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Even HN reporting / article linking / comments have been surprisingly low quality and seem to fulminate and declaim with surprisingly little interesting convers

Even HN reporting / article linking / comments have been surprisingly low quality and seem to fulminate and declaim with surprisingly little interesting conversation and tons of super big assertions. Linked articles and comments have said apple's brand is now destroyed, that apple is committing child porn felonies somehow with this (the logical jumps and twisting to get to these claims are very far from strong plausible interpretation). How do you scan for CASM in an E2EE system is the basic question Apple seems to be trying to solve for. I'd be more worried about the encrypted hash DB being unlockable - is it clear this DOES NOT have anything that could be recreated into an image? I'd actually prefer NOT to have E2EE and have apple scan stuff server side, and keep DB there.

still_grokking 5y ago
From https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Bad-Apple.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On... > The laws related to CSAM are very explicit. 18 U.S. Code § 2252 states that knowingly transferring CSAM material is a felony. (The only exception, in 2258A, is when it is reported to NCMEC.) In this case, Apple has a very strong reason to believe they are transferring CSAM material, and they are sending it to Apple -- not NCMEC. > It does not matter that Apple will then check it and forward it to NCMEC. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A is specific: the data can only be sent to NCMEC. (With 2258A, it is illegal for a service provider to turn over CP photos to the police or the FBI; you can only send it to NCMEC. Then NCMEC will contact the police or FBI.) What Apple has detailed is the intentional distribution (to Apple), collection (at Apple), and access (viewing at Apple) of material that they strongly have reason to believe is CSAM. As it was explained to me by my attorney, that is a felony. Apple is going to commit child porn felonies according to US law this way. This claim seems actually quite irrefutable.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Apple isn't looking at the actual image, but a derivative. Presumably their lawyers think this will be sufficient to shield them from accusations of possessing child porn.
  - still_grokking 5y ago
    "But look, I've re-compressed it with JPEG 80%. It's not THAT picture!". It would be interesting to hear what a court has to say if a child porn consumer would try to defend him/her with this "argument".
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Love 'em or hate 'em, it is hard to believe Apple's lawyers haven't very carefully figured out what kind of derivative image will be useful to catch false positives but not also itself illegal CP. I assume they have in fact had detailed conversations on this exact issue with NCMEC.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        Firstly, the NCMEC doesn't make the the laws. They can't therefore give any exceptional allowance to Apple. Secondly, any derivatives that are clear enough to enable a definitive judgment whether something's CP or not by an Apple employee would be subject to my argument above. Also just collecting such material is an felony. I don't see any way around that. Only that promising some checks before stuff gets reported for real is just a PR move to smoothen the first wave of pushback. PR promises aren't truly binding…
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Don't you think that Apple has their own attorneys and lawyers?
  - still_grokking 5y ago
    Don't you think that telling people now that there will be a "check" at Apple before things get reported to NCMEC could be a PR lie to keep people calm? They can easily say afterwards that they're "frankly" required to directly report any suspicion to enforcement agencies because "that's the law", and they didn't know because that was an oversight? That would be just an usual PR strategy to "sell" something people don't like: Selling it in small batches works best. (If the batches are small enough people often don't even realize how the whole picture looks. Salami tactics are tried tool for something like that; used for example in politics day to day).
- laserlight 5y ago
  IMHO, what Apple is doing is not _knowingly_ transferring CSAM material. Very strong reason to believe is not the same as knowing. Of course it's up to courts to decide and IANAL.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Go ahead and click on some google results after searching for child porn and see if that defence holds up.
    - laserlight 5y ago
      Can you elaborate how your reply relates to Apple's case and my comment?
- slownews45 5y ago
  Ahh - an "irrefutable" claim that apple is committing child porn felonies. This is sort of what I mean and a perfect example. People imagine that apple hasn't talked to the actual folks in charge NCMEC. People seem to imagine apple doesn't have lawyers? People go to the most sensationalist least good faith conclusion. Most mod systems at scale are using similar approaches. Facebook is doing 10's of MILLIONS of images to NCMEC, these get flagged by users and/or systems, and in most cases then facebook copies, checks through moderation queue and submits to NEC. Reddit uses the sexualization of minors flags. In almost all cases, even though folks may have strong reasons to believe some of this flagged content is CSAM, it still gets a manual look. Once they know they act appropriately. So the logic of this claim about apples late to party arrival of CSAM scanning is weird. We are going to find out that instead of trying to charge apple with some kind of child porn charges, NCMEC and politicians are going to be THANKING apple, and may start requiring others with E2EE ideas to follow a similar approach.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Sorry under which of these other moderation regimes does the organisation in question transmit CSAM from a client device to their own servers? To my knowledge Apple is the only one doing so.
    - matwood 5y ago
      Apple is attaching a ticket to images as the user uploads to iCloud. If enough of these tickets think CSAM and allow an unlock key to be built, they will unlock and get checked. It's still the user who has turned on iCloud and uploaded the images.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        Correct. The one odd thing I don't get. It would be a lot EASIER to just scan everything when its in the cloud itself. Why go to this trouble to avoid looking at users photos in the cloud, set these thresholds etc. You'd only need to scan on device if for some reason you blocked your own ability to scan in cloud (ie, for E2E photos - which I don't think users actually want).
