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I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. I’m not even talking about any “slippery slope” sc

by jmull 5y ago

I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. I’m not even talking about any “slippery slope” scenarios and I’ll never have any of the material they are looking for. And right or wrong, I don’t really fear a false identification, so this isn’t about a worry that they will actually turn me in. I just don’t want them scanning my phone for the purpose of turning me in. I definitely do not want to take an OS update or new phone that does this. (False positives are the huge flaw in this system, though. There are human judgements by anonymous people using opaque processes without appeal throughout this. A lot of damage can be done before anything goes to court, not to mention courts themselves are susceptible to the illusion of infallible technology. Others have well laid out the scenarios that will result in serious consequences for innocent people.)

zepto 5y ago
This is the most honest take on this that I’ve seen. The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense, nor does the risk of false positives. But the idea of being suspected even in this abstract way, because of something other people do, is at the very least distasteful, bordering on offensive.
- drvdevd 5y ago
  > distasteful This is the word that most captures my feeling not just around the feature but how it was rolled out as well. Reading the PR announcement and then the leaked memo just felt - quite distasteful. There are a number of things Apple has done and continues to do that fit into that category for me personally - the fact that iOS is so locked down for example. But this really takes the cake. It's like someone at Apple dialed up the distasteful to 11 and let loose. The whole industry does distasteful things but this is a harbinger of our inability to trust them at a deeper level. Not just Apple.
- thevagrant 5y ago
  I would not say the slippery slope take doesn't make sense. It is perfectly possible that had no one cried out about this change then the next change would have been: Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks."
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zepto 5y ago
    > Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks." How do you know this hasn’t already happened? What does it have to do with the CSAM technology?
    - feanaro 5y ago
      How do you know the invisible pink unicorn doesn't exist? You don't, but going after the known bad things is the most effective action you can take. You certainly don't ignore known bad things just because there may be even worse unknown things.
      - zepto 5y ago
        Right, but this isn’t a bad thing. The bad things people are claiming are things they imagine could be done in the future. Exactly like an Invisible Pink Unicorn. If you go after imaginary bad things, you will never stop. That is the problem with paranoia.
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    That’s not at all how hashes work here.
    - thevagrant 5y ago
      I know that is not how it works currently, I was merely suggesting how something could change.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    > it is possible that had no-one cried about this change, The “UK porn filter” has already been extended to all sorts of “« extremism online »” (to no effect in the capital of knife attacks, it seems — as usual invasive police rights do not equal a reduction of criminality) and it’s already being proposed to be extended to: - Online Harms - Online Safety Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kingdom#Planned_programmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
- Karunamon 5y ago
  How do the slippery slope arguments not make sense? This is a capability that: 1. Did not exist prior (scanning stuff on the endpoint) 2. Has a plausible abuse case (the same system, applied to stuff that isn't CSAM) I find this very compelling, especially in the shittier regimes (China...) that Apple operates in.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Neither 1 nor 2 are in fact true. Spotlight indexes all kinds of metadata, as does photos search. Adding an agent to upload data from these is easier than extending the CSAM mechanism, and the CSAM mechanism as is is not all that plausible to abuse either technically or socially given how clear Apple’s promises are.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Why should Apple's promises be taken at face value? Doubly so in a world where they can be compelled legally to break those promises and say nothing (especially in the more totalitarian countries they willingly operate in and willingly subvert some of their other privacy guarantees)? What stops Apple from altering the deal further? And if you have an answer for that, what makes you believe that 10 years in the future, with someone else at the helm, that they won't? Your device is now proactively acting as a stool pigeon for the government where it wasn't prior. This is a new capacity. And it's for CSAM. For now. The technological leap from locally scanning just the stuff you upload, to scanning everything, is a very simple change. The leap from scanning for CSAM to scanning for some other perceptual hashes the government wants matched is very simple.
      - zepto 5y ago
        What stops them from altering the deal is that they have said they won’t, and there really is no evidence to believe otherwise. If they do, then they do. There are never any guarantees about anyone’s future behavior. However just saying ‘what stops you from becoming a thief?’, does not imply that you will become a thief. There is no new capability other than what they have said. They already had far more general purpose mechanisms for analysing and searching your files already in the operating system. The leap from doing spotlight indexing to searching for the keywords ‘falun gong’ or ‘proud boys’ in your files is also simple. So is the leap from searching your photos locally for ‘dogs’, to searching locally for ‘swastikas’ and reporting back when they are found. If they decide to build some spyware, there is no need for it to be based on this. It’s a red herring.
- feanaro 5y ago
