6 ms·

> Were that to happen today, I would be sitting in a jail cell, looking at a lengthy prison sentence. No you would not, I was ready to somewhat agree with you

by DSMan195276 5y ago

> Were that to happen today, I would be sitting in a jail cell, looking at a lengthy prison sentence. No you would not, I was ready to somewhat agree with you but this is just false and has nothing to do with what you were talking about before. The law does not say that naked photos of (your or anyone else's) kids are inherently illegal, they have to actually be sexual in nature. And while the line is certainly not all that clear cut, a simple picture like you're describing would never meet that line. I mean let's be clear here, do you believe the law considers to much stuff to be CSAM, and if so why? How would you prefer we redefine it?

skinkestek 5y ago
> The law does not say that naked photos of (your or anyone else's) kids are inherently illegal, they have to actually be sexual in nature. But that depends on who looks at it. People have been arrested and (at least temporary) lost custody over their children because someone called the police over perfectly normal family photos. I remember one case a few years ago where someone had gotten into trouble because one photo included a toddler wearing nothing (even facing away from the camera if my memory serves me correctly) playing at the beach. When police realized this wasn't an offense, instead of apologizing they got hung up on another photo were kids were playing with an empty beer can. Recently this was also linked https://jonathanturley.org/2009/09/18/arizona-couple-sues-wal-mart-after-store-calls-the-police-on-them-for-developing-pictures-of-this-children-in-a-bathtub-and-the-children-are-taken-by-the-state/ https://jonathanturley.org/2009/09/18/arizona-couple-sues-wa... which further links to a couple of previous cases. I'd say we get police or health care to talk to people who think perfectly normal images are sexual in nature, but until we get laws changed at least then keep us safe. > I mean let's be clear here, do you believe the law considers to much stuff to be CSAM, and if so why? How would you prefer we redefine it? Another thing that comes up is that a lot of things that are legal might be in that database because criminal might have a somewhat varied history. Personally I am a practicing conservative Christian so this doesn't bother me personally at the moment since for obvious reasons I don't collect these kinds of images. The reason I care is because every such capability will be abused, and below I present in two easy steps how it will go from todays well intended system to a powerful tool for oppression: 1. today it is pictures but if getting around it is as simple as putting it in a pdf then obviously pdfs must be screened too. Same with zip files. Because otherwise this so simple to circumvent that is worthless. 2. once you have such a system in place it would be a shame not to use it for every other evil thing. Dependending on where you live this might be anything: Muslim scriptures, Atheist books or videos, Christian scriptures, Winnie the Pooh drawings - you name it and someone wants to censor it.
- mlac 5y ago
  As soon as it is used in a negative way beyond CSAM scanning, it will cause people to sell their phones and stop using apple products. If Apple starts using the tech to scan for religious material, there will be significant market and legal backlash. I think the fact that CSAM scanning will stop if they push it too far will keep them in check to only do CSAM scanning. Everyone can agree on using the tech for CSAM, but beyond that I don’t see Apple doing it. The tech community is reacting as if they already have.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Problem one is Apple doesn't know what they are scanning for. This is by design and actually a good thing. It becomes a problem because problem number 2: No one is accountable if someone gets their life ruined over a mistake in this database. I'd actually be somewhat less hostile to this idea if there was more regulatory oversight: - laws that punishes police/officials if innocent people are harmed in any way - mandatory technical audits as well as verification that for what it is used for: Apple keeps logs of all signatures that "matched"/triggered as well as raw files, these are provided to the court as part of any case that comes up. This way we could hopefully prevent most fishing expeditions - both wide and personalized ones - and also avoid any follow up parallel reconstructions. I'm not saying I'd necessarily be OK with it but at that point there would be something to discuss.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    It may be worth taking very seriously that you might be overestimating both how quickly regular people become aware of such events and how emphatically people will react.
- DSMan195276 5y ago
  > I'd say we get police or health care to talk to people who think perfectly normal images are sexual in nature, but until we get laws changed at least then keep us safe. Personally I don't find anecdotes convincing compared to the very real amount of CSAM (and actual child abuse) we already know exists and circulates in the wild, but I do get your point. That said personally I don't think changing the laws would really achieve what you want anyway - I don't think a random Walmart employee is up-to-date on the legal definitions of CSAM, they're going to potentially report it regardless of what the law is (and the question of whether this is a wider trend is debatable, again this is an anecdote). With that, they were eventually found innocent, so the law already agrees what they did was perfectly fine, which was my original point. No it should not have taken that long, but then again we don't know much about the background of those who took them, so I'm not entirely sure we can easily determine how appropriate the response was. I'm certainly not trying to claim our system is perfect, but I'm also not convinced rolling back protections for abused children is a great idea without some solid evidence that it really isn't working. > Another thing that comes up is that a lot of things that are legal might be in that database because criminal might have a somewhat varied history. That didn't really answer my question :P I agree the database is suspect but I don't see how that has anything to do with the definition of CSAM. The legal definition of CSAM is not "anything in that database", and if we're already suggesting that there's stuff in there that's known to not be CSAM then how would changing the definition of CSAM help?
withinboredom 5y ago
A large? portion of “sexual predators” are men peeing on the side of the interstate[1]. So it’s not far-fetched to think that a random pic would also land you in jail. [1]: I looked up the cases of sex offenders living around me several years ago.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