- FabHK 5y ago
  > This claim seems actually quite irrefutable. I don't think so. Apple transfers the images to iCloud, yes, but before the threshold of flagged photos is reached, Apple doesn't know that there might be CSAM material among them. When the threshold is exceeded and Apple learns about the potential of CSAM, the images have been transferred already. But then Apple does not transfer them any further, and has a human review not the images themselves, but a "visual derivative" that was in a secure envelope (that can by construction only be unlocked once the threshold is exceeded).
- stfuhnjfc 5y ago
  It’s good to know that if I use the “section” glyph in an otherwise completely false analysis born of extending my experience past where I’m competent, readers will quickly repeat whatever it is I said as factual and “quite irrefutable”. The power of one blog post is quite something. You’re the third person I’ve seen quote that very post and go “welp, sure is a smoking gun” despite it being completely, utterly, demonstrably false. It’s make believe. That entire blog post is so incorrect that it’s barely useful as toilet paper, friend. If the author were correct Facebook and others would have been charged with felonies already. Verification happens in good faith and requires transmission despite the exact letter of the law. The people doing it regularly talk to NCMEC. There are evidentiary and chain of custody procedures to follow that also transmit the material. Guess we should charge computers with felonies! It’s also fucking hysterical that the armchairs who didn’t know what CSAM stood for a week ago think that one of the most litigiously sensitive systems ever built by a corporation somehow missed criminal legal liability. You know, it’s pretty easy to overlook criminal liability when you’re building a system that is used to establish criminal liability. Totally passes the smell test. Irrefutable indeed. You guys are off your rockers and should move on to another topic. Seriously. Every day this is discussed is another harsh reminder of (a) how few fucks the industry gives about abuse of children and (b) how everyone here digests blogs and considers themselves authoritative on horrors they’ve never once experienced. Every day this is argued on HN, particularly last night when someone said the privacy situation is “the actual abuse” and “much worse” than the rape of children, is another day I’m ashamed to have chosen this profession and work alongside you. This community welcomes the people who have built surveillance systems for every consumer activity imaginable and kids getting molested is where you draw the privacy line, huh? Can’t look for that? I’m genuinely out. Keep your industry. I’d rather manage a Taco Bell if this is the perspective of this industry, because brother, I’ve seen what they’re trying to tackle and I’m still in therapy. There is a hypocrisy at the core of the “privacy” argument here that is fundamentally indicting not only this community, but everyone discussing this up to and including EFF. I’ve never been so disappointed in people who I used to look up to and think of as good, smart folks. Source: I’ve built CSAM handling systems for a FAANG and written the policy for using it. The author has misinterpreted the very law he cites and overlooked two subparagraphs. But that isn’t what you want to hear.
  - 5y ago
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  That’s amusing, but your source is completely wrong about (1) What 18 USC § 2252 says in general (notably, it leaves out the “knowingly” requirement, which is critical given the wait being given to post-auto-flag, pre-verification transfer), (2) What exceptions are in § 2252, and (3) the entire reference to § 2258A, which is a separate reporting requitement, not an exception to § 2252. Really, one should read all of the chapter those sections are part of, but the whole argument is based on either fantasy or distortion of the text. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-110 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...
zionic 5y ago
You don’t. That’s the entire point of E2EE, the data transferred is private between you and the recipient party.
nonbirithm 5y ago
Another reminder that many parts of HN have their own biases; they're just different than the biases found on other networks. Instead of exclusively focusing on the authoritarian slippery slope like it's inevitable, it's worth wondering first: why do the major tech companies show no intention of giving up the server-side PhotoDNA scanning that has already existed for over a decade? CSAM is still considered illegal by half of all the countries in the entire world, for reasons many consider justifiable. The point of all the detection is so that Apple isn't found liable for hosting CSAM and consequently implicated with financial and legal consequences themselves. And beyond just the realm of law, it's reputational suicide to be denounced as a "safe haven for pedophiles" if it's not possible for law enforcement to tell if CSAM is being stored on third-party servers. Apple was not the best actor to look towards if absolute privacy was one's goal to begin with, because the requests of law enforcement are both reasonable enough to the public and intertwined with regulation from the higher powers anyway. It's the nature of public sentiment surrounding this issue. Because a third party insisting that user-hosted content is completely impervious to outside actors also means that it is possible for users to hide CSAM from law enforcement using the same service, thus making the service criminally liable for damages under many legal jurisdictions, I was surprised that this debate didn't happen earlier (to the extent it's taking place, at least). The two principles seem fundamentally incompatible.
belorn 5y ago
The encryption on the hash DB has very little to do with recreating images. It is pretty trivial to make sure that it is mathematical impossible to do (just not enough bytes, and hash collisions means there is an infinitive large number of false positives). My own guess is that the encryption is there so that people won't have access to an up-to-date database to test against. People who want to intentionally create false positive could abuse it, and sites that distribute images could alter images to automatic bypass the check. There is also always the "risk" that some security research may look at the database and find false positives from the original source and make bad press, as they have done with block lists (who can forget the bonsai tree website that got classified as child porn).

