4 ms·

A police raid on a person's home, or even a gentler thorough search, can be enough to quite seriously disrupt a person's life. Certainly having the police walk

by Kalium 5y ago

A police raid on a person's home, or even a gentler thorough search, can be enough to quite seriously disrupt a person's life. Certainly having the police walk away with all your electronics in evidence bags will complicate trying to work remotely. Of course, this is assuming everything works as intended and they don't find anything else they can use to charge you with something as they search your home. If you smoke cannabis while being in the wrong state, you're now in several more kinds of trouble.

topynate 5y ago
This could happen with a perturbed image, but I doubt it. Apple will send the suspicious images to the relevant authorities. Those authorities will then look at the images. The chances are low that they will then seek a search, even though the images are innocent upon visual inspection. But maybe in some places a ping from Apple is good enough for a search and seizure.
- Kalium 5y ago
  In broad strokes, I agree with you. I think you're absolutely correct that most trained, educated, technologically sophisticated law enforcement bodies will do exactly as you suggest and decide that there's not enough to investigate. That said, I'm not willing to say it won't happen. There are too many law enforcement entities of wildly varying levels of professionalism, staffing, and technical sophistication. Someone innocent, somewhere, is likely to have a multi-year legal drama because their local PD got an email from Apple. And we haven't even gotten to subjects like how some LEOs will happily plant evidence once they decide you're guilty.
- falcolas 5y ago
  FWIW, they won't send the images. Even in the pursuit of knocking back CSAM, there are strict restrictions on the transmission and viewing of CSAM - in some cases even the defendant's lawyers don't usually see the images themselves in preparation for a trial, just a description of the contents. Apple employees or contractors will likely not look at the images themselves, only visual hashes. They will instead contact the police and say "Person X has Y images that are on list Z," and let the police get a warrant based off that information and execute it to check for actual CSAM.
  - topynate 5y ago
    On reflection, yes, there must be warrants involved. I'm raising my estimate of how likely it is that innocent people get raided due to this. The warrant would properly only be to search iCloud, not some guy's house, but I can easily see overly-broad warrants being issued.
    - gowld 5y ago
      > The warrant would properly only be to search iCloud, iCloud is encrypted, so that warrant is useless. They need to unlock and search the device.
      - topynate 5y ago
        Yes, it's encrypted, but part of this anti-CSAM strategy is a threshold encryption scheme that allows Apple to decrypt photos if a certain number of them have suspicious hashes.
        Kalium 5y ago
        Apple having any kind of ability to decrypt user contents is disconcerting. It means they can be subpoenaed for that information.
        heavyset_go 5y ago
        > It means they can be subpoenaed for that information. They regularly are, and they regularly give up customer data in order to comply with subpeonas[1]. They give up customer data in response to government requests for 150,000 users/accounts a year[1]. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
        bbatsell 5y ago
        No, the threshold encryption only allows for the 30+ cryptographic “vouchers” to be unlocked, which contain details about the hash matching as well as a “visual derivative” of the image. We don’t know any details about the visual derivative.
cirrus3 5y ago
The police do not show up until a human has compared the matched image to the actual. Just stop.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  The more collisions, the more chances of a false positive by a (tired, underpaid) human. I don't envy the innocent person whose home gets raided by a SWAT team convinced they're busting a child sex trafficker.
  - hda2 5y ago
    The database is known to contain non-csam images like porn. I doubt the reviewer will be qualified to discern which is which.
    - Operyl 5y ago
      Not that I doubt your motives, but can I get your source on this? It seems like a huge blunder if so.
    - jgreen401 5y ago
      Known by whom to contain legal images? The "reviewer" might well be a retired Pediatrician who can identify the age of the subject by looking at the photographs and will be extremely accurate.

by Kalium 5y ago

topynate 5y ago

This could happen with a perturbed image, but I doubt it. Apple will send the suspicious images to the relevant authorities. Those authorities will then look at the images. The chances are low that they will then seek a search, even though the images are innocent upon visual inspection. But maybe in some places a ping from Apple is good enough for a search and seizure.

Kalium 5y ago
In broad strokes, I agree with you. I think you're absolutely correct that most trained, educated, technologically sophisticated law enforcement bodies will do exactly as you suggest and decide that there's not enough to investigate. That said, I'm not willing to say it won't happen. There are too many law enforcement entities of wildly varying levels of professionalism, staffing, and technical sophistication. Someone innocent, somewhere, is likely to have a multi-year legal drama because their local PD got an email from Apple. And we haven't even gotten to subjects like how some LEOs will happily plant evidence once they decide you're guilty.
falcolas 5y ago
FWIW, they won't send the images. Even in the pursuit of knocking back CSAM, there are strict restrictions on the transmission and viewing of CSAM - in some cases even the defendant's lawyers don't usually see the images themselves in preparation for a trial, just a description of the contents. Apple employees or contractors will likely not look at the images themselves, only visual hashes. They will instead contact the police and say "Person X has Y images that are on list Z," and let the police get a warrant based off that information and execute it to check for actual CSAM.
- topynate 5y ago
  On reflection, yes, there must be warrants involved. I'm raising my estimate of how likely it is that innocent people get raided due to this. The warrant would properly only be to search iCloud, not some guy's house, but I can easily see overly-broad warrants being issued.
  - gowld 5y ago
    > The warrant would properly only be to search iCloud, iCloud is encrypted, so that warrant is useless. They need to unlock and search the device.
    - topynate 5y ago
      Yes, it's encrypted, but part of this anti-CSAM strategy is a threshold encryption scheme that allows Apple to decrypt photos if a certain number of them have suspicious hashes.
      - Kalium 5y ago
        Apple having any kind of ability to decrypt user contents is disconcerting. It means they can be subpoenaed for that information.
        heavyset_go 5y ago
        > It means they can be subpoenaed for that information. They regularly are, and they regularly give up customer data in order to comply with subpeonas[1]. They give up customer data in response to government requests for 150,000 users/accounts a year[1]. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
      - bbatsell 5y ago
        No, the threshold encryption only allows for the 30+ cryptographic “vouchers” to be unlocked, which contain details about the hash matching as well as a “visual derivative” of the image. We don’t know any details about the visual derivative.

cirrus3 5y ago

The police do not show up until a human has compared the matched image to the actual. Just stop.

teachrdan 5y ago
The more collisions, the more chances of a false positive by a (tired, underpaid) human. I don't envy the innocent person whose home gets raided by a SWAT team convinced they're busting a child sex trafficker.
- hda2 5y ago
  The database is known to contain non-csam images like porn. I doubt the reviewer will be qualified to discern which is which.
  - Operyl 5y ago
    Not that I doubt your motives, but can I get your source on this? It seems like a huge blunder if so.
  - jgreen401 5y ago
    Known by whom to contain legal images? The "reviewer" might well be a retired Pediatrician who can identify the age of the subject by looking at the photographs and will be extremely accurate.