  I agree with this take, but the slippery slope arguments do make sense, as exemplified by any spying technology ever. Once a capability exists, it's too enticing not to continue expanding the scope.
  - somedude895 5y ago
    Exactly. Selling dev consoles on ebay or drugs on the darkweb? We'll take the picture in the listing and find out who took it. Can't find any matches? This is too ineffective. We'll need Apple to store all hashes on all devices for 6 months. The slippery slope argument makes a LOT of sense.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Nope. This would be an illegal search under the 4th Amendment. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year-old-charity-will-be-integrated-into-apples-newest-operating-system https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year...
      - LeapingLennie 5y ago
        Not everyone in the world is protected by the US Constitution and although Apple is initially only rolling this out in the US there is no doubt it will be rolled out in other countries sooner or later.
      - chrisdhoover 5y ago
        Parallel construction is how rules are circumvented
- lm28469 5y ago
  > The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense, nor does the risk of false positives. Yeah no, there are about 1b iphones in use, even a ridiculous low amount of false positive would be a major pain in the ass for a lot of people regularly. The slippery slope argument is totally valid, whatever legal safeguards you have today might not exist tomorrow, but the tech will stay here forever. I actually fail to see how your second sentence support the first. Treating everyone as a potential suspect of a crime (which isn't even wide spread in the first place) is a major slippery slope. Today it's "for the children and only in the US" tomorrow it might be "find me pro Palestinians pictures of people living in Israel". Nobody can predict what apple stance will be in 25+ years
- fsflover 5y ago
  > The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense Yes, they do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28160092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28160092
  - zepto 5y ago
    No they don’t. Searches for things other than CSAM would be inadmissible under the 4th amendment. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year-old-charity-will-be-integrated-into-apples-newest-operating-system https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year...
    - psyc 5y ago
      That article is very obviously not about what is being searched for. It's about who it is being reported to. For example, if Apple one day decided to detect unauthorized copyrighted media, they could report it to the RIAA. The RIAA is independent of the government, thus the 4th amendment is not violated.
      - zepto 5y ago
        So then you must agree that the fears of government overreach are unwarranted. Given that’s what most of the complaints here raw about, that’s a big deal. > For example, if Apple one day decided to detect unauthorized copyrighted media, they could report it to the RIAA. The RIAA is independent of the government, thus the 4th amendment is not violated. It’s true that Apple could decide to implement any search or scanning mechanism at any time, and report anything they like to anyone they want to. So what? This is true of anyone who writes software that handles user data. What does that have to do with the CSAM mechanism? It seems like an unrelated fear.
        fsflover 5y ago
        > What does that have to do with the CSAM mechanism? It seems like an unrelated fear. He CSAM mechanism proves that Apple can and will go this route, even if users are against that.
BikiniPrince 5y ago
You don’t have anything they want today. How difficult would it be to transform it into looking for images from political dissenters? Now, you have a magical list to find targets to probe further. Maybe you want to identify behaviors you disagree with. Images tell a story and maybe not to the people who are looking out for your best interests. Wrong think always changes.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  Sure its "just" CSAM for Americans, but for Chinese citizens, it won't be, of any other sizable market for Apple.
cucumb3rrelish 5y ago
It's not scanning your device, but your iCloud uploads, and if configured, the imessages of your children
- M4v3R 5y ago
  Please do not spread misinformation. The system DOES scan your local device for photos that match CSAM hashes that are downloaded to the device. What you probably meant is that currently it is only enabled if you have iCloud Photos enabled (which almost everyone has), but now that the mechanism for client-side scanning is in place there’s nothing preventing them to turn it on later regardless of your user settings.
  - hypothesis 5y ago
    I don’t like that system, but according to their summary document, CSAM detection system is only (as described today) processing images that are uploaded to iCloud. [1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Technology_Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
    - pdabbadabba 5y ago
      Please look more carefully at that document. It says, on page 5: "Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC and other child safety organizations." And look at the diagram. The matching of image hashes with user photos occurs "on device."
      - cucumb3rrelish 5y ago
        On device != Scanning your device. It scans your iCloud uploads and if configured, iMessages (which you didnt mean, because that doesnt work with hashes)
        5y ago
istingray 5y ago
I like this take. It shortcuts around all the "but people misunderstand the technology" back and forth and gets to the root of it. "Don't scan my phone for stuff you can send to the police."
- 6AA4FD 5y ago
  Yup. We don't need to demand privacy as a means to an end, it is just respect I want from my belongings.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Should we consider the phone: - as part of the home? - as part of the human body? In either cases we’re allowed to do crime at home as long as no-one knows it.
  - aj3 5y ago
    No, you’re not allowed to do crime even if you kill all witnesses and destroy all evidence.
    - z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
      Funny, the CIA says otherwise
  - ycombinete 5y ago
    I don’t think that’s how crime works