skinkestek 5y ago

> The law does not say that naked photos of (your or anyone else's) kids are inherently illegal, they have to actually be sexual in nature. But that depends on who looks at it. People have been arrested and (at least temporary) lost custody over their children because someone called the police over perfectly normal family photos. I remember one case a few years ago where someone had gotten into trouble because one photo included a toddler wearing nothing (even facing away from the camera if my memory serves me correctly) playing at the beach. When police realized this wasn't an offense, instead of apologizing they got hung up on another photo were kids were playing with an empty beer can. Recently this was also linked https://jonathanturley.org/2009/09/18/arizona-couple-sues-wal-mart-after-store-calls-the-police-on-them-for-developing-pictures-of-this-children-in-a-bathtub-and-the-children-are-taken-by-the-state/ https://jonathanturley.org/2009/09/18/arizona-couple-sues-wa... which further links to a couple of previous cases. I'd say we get police or health care to talk to people who think perfectly normal images are sexual in nature, but until we get laws changed at least then keep us safe. > I mean let's be clear here, do you believe the law considers to much stuff to be CSAM, and if so why? How would you prefer we redefine it? Another thing that comes up is that a lot of things that are legal might be in that database because criminal might have a somewhat varied history. Personally I am a practicing conservative Christian so this doesn't bother me personally at the moment since for obvious reasons I don't collect these kinds of images. The reason I care is because every such capability will be abused, and below I present in two easy steps how it will go from todays well intended system to a powerful tool for oppression: 1. today it is pictures but if getting around it is as simple as putting it in a pdf then obviously pdfs must be screened too. Same with zip files. Because otherwise this so simple to circumvent that is worthless. 2. once you have such a system in place it would be a shame not to use it for every other evil thing. Dependending on where you live this might be anything: Muslim scriptures, Atheist books or videos, Christian scriptures, Winnie the Pooh drawings - you name it and someone wants to censor it.

mlac 5y ago
As soon as it is used in a negative way beyond CSAM scanning, it will cause people to sell their phones and stop using apple products. If Apple starts using the tech to scan for religious material, there will be significant market and legal backlash. I think the fact that CSAM scanning will stop if they push it too far will keep them in check to only do CSAM scanning. Everyone can agree on using the tech for CSAM, but beyond that I don’t see Apple doing it. The tech community is reacting as if they already have.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Problem one is Apple doesn't know what they are scanning for. This is by design and actually a good thing. It becomes a problem because problem number 2: No one is accountable if someone gets their life ruined over a mistake in this database. I'd actually be somewhat less hostile to this idea if there was more regulatory oversight: - laws that punishes police/officials if innocent people are harmed in any way - mandatory technical audits as well as verification that for what it is used for: Apple keeps logs of all signatures that "matched"/triggered as well as raw files, these are provided to the court as part of any case that comes up. This way we could hopefully prevent most fishing expeditions - both wide and personalized ones - and also avoid any follow up parallel reconstructions. I'm not saying I'd necessarily be OK with it but at that point there would be something to discuss.
- Kalium 5y ago
  It may be worth taking very seriously that you might be overestimating both how quickly regular people become aware of such events and how emphatically people will react.
DSMan195276 5y ago
> I'd say we get police or health care to talk to people who think perfectly normal images are sexual in nature, but until we get laws changed at least then keep us safe. Personally I don't find anecdotes convincing compared to the very real amount of CSAM (and actual child abuse) we already know exists and circulates in the wild, but I do get your point. That said personally I don't think changing the laws would really achieve what you want anyway - I don't think a random Walmart employee is up-to-date on the legal definitions of CSAM, they're going to potentially report it regardless of what the law is (and the question of whether this is a wider trend is debatable, again this is an anecdote). With that, they were eventually found innocent, so the law already agrees what they did was perfectly fine, which was my original point. No it should not have taken that long, but then again we don't know much about the background of those who took them, so I'm not entirely sure we can easily determine how appropriate the response was. I'm certainly not trying to claim our system is perfect, but I'm also not convinced rolling back protections for abused children is a great idea without some solid evidence that it really isn't working. > Another thing that comes up is that a lot of things that are legal might be in that database because criminal might have a somewhat varied history. That didn't really answer my question :P I agree the database is suspect but I don't see how that has anything to do with the definition of CSAM. The legal definition of CSAM is not "anything in that database", and if we're already suggesting that there's stuff in there that's known to not be CSAM then how would changing the definition of CSAM help?

withinboredom 5y ago

A large? portion of “sexual predators” are men peeing on the side of the interstate[1]. So it’s not far-fetched to think that a random pic would also land you in jail. [1]: I looked up the cases of sex offenders living around me several years ago.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]