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5. The system can easily be abused by governments or malicious actors to frame innocent people. People merely suspected of keeping such images are de-facto puni

5. The system can easily be abused by governments or malicious actors to frame innocent people. People merely suspected of keeping such images are de-facto punished and stripped of rights even without standing before a judge or getting a conviction.

GeekyBear 5y ago
Google has been scanning your entire account for kiddie porn for the past decade. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Their system can easily be abused by governments or malicious actors to frame innocent people.
- Unklejoe 5y ago
  Once again, this scan takes place on _their_ servers on data that is stored on _their_ servers. It does not take place on the device itself, which is the case with this new Apple thing.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. Only photos you attempt to upload to Apple's iCloud are scanned. If you turn off iCloud photos, NOTHING is scanned. >Q: So if iCloud Photos is disabled, the system does not work, which is the public language in the FAQ. I just wanted to ask specifically, when you disable iCloud Photos, does this system continue to create hashes of your photos on device, or is it completely inactive at that point? A: If users are not using iCloud Photos, NeuralHash will not run https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-privacy-details-child-abuse-detection-and-messages-safety-features/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...
    - Unklejoe 5y ago
      > Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. That isn't what I said. Also, that's not why most people are so upset. Most people are so upset mainly because Apple has now proven that the capability exists, so they can now be more easily compelled by governments to scan for "extra things". Prior to this, if a government asked Apple to scan someone's phone, Apple could respond with "we don't have that capability", and it would presumably be a tough legal battle to force a company to add a capability that doesn't exist. This hurdle is now much lower. The effort has gone from "force Apple to design a new system for scanning phones" to "add these couple of hashes to the pre-existing database". Also, expanding this from just iCloud upload candidates to the entire device is a very small leap now. I mean, the bad guys could just turn off iCloud, and we must think of the children... Then you have Apple's "reassurance" that they won't comply with government requests to scan for additional things, which is completely moot considering Apple relies on a third party database and has absolutely no control or idea of what the hashes really are.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        The notion that scanning cloud data on device is somehow worse than doing the same thing on server is deeply flawed. If you have a false positive on device, nothing is sent to Apple's servers. It takes several (possibly false) positives at once to trigger a human review. If you have a single false positive on server, that data is sitting there where it can be subpoenaed and abused. Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court.
        shawnz 5y ago
        > Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court. I can only think of one instance where they did that (the San Bernardino shooter case), and the request was hugely overreaching (the FBI wanted them to compromise their software update signing services), and also they actually DID comply with giving the FBI access to their iCloud data -- just not the software update service. In fact this report suggests that Apple cooperating with the FBI when it comes to subpoenaing iCloud data is nothing new: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
- adventured 5y ago
  Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Gmail files that get scanned are contained on Google's property, in their cloud, on their machines. Entirely different context. It's the difference between the USPS coming into my home without permission and going through my documents, records, mail - versus if I send mail through their system and they track it, scan the envelope, etc. The iPhone used to be pretty obviously personal property, now Apple is saying that's clearly no longer going to be the case going forward.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    > Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. Nothing else is scanned. Scanning the files on server, the way Google and Microsoft do it, means that false positive data is lying around where it can be subpoenaed and used to incriminate innocent people. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      >Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. And what if in the future they decide they need to scan more than images going to the cloud? What if there is some huge epidemic of child abuse or some other terrible thing and Apple decides they need to do more? Once you open Pandora's Box you can't close it.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        What if in the future Google starts selling your location data to anyone willing to write them a check? Once you open the Pandora's Box of collecting location data, you can't close it.
newbamboo 5y ago
This is my primary concern. It will become a weapon to destroy the lives of anyone who is targeted by someone with middling or better hacking skills. A sort of digital “swatting” that makes using apple products a no go for anyone with cyber-enemies (one can’t opt out of Apple ID and apply security updates).

GeekyBear 5y ago

Google has been scanning your entire account for kiddie porn for the past decade. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Their system can easily be abused by governments or malicious actors to frame innocent people.

Unklejoe 5y ago
Once again, this scan takes place on _their_ servers on data that is stored on _their_ servers. It does not take place on the device itself, which is the case with this new Apple thing.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. Only photos you attempt to upload to Apple's iCloud are scanned. If you turn off iCloud photos, NOTHING is scanned. >Q: So if iCloud Photos is disabled, the system does not work, which is the public language in the FAQ. I just wanted to ask specifically, when you disable iCloud Photos, does this system continue to create hashes of your photos on device, or is it completely inactive at that point? A: If users are not using iCloud Photos, NeuralHash will not run https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-privacy-details-child-abuse-detection-and-messages-safety-features/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...
  - Unklejoe 5y ago
    > Once again, the notion that everything on the device is scanned under Apple's system was never true. That isn't what I said. Also, that's not why most people are so upset. Most people are so upset mainly because Apple has now proven that the capability exists, so they can now be more easily compelled by governments to scan for "extra things". Prior to this, if a government asked Apple to scan someone's phone, Apple could respond with "we don't have that capability", and it would presumably be a tough legal battle to force a company to add a capability that doesn't exist. This hurdle is now much lower. The effort has gone from "force Apple to design a new system for scanning phones" to "add these couple of hashes to the pre-existing database". Also, expanding this from just iCloud upload candidates to the entire device is a very small leap now. I mean, the bad guys could just turn off iCloud, and we must think of the children... Then you have Apple's "reassurance" that they won't comply with government requests to scan for additional things, which is completely moot considering Apple relies on a third party database and has absolutely no control or idea of what the hashes really are.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      The notion that scanning cloud data on device is somehow worse than doing the same thing on server is deeply flawed. If you have a false positive on device, nothing is sent to Apple's servers. It takes several (possibly false) positives at once to trigger a human review. If you have a single false positive on server, that data is sitting there where it can be subpoenaed and abused. Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court.
      - shawnz 5y ago
        > Also, recent history shows that Apple is willing to fight government demands to invade user privacy in court. I can only think of one instance where they did that (the San Bernardino shooter case), and the request was hugely overreaching (the FBI wanted them to compromise their software update signing services), and also they actually DID comply with giving the FBI access to their iCloud data -- just not the software update service. In fact this report suggests that Apple cooperating with the FBI when it comes to subpoenaing iCloud data is nothing new: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive-idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
adventured 5y ago
Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Gmail files that get scanned are contained on Google's property, in their cloud, on their machines. Entirely different context. It's the difference between the USPS coming into my home without permission and going through my documents, records, mail - versus if I send mail through their system and they track it, scan the envelope, etc. The iPhone used to be pretty obviously personal property, now Apple is saying that's clearly no longer going to be the case going forward.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > Apple's new system is scanning personal property that doesn't belong to them and isn't yet in their cloud. Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. Nothing else is scanned. Scanning the files on server, the way Google and Microsoft do it, means that false positive data is lying around where it can be subpoenaed and used to incriminate innocent people. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    >Apple's new system only scans photos you attempt to upload to their cloud. And what if in the future they decide they need to scan more than images going to the cloud? What if there is some huge epidemic of child abuse or some other terrible thing and Apple decides they need to do more? Once you open Pandora's Box you can't close it.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      What if in the future Google starts selling your location data to anyone willing to write them a check? Once you open the Pandora's Box of collecting location data, you can't close it.

newbamboo 5y ago

This is my primary concern. It will become a weapon to destroy the lives of anyone who is targeted by someone with middling or better hacking skills. A sort of digital “swatting” that makes using apple products a no go for anyone with cyber-enemies (one can’t opt out of Apple ID and apply security updates).