still_grokking 5y ago

From https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Bad-Apple.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On... > The laws related to CSAM are very explicit. 18 U.S. Code § 2252 states that knowingly transferring CSAM material is a felony. (The only exception, in 2258A, is when it is reported to NCMEC.) In this case, Apple has a very strong reason to believe they are transferring CSAM material, and they are sending it to Apple -- not NCMEC. > It does not matter that Apple will then check it and forward it to NCMEC. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A is specific: the data can only be sent to NCMEC. (With 2258A, it is illegal for a service provider to turn over CP photos to the police or the FBI; you can only send it to NCMEC. Then NCMEC will contact the police or FBI.) What Apple has detailed is the intentional distribution (to Apple), collection (at Apple), and access (viewing at Apple) of material that they strongly have reason to believe is CSAM. As it was explained to me by my attorney, that is a felony. Apple is going to commit child porn felonies according to US law this way. This claim seems actually quite irrefutable.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Apple isn't looking at the actual image, but a derivative. Presumably their lawyers think this will be sufficient to shield them from accusations of possessing child porn.
- still_grokking 5y ago
  "But look, I've re-compressed it with JPEG 80%. It's not THAT picture!". It would be interesting to hear what a court has to say if a child porn consumer would try to defend him/her with this "argument".
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Love 'em or hate 'em, it is hard to believe Apple's lawyers haven't very carefully figured out what kind of derivative image will be useful to catch false positives but not also itself illegal CP. I assume they have in fact had detailed conversations on this exact issue with NCMEC.
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      Firstly, the NCMEC doesn't make the the laws. They can't therefore give any exceptional allowance to Apple. Secondly, any derivatives that are clear enough to enable a definitive judgment whether something's CP or not by an Apple employee would be subject to my argument above. Also just collecting such material is an felony. I don't see any way around that. Only that promising some checks before stuff gets reported for real is just a PR move to smoothen the first wave of pushback. PR promises aren't truly binding…
madeofpalk 5y ago
Don't you think that Apple has their own attorneys and lawyers?
- still_grokking 5y ago
  Don't you think that telling people now that there will be a "check" at Apple before things get reported to NCMEC could be a PR lie to keep people calm? They can easily say afterwards that they're "frankly" required to directly report any suspicion to enforcement agencies because "that's the law", and they didn't know because that was an oversight? That would be just an usual PR strategy to "sell" something people don't like: Selling it in small batches works best. (If the batches are small enough people often don't even realize how the whole picture looks. Salami tactics are tried tool for something like that; used for example in politics day to day).
laserlight 5y ago
IMHO, what Apple is doing is not _knowingly_ transferring CSAM material. Very strong reason to believe is not the same as knowing. Of course it's up to courts to decide and IANAL.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Go ahead and click on some google results after searching for child porn and see if that defence holds up.
  - laserlight 5y ago
    Can you elaborate how your reply relates to Apple's case and my comment?
slownews45 5y ago
Ahh - an "irrefutable" claim that apple is committing child porn felonies. This is sort of what I mean and a perfect example. People imagine that apple hasn't talked to the actual folks in charge NCMEC. People seem to imagine apple doesn't have lawyers? People go to the most sensationalist least good faith conclusion. Most mod systems at scale are using similar approaches. Facebook is doing 10's of MILLIONS of images to NCMEC, these get flagged by users and/or systems, and in most cases then facebook copies, checks through moderation queue and submits to NEC. Reddit uses the sexualization of minors flags. In almost all cases, even though folks may have strong reasons to believe some of this flagged content is CSAM, it still gets a manual look. Once they know they act appropriately. So the logic of this claim about apples late to party arrival of CSAM scanning is weird. We are going to find out that instead of trying to charge apple with some kind of child porn charges, NCMEC and politicians are going to be THANKING apple, and may start requiring others with E2EE ideas to follow a similar approach.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Sorry under which of these other moderation regimes does the organisation in question transmit CSAM from a client device to their own servers? To my knowledge Apple is the only one doing so.