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Lol, this guy gets it.
samstave 5y ago
Wait until you hear about judges who are actively on the take to send people to jail - like the judge who was taking money from for-profit juvenile detention centers to send kids to their facilities on ridiculous charges. Yeah - this is an architecture designed to be abused.
tuatoru 5y ago
> I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. Yes. This is called vigilantism.[1] Apple is proposing to become a vigilante. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism "Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amelius 5y ago
  "Voyeurism is the act of observing other people without legal authority."
- ransom1538 5y ago
  Exactly this.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Except governments applaud it, so, no.
- otterley 5y ago
  Except that they do have the legal authority to do so. See 18 U.S.C. section 2258A(a)(1)(A)(ii). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A
borplk 5y ago
Not to mention how this kind of stuff can be abused. Think about the digital version of the cop that drops a small bag containing a white powder in the back of your car. Good luck proving that it wasn't you.
sunshineforever 5y ago
This is exactly how I feel to a T. It's intangible to explained but I'm not a criminal and I'm not on probation. Apple as zero business scanning my phone for anything and I don't want that to be done.
Svoka 5y ago
From what I understand, Apple does not want to scan your phone. They want to have end-to-end encryption and store your photos encrypted. This is why they scan before sending them encrypted. They won't scan anything which you would not put in the cloud anyway. This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Probably too clever for journalists to understand :(
- feanaro 5y ago
  > This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Correction: Anything in the shady government-supplied database, pushed through a private corporation, not CP. The official purpose today is CP (well, CSAM, which is already more vague than CP), but the distinction is important. Also, not only to prevent storing that content on their servers, but to report you to the authorities.
- isaac21259 5y ago
  What? Scanning your phone is exactly what Apple is doing. They say they won't scan anything not put on the cloud but you have no control over that and it is subject to change at anytime. They've already weakened their systems at the request of the government so it wouldn't be at all unexpected for them to scan photos not uploaded to the cloud. End-to-end encryption is completely useless if you have spyware installed on one of those ends.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  >This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. It's a pretty clever way to normalize adversarial devices, there's no preserving of any kind of privacy going on here. I contend that if they are storing encrypted data that they cannot decode, then they are not knowingly storing CP at all. If someone then downloads that, decrypts it with the key that only they know, and it turns out to be CP, then they are the ones storing CP, which as we all know is already illegal. Obviously I'm not a lawyer and this isn't how icloud works, but lots of companies legally store encrypted data that they can't decode. There's no legal requirement that the storage provider needs to ensure there's no CP, only that they don't knowingly store it. Apple just doesn't want to allow people to have real encryption that they control, almost definitely so they can make more money by forcing people to use expensive icloud instead of local encrypted backups, and retain the ability to scan everyone's data. All under the flimsy excuse that 0.1% of people might forget their password and be unable to unlock their data. Nevermind you could only allow this for power users at their own request but "it's for your own good because you're too dumb to manage a password", lol fuck you Apple. So it's just yet another self-serving, penny pinching, thinly veiled customer privacy violation, this time wrapped in a big fat "think of the children", which as we know is corporate-speak for "turn brain off now - we want to do $thing_you_wont_like". I'm yet to think of how Apple plans to make money out of this one, but I'm sure there's an angle in there somewhere and we'll find out eventually. Maybe simply that either NSA or China said "give us this new scanning system or we shut you down" - and I'm not American but I do wonder about people who still cling to the belief that the fourth amendment would be respected post Snowden revelations. Hell, I'm Australian - they're probably just planning to push that hash-matched data through servers in Australia so they can see everything, because Australia has no bill of rights, and getting more authoritarian with every uncontested bill that passes. Or some other kind of "legal" fuckery to move even closer to the dystopia they are so hell-bent on creating.
sbr464 5y ago
Franz Kafka.
argvargc 5y ago
Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their TV scans every frame displayed and every word said if it sees anything the TV manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their blender has an array of chemical sensors in it, and if it detects a substance the manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? How about smart floorboards that detect illegal dancing by women in Iran? Shall we do that too? Apple where are you on that one? I can point you to a country filled with eager customers, seems right up your alley.
- burkaman 5y ago
  > Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? FYI most (all?) modern printers will refuse to print anything they think is counterfeit money, and will include a unique code traceable back to you in every printed document. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - asperous 5y ago
    Printers may do this but it doesn't call the police on them
    - badRNG 5y ago
      But let's be honest here: MIC is a truly upsetting privacy violation all on its own.
  - thescriptkiddie 5y ago
    Well, looks like I'm never buying a new printer.
e40 5y ago
Whether it's likely or not, I'm worried about false identification of images. Let's also remember that malware would easily drop illegal images as a way to mess with the system and specific people.

