3 ms·

This whole mess brought back a memory of when I was 4 to 5 years old (so probably 1971). During a summer vacation we were walking at a harbor in Tuscany with my

This whole mess brought back a memory of when I was 4 to 5 years old (so probably 1971). During a summer vacation we were walking at a harbor in Tuscany with my parents and they told me suddenly I had to take a dump. Problem was that there was no bathroom nearby, well it probably was since the place was filled with restaurants, but we were like a hundred meters from the nearest one, which was incompatible with the sudden need of a baby like I was. So my parents quickly found an area with vegetation behind a building, helped me remove my clothes and sit down waiting for me to unload all that stuff. Then my father saw me doing an expression they later described as priceless, so he quickly shouted me to wait, then grabbed his Nikon and shot me a photo. That photo later that year won a prize. Now imagine the same happening today with my dad shooting me a photo using his iPhone, only to trigger a CSAM alert somewhere an probably be investigated for child abuse. Just no thanks. Screw you Apple, and all those who pull your strings into creating this farce.

tehnub 5y ago
There will only be an alert if that photo is extremely similar to an image in the NCMEC database, AND there are numerous other such photos on the account that match. The threshold number of matches to trigger an alert is tuned for a 1/trillion chance of false positive. Furthermore, if you were using say Google Photos to store your images, then you were already subject to this vulnerability.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- squarefoot 5y ago
  So what if a small circle of people produce their CSAM material by themselves and share only among themselves? None of the pictures is being uploaded to that database, so either the algorithms are really really good at recognizing them, or it will require human intervention, that is, scanning one by one all phones, then deciding which picture matches the criteria and write down the names of the people involved. I can't think of a similar scenario that doesn't imply the total loss of privacy by anyone even remotely linked to one of these people.
  - fortenforge 5y ago
    If a small circle of people only share not-already-known CSAM content among themselves and never share known CSAM material then there is no way that Apple's scheme can catch them. However, if at any point one of them screws up and shares a known CSAM image, the entire ring can be caught. This is not actually an implausible scenario. See for example: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1424037132201431045?s=20 https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1424037132201431045?s=...

tehnub 5y ago

There will only be an alert if that photo is extremely similar to an image in the NCMEC database, AND there are numerous other such photos on the account that match. The threshold number of matches to trigger an alert is tuned for a 1/trillion chance of false positive. Furthermore, if you were using say Google Photos to store your images, then you were already subject to this vulnerability.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
squarefoot 5y ago
So what if a small circle of people produce their CSAM material by themselves and share only among themselves? None of the pictures is being uploaded to that database, so either the algorithms are really really good at recognizing them, or it will require human intervention, that is, scanning one by one all phones, then deciding which picture matches the criteria and write down the names of the people involved. I can't think of a similar scenario that doesn't imply the total loss of privacy by anyone even remotely linked to one of these people.
- fortenforge 5y ago
  If a small circle of people only share not-already-known CSAM content among themselves and never share known CSAM material then there is no way that Apple's scheme can catch them. However, if at any point one of them screws up and shares a known CSAM image, the entire ring can be caught. This is not actually an implausible scenario. See for example: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1424037132201431045?s=20 https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1424037132201431045?s=...