  - matwood 5y ago
    Apple is attaching a ticket to images as the user uploads to iCloud. If enough of these tickets think CSAM and allow an unlock key to be built, they will unlock and get checked. It's still the user who has turned on iCloud and uploaded the images.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      Correct. The one odd thing I don't get. It would be a lot EASIER to just scan everything when its in the cloud itself. Why go to this trouble to avoid looking at users photos in the cloud, set these thresholds etc. You'd only need to scan on device if for some reason you blocked your own ability to scan in cloud (ie, for E2E photos - which I don't think users actually want).
FabHK 5y ago
> This claim seems actually quite irrefutable. I don't think so. Apple transfers the images to iCloud, yes, but before the threshold of flagged photos is reached, Apple doesn't know that there might be CSAM material among them. When the threshold is exceeded and Apple learns about the potential of CSAM, the images have been transferred already. But then Apple does not transfer them any further, and has a human review not the images themselves, but a "visual derivative" that was in a secure envelope (that can by construction only be unlocked once the threshold is exceeded).
stfuhnjfc 5y ago
It’s good to know that if I use the “section” glyph in an otherwise completely false analysis born of extending my experience past where I’m competent, readers will quickly repeat whatever it is I said as factual and “quite irrefutable”. The power of one blog post is quite something. You’re the third person I’ve seen quote that very post and go “welp, sure is a smoking gun” despite it being completely, utterly, demonstrably false. It’s make believe. That entire blog post is so incorrect that it’s barely useful as toilet paper, friend. If the author were correct Facebook and others would have been charged with felonies already. Verification happens in good faith and requires transmission despite the exact letter of the law. The people doing it regularly talk to NCMEC. There are evidentiary and chain of custody procedures to follow that also transmit the material. Guess we should charge computers with felonies! It’s also fucking hysterical that the armchairs who didn’t know what CSAM stood for a week ago think that one of the most litigiously sensitive systems ever built by a corporation somehow missed criminal legal liability. You know, it’s pretty easy to overlook criminal liability when you’re building a system that is used to establish criminal liability. Totally passes the smell test. Irrefutable indeed. You guys are off your rockers and should move on to another topic. Seriously. Every day this is discussed is another harsh reminder of (a) how few fucks the industry gives about abuse of children and (b) how everyone here digests blogs and considers themselves authoritative on horrors they’ve never once experienced. Every day this is argued on HN, particularly last night when someone said the privacy situation is “the actual abuse” and “much worse” than the rape of children, is another day I’m ashamed to have chosen this profession and work alongside you. This community welcomes the people who have built surveillance systems for every consumer activity imaginable and kids getting molested is where you draw the privacy line, huh? Can’t look for that? I’m genuinely out. Keep your industry. I’d rather manage a Taco Bell if this is the perspective of this industry, because brother, I’ve seen what they’re trying to tackle and I’m still in therapy. There is a hypocrisy at the core of the “privacy” argument here that is fundamentally indicting not only this community, but everyone discussing this up to and including EFF. I’ve never been so disappointed in people who I used to look up to and think of as good, smart folks. Source: I’ve built CSAM handling systems for a FAANG and written the policy for using it. The author has misinterpreted the very law he cites and overlooked two subparagraphs. But that isn’t what you want to hear.
- 5y ago
dragonwriter 5y ago
That’s amusing, but your source is completely wrong about (1) What 18 USC § 2252 says in general (notably, it leaves out the “knowingly” requirement, which is critical given the wait being given to post-auto-flag, pre-verification transfer), (2) What exceptions are in § 2252, and (3) the entire reference to § 2258A, which is a separate reporting requitement, not an exception to § 2252. Really, one should read all of the chapter those sections are part of, but the whole argument is based on either fantasy or distortion of the text. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-110 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...