by jmull 5y ago

zepto 5y ago

This is the most honest take on this that I’ve seen. The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense, nor does the risk of false positives. But the idea of being suspected even in this abstract way, because of something other people do, is at the very least distasteful, bordering on offensive.

drvdevd 5y ago
> distasteful This is the word that most captures my feeling not just around the feature but how it was rolled out as well. Reading the PR announcement and then the leaked memo just felt - quite distasteful. There are a number of things Apple has done and continues to do that fit into that category for me personally - the fact that iOS is so locked down for example. But this really takes the cake. It's like someone at Apple dialed up the distasteful to 11 and let loose. The whole industry does distasteful things but this is a harbinger of our inability to trust them at a deeper level. Not just Apple.
thevagrant 5y ago
I would not say the slippery slope take doesn't make sense. It is perfectly possible that had no one cried out about this change then the next change would have been: Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zepto 5y ago
  > Large government to Apple: "Please now also create a hash on each photo metadata field including date/time and location. Let us query these. AND BTW, this change must be kept secret. Thanks." How do you know this hasn’t already happened? What does it have to do with the CSAM technology?
  - feanaro 5y ago
    How do you know the invisible pink unicorn doesn't exist? You don't, but going after the known bad things is the most effective action you can take. You certainly don't ignore known bad things just because there may be even worse unknown things.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Right, but this isn’t a bad thing. The bad things people are claiming are things they imagine could be done in the future. Exactly like an Invisible Pink Unicorn. If you go after imaginary bad things, you will never stop. That is the problem with paranoia.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  That’s not at all how hashes work here.
  - thevagrant 5y ago
    I know that is not how it works currently, I was merely suggesting how something could change.
- laurent92 5y ago
  > it is possible that had no-one cried about this change, The “UK porn filter” has already been extended to all sorts of “« extremism online »” (to no effect in the capital of knife attacks, it seems — as usual invasive police rights do not equal a reduction of criminality) and it’s already being proposed to be extended to: - Online Harms - Online Safety Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kingdom#Planned_programmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
Karunamon 5y ago
How do the slippery slope arguments not make sense? This is a capability that: 1. Did not exist prior (scanning stuff on the endpoint) 2. Has a plausible abuse case (the same system, applied to stuff that isn't CSAM) I find this very compelling, especially in the shittier regimes (China...) that Apple operates in.
- zepto 5y ago
  Neither 1 nor 2 are in fact true. Spotlight indexes all kinds of metadata, as does photos search. Adding an agent to upload data from these is easier than extending the CSAM mechanism, and the CSAM mechanism as is is not all that plausible to abuse either technically or socially given how clear Apple’s promises are.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Why should Apple's promises be taken at face value? Doubly so in a world where they can be compelled legally to break those promises and say nothing (especially in the more totalitarian countries they willingly operate in and willingly subvert some of their other privacy guarantees)? What stops Apple from altering the deal further? And if you have an answer for that, what makes you believe that 10 years in the future, with someone else at the helm, that they won't? Your device is now proactively acting as a stool pigeon for the government where it wasn't prior. This is a new capacity. And it's for CSAM. For now. The technological leap from locally scanning just the stuff you upload, to scanning everything, is a very simple change. The leap from scanning for CSAM to scanning for some other perceptual hashes the government wants matched is very simple.
    - zepto 5y ago
