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You could completely wreck somebody's life with this. SWATing will look trivial in comparison.

by bpoyner 5y ago

scbrg 5y ago
To be fair, SWATing kills people. Death is generally considered a non trivial and also life wrecking event.
- headmelted 5y ago
  Honestly I'd rather get shot dead by a SWAT team than implicated for something as atrocious as what this tool is looking for. I imagine many people with a family would feel the same way. It's an abomination that will destroy innocent people. The engineers behind this no doubt think it's fool-proof because they believe they're leagues smarter than any of those pesky naysayers ("hey, we're Apple"). If we've learned anything about Apple this year (as if we needed the reminder) is that their software is nowhere close to as flawless as they seem to think it is.
headmelted 5y ago
This. Combined with the unpatched remote-root-via-phone-number disclosed in the Pegasus leak this boils down to a single-click "destroy this person's life" tool.
donkeyd 5y ago
If you assume that cops will just arrest people without doing any further research... Then yeah.
- shakna 5y ago
  > If you assume that cops will just arrest people without doing any further research... Then yeah. Like when they arrested & charged someone for a poor facial recognition match that never had a hope of passing human review? [0] Just glancing at the original photo would have stopped that. Or checking his rock-solid alibi. Neither of those things happened. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/flawed-facial-recognition-system-sent-man-jail/ https://www.wired.com/story/flawed-facial-recognition-system...
- bpoyner 5y ago
  Oh, the police will get a search warrant, and find exactly what they were told would be on your device. The police aren't in the business of discovering your innocence. It's then up to you and your lawyer to prove you didn't put it on your device. Meanwhile your life will fall apart as you get fired, your wife divorces you, you lose all custody of your kids, etc.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
You can already do the same. Send message then call the cops. Just because it's auto-detected now doesn't mean it wasn't possible before.

You could completely wreck somebody's life with this. SWATing will look trivial in comparison.

scbrg 5y ago

To be fair, SWATing kills people. Death is generally considered a non trivial and also life wrecking event.

headmelted 5y ago
Honestly I'd rather get shot dead by a SWAT team than implicated for something as atrocious as what this tool is looking for. I imagine many people with a family would feel the same way. It's an abomination that will destroy innocent people. The engineers behind this no doubt think it's fool-proof because they believe they're leagues smarter than any of those pesky naysayers ("hey, we're Apple"). If we've learned anything about Apple this year (as if we needed the reminder) is that their software is nowhere close to as flawless as they seem to think it is.

headmelted 5y ago

This. Combined with the unpatched remote-root-via-phone-number disclosed in the Pegasus leak this boils down to a single-click "destroy this person's life" tool.

donkeyd 5y ago

If you assume that cops will just arrest people without doing any further research... Then yeah.

shakna 5y ago
> If you assume that cops will just arrest people without doing any further research... Then yeah. Like when they arrested & charged someone for a poor facial recognition match that never had a hope of passing human review? [0] Just glancing at the original photo would have stopped that. Or checking his rock-solid alibi. Neither of those things happened. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/flawed-facial-recognition-system-sent-man-jail/ https://www.wired.com/story/flawed-facial-recognition-system...
bpoyner 5y ago
Oh, the police will get a search warrant, and find exactly what they were told would be on your device. The police aren't in the business of discovering your innocence. It's then up to you and your lawyer to prove you didn't put it on your device. Meanwhile your life will fall apart as you get fired, your wife divorces you, you lose all custody of your kids, etc.

dzhiurgis 5y ago

You can already do the same. Send message then call the cops. Just because it's auto-detected now doesn't mean it wasn't possible before.