when it's something so abhorrent, but in general I think a push back on any erosion of our rights is a good and useful way for people to dedicate time and effort. While we shouldn't lose sight that there are real children in danger and that this should help, we also shouldn't lose sight that there is plenty of precedence that this could eventually lead to danger and problems for a great many other people, children included.

slg 5y ago
>I think the actual idea, which the nuance is often lost (and let's be honest, some people aren't really aware of and are just jumping on the bandwagon), is that privacy is a right, and erosion of rights is extremely important because it has been shown many times in the past to have far reaching and poorly understood future effects. The encryption everywhere mindset of a lot of the tech community is changing the nature of the right to privacy. 50 years ago all these images would have been physical objects. They could have been found by the person developing the photos or the person making copies. They could have been found with a warrant. Now they are all hidden behind E2EE and a secure enclave. To a certain extent the proliferation of technology means people can have an even stronger degree of privacy today than was practical in the past. It is only natural for people to wonder if that shift has changed where the line should be.
- kbenson 5y ago
  In the past these people would have been developing the pictures themselves, and handing them between each other either personally or in some hidden manner using public systems. Not only has communication become easier, so has surveillance. The only difference now is that it's easier for people not to be aware when their very personal privacy is invaded, and that it can be done to the whole populace at once.

mlac 5y ago

It’s not just thinking of the victims when they are kids - if they aren’t killed after the material is made, then they have issues for the rest of their life with a real cost to society. We’re talking a life-long impact from being abused in that stuff…

thegrimmest 5y ago

Any reach into privacy, even while "thinking of the kids" is an overreach. Police can't open your mail or search your house without a warrant. The same should apply to your packets and your devices. Why not police these groups with.. you know.. regular policing? Infiltrate, gather evidence, arrest. This strategy has worked for centuries to combat all manner of organized crime. I don't see why it's any different here.

loves_mangoes 5y ago
Devil's advocate: It may not be mostly big organized crime. It may be hard to fight, because it's not groups. It mostly comes from people close to the families, or the families themselves. Here's a relevant extract sourced from Wikipedia: "Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbours; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.[53] In over one-third of cases, the perpetrator is also a minor.[56]" Content warning: The WP article contains pictures of abused children.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  Sure, but the people sharing these images do so in organized groups, often referred to as "rings". I agree it would be very hard to catch a solitary perpetrator abusing children and not sharing the images. However since they would be creating novel images with new hashes, Apple's system wouldn't do much to help catch them would it?
  - loves_mangoes 5y ago
    Let me respond to the "novel images with new hashes" part. Apple's system doesn't use only cryptographic hashes, it seems designed to catch novel images too. There is concern that it will be inaccurate and have a much higher rate of false positive than the 1 in a trillion reported by Apple (as described in the, very thorough, article).

kfprt 5y ago

The laws regarding CSAM/CSA are not the problem, they are fine. The problem is that we are expected to give up our rights in the vague notion of 'protecting children' while the same authorities actively ignore ongoing CSA. The Sophie Long case is an excellent example where the police has no interest in investigating allegations of CSA. Why is it that resources are spent policing CSAM but not CSA? It is because it is about control and eroding our right to privacy.

hef19898 5y ago
I agree that our current legal and law enforcement system isn't up to speed with 21st century internet. And it has to be updated, because this kind of makes the internet a de-facto law less space, covering everything from stalking, harassment over fraud to contraband trafficking and CSAM. I don't think full scale surveillance is the way to go in free, democratic societies. It is the easiest one, so. Even more if surveillance can be outsourced to private, global tech companies. It saves the pain of passing laws. Talking about laws, those along with legal proceedings should be brought up to speed. If investigators, based on existing and potential new laws, convince a court to issue a warrant to surveil or search any of my devices, fine. Because then I have legal options to react to that. Having that surveillance incorporated into some opaque EULA from a company in US, a company that now can enforce its standards on stuff I do, is nothing I would have thought would be acceptable. Not that I am shocked it is, I just wonder why that stuff still surprises me when it happens. Going one step forward, if FANG manages to block right to repair laws it would be easy to block running non-approved OS on their devices. Which would than be possible to enforce by law. Welcome to STASI's wet dream.
- kfprt 5y ago
  All of the 'bad things' you mention are already very illegal. Changing the laws in this case will only lead to tyranny. I cannot emphasize this enough, you cannot fix societal ills by simply making bad things illegal. Right to repair is of course crucial to free society.
  - hef19898 5y ago