      What stops them from altering the deal is that they have said they won’t, and there really is no evidence to believe otherwise. If they do, then they do. There are never any guarantees about anyone’s future behavior. However just saying ‘what stops you from becoming a thief?’, does not imply that you will become a thief. There is no new capability other than what they have said. They already had far more general purpose mechanisms for analysing and searching your files already in the operating system. The leap from doing spotlight indexing to searching for the keywords ‘falun gong’ or ‘proud boys’ in your files is also simple. So is the leap from searching your photos locally for ‘dogs’, to searching locally for ‘swastikas’ and reporting back when they are found. If they decide to build some spyware, there is no need for it to be based on this. It’s a red herring.
feanaro 5y ago
I agree with this take, but the slippery slope arguments do make sense, as exemplified by any spying technology ever. Once a capability exists, it's too enticing not to continue expanding the scope.
- somedude895 5y ago
  Exactly. Selling dev consoles on ebay or drugs on the darkweb? We'll take the picture in the listing and find out who took it. Can't find any matches? This is too ineffective. We'll need Apple to store all hashes on all devices for 6 months. The slippery slope argument makes a LOT of sense.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Nope. This would be an illegal search under the 4th Amendment. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year-old-charity-will-be-integrated-into-apples-newest-operating-system https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year...
    - LeapingLennie 5y ago
      Not everyone in the world is protected by the US Constitution and although Apple is initially only rolling this out in the US there is no doubt it will be rolled out in other countries sooner or later.
    - chrisdhoover 5y ago
      Parallel construction is how rules are circumvented
lm28469 5y ago
> The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense, nor does the risk of false positives. Yeah no, there are about 1b iphones in use, even a ridiculous low amount of false positive would be a major pain in the ass for a lot of people regularly. The slippery slope argument is totally valid, whatever legal safeguards you have today might not exist tomorrow, but the tech will stay here forever. I actually fail to see how your second sentence support the first. Treating everyone as a potential suspect of a crime (which isn't even wide spread in the first place) is a major slippery slope. Today it's "for the children and only in the US" tomorrow it might be "find me pro Palestinians pictures of people living in Israel". Nobody can predict what apple stance will be in 25+ years
fsflover 5y ago
> The slippery slope arguments don’t make sense Yes, they do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28160092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28160092
- zepto 5y ago
  No they don’t. Searches for things other than CSAM would be inadmissible under the 4th amendment. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year-old-charity-will-be-integrated-into-apples-newest-operating-system https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/12/a-38-year...
  - psyc 5y ago
    That article is very obviously not about what is being searched for. It's about who it is being reported to. For example, if Apple one day decided to detect unauthorized copyrighted media, they could report it to the RIAA. The RIAA is independent of the government, thus the 4th amendment is not violated.
    - zepto 5y ago
      So then you must agree that the fears of government overreach are unwarranted. Given that’s what most of the complaints here raw about, that’s a big deal. > For example, if Apple one day decided to detect unauthorized copyrighted media, they could report it to the RIAA. The RIAA is independent of the government, thus the 4th amendment is not violated. It’s true that Apple could decide to implement any search or scanning mechanism at any time, and report anything they like to anyone they want to. So what? This is true of anyone who writes software that handles user data. What does that have to do with the CSAM mechanism? It seems like an unrelated fear.
      - fsflover 5y ago
        > What does that have to do with the CSAM mechanism? It seems like an unrelated fear. He CSAM mechanism proves that Apple can and will go this route, even if users are against that.