zionic 5y ago

You don’t. That’s the entire point of E2EE, the data transferred is private between you and the recipient party.

nonbirithm 5y ago

Another reminder that many parts of HN have their own biases; they're just different than the biases found on other networks. Instead of exclusively focusing on the authoritarian slippery slope like it's inevitable, it's worth wondering first: why do the major tech companies show no intention of giving up the server-side PhotoDNA scanning that has already existed for over a decade? CSAM is still considered illegal by half of all the countries in the entire world, for reasons many consider justifiable. The point of all the detection is so that Apple isn't found liable for hosting CSAM and consequently implicated with financial and legal consequences themselves. And beyond just the realm of law, it's reputational suicide to be denounced as a "safe haven for pedophiles" if it's not possible for law enforcement to tell if CSAM is being stored on third-party servers. Apple was not the best actor to look towards if absolute privacy was one's goal to begin with, because the requests of law enforcement are both reasonable enough to the public and intertwined with regulation from the higher powers anyway. It's the nature of public sentiment surrounding this issue. Because a third party insisting that user-hosted content is completely impervious to outside actors also means that it is possible for users to hide CSAM from law enforcement using the same service, thus making the service criminally liable for damages under many legal jurisdictions, I was surprised that this debate didn't happen earlier (to the extent it's taking place, at least). The two principles seem fundamentally incompatible.

belorn 5y ago

The encryption on the hash DB has very little to do with recreating images. It is pretty trivial to make sure that it is mathematical impossible to do (just not enough bytes, and hash collisions means there is an infinitive large number of false positives). My own guess is that the encryption is there so that people won't have access to an up-to-date database to test against. People who want to intentionally create false positive could abuse it, and sites that distribute images could alter images to automatic bypass the check. There is also always the "risk" that some security research may look at the database and find false positives from the original source and make bad press, as they have done with block lists (who can forget the bonsai tree website that got classified as child porn).