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Personally, I would not want to be the major cloud photo provider who is most friendly to hosting CSAM. For me that would be reason enough. As a company, there

by notJim 5y ago

Personally, I would not want to be the major cloud photo provider who is most friendly to hosting CSAM. For me that would be reason enough. As a company, there is also PR risk, and risk that laws will be passed requiring enforcement. This could be a way to get ahead of those laws. But it's really wild to me that people on HN would be so comfortable hosting CSAM on their servers.

BoorishBears 5y ago
This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Let's pretend you didn't just do that... you're talking about PR risk, but here we're seeing that risk blow up into a full blown scandal on the other side. Apple already was the most friendly hoster to CSAM, and the bad PR from it was quantifiable and minimal compared to the current PR they're getting. This isn't a new thing, encryption helps bad guys too. The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be.
- notJim 5y ago
  > This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Fair enough, I could have phrased this more carefully. But my point stands, so I'll rephrase it. To put it more carefully, people here are saying they would prefer the tradeoff of hosting CSAM compared against the tradeoff of the privacy implications of scanning users photos when they're uploaded to iCloud. I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. > The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be. iCloud photos are not E2E encrypted [1]. iCloud photos allows you to share photo albums with others and publicly. This is the reason I feel strongly about this, because if you don't scan for CSAM, iCloud will be used to distributed it. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I'm not saying iCloud Photos is using end-to-end encryption. I'm saying that the same arguments you're making against their at rest encryption scheme apply to all E2EE communication The idea being we already went through the "think of the kids" moment for that and now iMessage for example doesn't come up as being a defender of illegal content (at least not as often) - And your refined point isn't much better. You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. It's like saying people who are against banning matches are pro-forest fires. It doesn't pass a sniff test.
    - notJim 5y ago
      > You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. I do no such thing in my revised statement. I'm saying there's a tradeoff, and I come down differently than most on the tradeoff. Obviously no one wants CSAM on their servers, but one of the options will result in more Apple hosting more CSAM. I'm sorry if you still don't like my phrasing, but it's objectively true. Fundamentally, I feel like a lot of people on HN refuse to justify this tradeoff.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        > I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. When you say that it means people who would do want to host a website that distributes CSAM. The reality is people are ok with unknowingly being one of many many places that all types of "horrible things" can be hosted because when we look back at history "horrible things" has a very flexible meaning. We can all agree CSAM is horrible, but what you're failing to understand is that nothing prevents politically unfavored statements from being "horrible things". And this is a one-way ticket here, once Apple rolls this out there's no longer a way to confirm they're not signaling to authorities over other types of content. This is especially problematic in countries where Apple has already been known to cooperate with oppressive regimes... - Like I said, even painting allowing matches and allowing forest fires as a "trade-off" is disingenuous. There are a lot of things that allow more CSAM, again like any form of E2EE messaging. In the end your argument boils down to "it reduces CSAM", but that logic is just making a paperclip machine. Cameras are used for CSAM, so less cameras is less CSAM. Photos might be physically distributed so now lets have printers scan for specific hashes too. Encryption prevents ISPs from detecting CSAM, let's block https... By itself it's just not a useful argument.

by notJim 5y ago

BoorishBears 5y ago

This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Let's pretend you didn't just do that... you're talking about PR risk, but here we're seeing that risk blow up into a full blown scandal on the other side. Apple already was the most friendly hoster to CSAM, and the bad PR from it was quantifiable and minimal compared to the current PR they're getting. This isn't a new thing, encryption helps bad guys too. The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be.

notJim 5y ago
> This becomes a bad faith argument the moment you start trying to browbeat people over "being comfortable hosting kiddie porn." Fair enough, I could have phrased this more carefully. But my point stands, so I'll rephrase it. To put it more carefully, people here are saying they would prefer the tradeoff of hosting CSAM compared against the tradeoff of the privacy implications of scanning users photos when they're uploaded to iCloud. I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. > The same reason Apple was the most "friendly to CSAM" is the same reason any E2EE platform would be. iCloud photos are not E2E encrypted [1]. iCloud photos allows you to share photo albums with others and publicly. This is the reason I feel strongly about this, because if you don't scan for CSAM, iCloud will be used to distributed it. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I'm not saying iCloud Photos is using end-to-end encryption. I'm saying that the same arguments you're making against their at rest encryption scheme apply to all E2EE communication The idea being we already went through the "think of the kids" moment for that and now iMessage for example doesn't come up as being a defender of illegal content (at least not as often) - And your refined point isn't much better. You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. It's like saying people who are against banning matches are pro-forest fires. It doesn't pass a sniff test.
  - notJim 5y ago
    > You're painting people who are against on device scanning as being pro-hosting kiddie porn, and that's a terrible base for an argument. I do no such thing in my revised statement. I'm saying there's a tradeoff, and I come down differently than most on the tradeoff. Obviously no one wants CSAM on their servers, but one of the options will result in more Apple hosting more CSAM. I'm sorry if you still don't like my phrasing, but it's objectively true. Fundamentally, I feel like a lot of people on HN refuse to justify this tradeoff.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      > I personally would not make that tradeoff, as I do not want to host a website that distributes CSAM. When you say that it means people who would do want to host a website that distributes CSAM. The reality is people are ok with unknowingly being one of many many places that all types of "horrible things" can be hosted because when we look back at history "horrible things" has a very flexible meaning. We can all agree CSAM is horrible, but what you're failing to understand is that nothing prevents politically unfavored statements from being "horrible things". And this is a one-way ticket here, once Apple rolls this out there's no longer a way to confirm they're not signaling to authorities over other types of content. This is especially problematic in countries where Apple has already been known to cooperate with oppressive regimes... - Like I said, even painting allowing matches and allowing forest fires as a "trade-off" is disingenuous. There are a lot of things that allow more CSAM, again like any form of E2EE messaging. In the end your argument boils down to "it reduces CSAM", but that logic is just making a paperclip machine. Cameras are used for CSAM, so less cameras is less CSAM. Photos might be physically distributed so now lets have printers scan for specific hashes too. Encryption prevents ISPs from detecting CSAM, let's block https... By itself it's just not a useful argument.