BikiniPrince 5y ago

You don’t have anything they want today. How difficult would it be to transform it into looking for images from political dissenters? Now, you have a magical list to find targets to probe further. Maybe you want to identify behaviors you disagree with. Images tell a story and maybe not to the people who are looking out for your best interests. Wrong think always changes.

calvinmorrison 5y ago
Sure its "just" CSAM for Americans, but for Chinese citizens, it won't be, of any other sizable market for Apple.

cucumb3rrelish 5y ago

It's not scanning your device, but your iCloud uploads, and if configured, the imessages of your children

M4v3R 5y ago
Please do not spread misinformation. The system DOES scan your local device for photos that match CSAM hashes that are downloaded to the device. What you probably meant is that currently it is only enabled if you have iCloud Photos enabled (which almost everyone has), but now that the mechanism for client-side scanning is in place there’s nothing preventing them to turn it on later regardless of your user settings.
- hypothesis 5y ago
  I don’t like that system, but according to their summary document, CSAM detection system is only (as described today) processing images that are uploaded to iCloud. [1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Technology_Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
  - pdabbadabba 5y ago
    Please look more carefully at that document. It says, on page 5: "Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC and other child safety organizations." And look at the diagram. The matching of image hashes with user photos occurs "on device."
    - cucumb3rrelish 5y ago
      On device != Scanning your device. It scans your iCloud uploads and if configured, iMessages (which you didnt mean, because that doesnt work with hashes)
      - 5y ago

istingray 5y ago

I like this take. It shortcuts around all the "but people misunderstand the technology" back and forth and gets to the root of it. "Don't scan my phone for stuff you can send to the police."

6AA4FD 5y ago
Yup. We don't need to demand privacy as a means to an end, it is just respect I want from my belongings.
laurent92 5y ago
Should we consider the phone: - as part of the home? - as part of the human body? In either cases we’re allowed to do crime at home as long as no-one knows it.
- aj3 5y ago
  No, you’re not allowed to do crime even if you kill all witnesses and destroy all evidence.
  - z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
    Funny, the CIA says otherwise
- ycombinete 5y ago
  I don’t think that’s how crime works
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Lol, this guy gets it.

samstave 5y ago

Wait until you hear about judges who are actively on the take to send people to jail - like the judge who was taking money from for-profit juvenile detention centers to send kids to their facilities on ridiculous charges. Yeah - this is an architecture designed to be abused.

tuatoru 5y ago

> I just do not want Apple scanning my phone for the purpose of finding something they can send to the police. Yes. This is called vigilantism.[1] Apple is proposing to become a vigilante. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism "Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
"Voyeurism is the act of observing other people without legal authority."
ransom1538 5y ago
Exactly this.
- amelius 5y ago
  Except governments applaud it, so, no.
otterley 5y ago
Except that they do have the legal authority to do so. See 18 U.S.C. section 2258A(a)(1)(A)(ii). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

borplk 5y ago

Not to mention how this kind of stuff can be abused. Think about the digital version of the cop that drops a small bag containing a white powder in the back of your car. Good luck proving that it wasn't you.

sunshineforever 5y ago

This is exactly how I feel to a T. It's intangible to explained but I'm not a criminal and I'm not on probation. Apple as zero business scanning my phone for anything and I don't want that to be done.

Svoka 5y ago

From what I understand, Apple does not want to scan your phone. They want to have end-to-end encryption and store your photos encrypted. This is why they scan before sending them encrypted. They won't scan anything which you would not put in the cloud anyway. This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Probably too clever for journalists to understand :(

feanaro 5y ago
> This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. Correction: Anything in the shady government-supplied database, pushed through a private corporation, not CP. The official purpose today is CP (well, CSAM, which is already more vague than CP), but the distinction is important. Also, not only to prevent storing that content on their servers, but to report you to the authorities.
isaac21259 5y ago
What? Scanning your phone is exactly what Apple is doing. They say they won't scan anything not put on the cloud but you have no control over that and it is subject to change at anytime. They've already weakened their systems at the request of the government so it wouldn't be at all unexpected for them to scan photos not uploaded to the cloud. End-to-end encryption is completely useless if you have spyware installed on one of those ends.
brokenmachine 5y ago
>This is pretty clever way to preserve end-to-end encryption and satisfy requirement not to store anything CP related on their servers. It's a pretty clever way to normalize adversarial devices, there's no preserving of any kind of privacy going on here. I contend that if they are storing encrypted data that they cannot decode, then they are not knowingly storing CP at all. If someone then downloads that, decrypts it with the key that only they know, and it turns out to be CP, then they are the ones storing CP, which as we all know is already illegal. Obviously I'm not a lawyer and this isn't how icloud works, but lots of companies legally store encrypted data that they can't decode. There's no legal requirement that the storage provider needs to ensure there's no CP, only that they don't knowingly store it. Apple just doesn't want to allow people to have real encryption that they control, almost definitely so they can make more money by forcing people to use expensive icloud instead of local encrypted backups, and retain the ability to scan everyone's data. All under the flimsy excuse that 0.1% of people might forget their password and be unable to unlock their data. Nevermind you could only allow this for power users at their own request but "it's for your own good because you're too dumb to manage a password", lol fuck you Apple. So it's just yet another self-serving, penny pinching, thinly veiled customer privacy violation, this time wrapped in a big fat "think of the children", which as we know is corporate-speak for "turn brain off now - we want to do $thing_you_wont_like". I'm yet to think of how Apple plans to make money out of this one, but I'm sure there's an angle in there somewhere and we'll find out eventually. Maybe simply that either NSA or China said "give us this new scanning system or we shut you down" - and I'm not American but I do wonder about people who still cling to the belief that the fourth amendment would be respected post Snowden revelations. Hell, I'm Australian - they're probably just planning to push that hash-matched data through servers in Australia so they can see everything, because Australia has no bill of rights, and getting more authoritarian with every uncontested bill that passes. Or some other kind of "legal" fuckery to move even closer to the dystopia they are so hell-bent on creating.

sbr464 5y ago

Franz Kafka.

argvargc 5y ago

Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their TV scans every frame displayed and every word said if it sees anything the TV manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? Or their blender has an array of chemical sensors in it, and if it detects a substance the manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? How about smart floorboards that detect illegal dancing by women in Iran? Shall we do that too? Apple where are you on that one? I can point you to a country filled with eager customers, seems right up your alley.

burkaman 5y ago
> Who wants their printer to scan every document they print, and if it sees something the printer manufacturer thinks is illegal it's reported to the police? FYI most (all?) modern printers will refuse to print anything they think is counterfeit money, and will include a unique code traceable back to you in every printed document. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- asperous 5y ago
  Printers may do this but it doesn't call the police on them
  - badRNG 5y ago
    But let's be honest here: MIC is a truly upsetting privacy violation all on its own.
- thescriptkiddie 5y ago
  Well, looks like I'm never buying a new printer.

e40 5y ago

Whether it's likely or not, I'm worried about false identification of images. Let's also remember that malware would easily drop illegal images as a way to mess with the system and specific people.