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For a normal random person, a grey man. In the real world, a single collision could be enough for the police to acquire further access to people they are alrea
by sandworm101 5y ago
For a normal random person, a grey man. In the real world, a single collision could be enough for the police to acquire further access to people they are already looking at. If the police want access to your phone for other reasons (drugs, taxes, illegal speech) they can use that one collision to get a warrant which will give them greater access.
It is akin to cops wanting to search a car. They don't need a warrant. They only need to follow the car until it breaks any number of traffic laws. Then the resulting traffic stops lets them talk to the driver, who seems evasive, which gives them probable cause, which gets them a warrant to perform a full search. The accidental collision, week evidence of an offending image on the phone, opens the door to whatever other investigation they want to do.
- Grustaf 5y agoI'm not sure what you mean. If we are talking about Apple's new feature, they will not even be alerted until you have enough matches. And the police probably won't be using any neural hashes if they have access to your device, so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
- sandworm101 5y agoThat is an Apple current policy, not any sort of law. If the FBI wants to know if there are any collisions on a particular phone, that will be shared. If the FBI wants to know of all single collisions, that too must be shared. A corporation's internal policy decisions are nothing when faced with a government official carrying a warrant. If they have data indicating possible crimes, no matter how small, they can be forced to divulge it to investigators. Unlike Lavabit, I don't think Apple will ever close up shop to protect customer data.
- Grustaf 5y agoWell of course if you believe that FBI can ask Apple to share anything and they will agree, and not tell us, then what is even the point of this discussion? Then they already have access to every photo, every email, every text. Because Apple controls those apps on your phone.
- fsflover 5y agoThe difference is that now they confirmed that they do search your private images.
- jasamer 5y agoI thought the system is designed such that the threshold must be met to check the matches, i.e. it’s not possible to follow the FBIs request without changing the entire system.
- brokenmachine 5y agoint matchThreshold = 30; if (numMatches > matchThreshold) { snitch(customer) && customer.life.ruin() }
- merpnderp 5y agoIsn't Apple seeding their database with fake hits so that a court can't order them to turn over everyone who's just a few shy of Apple's threshold? So when this database leaks, won't there be a lot of people accused of horrific crimes simply because Apple seeded their database with random hits? Why would people pay a company to falsely accuse them of horrific crimes?
- JKCalhoun 5y agoSince, as I have read, Microsoft and Google already do this, where are all the illicit cop take-downs? I have not heard of any.
- sandworm101 5y agoThey are scanning images on online accounts, stuff that is stored on their systems and system files on machines (files they own). They are not, from what I have read, scanning customer-owned images stored on customer-owned devices.
- snowwrestler 5y agoEvery AV (antivirus) software system scans customer-owned files on customer-owned devices. So the question is the same: if it’s easy for law enforcement to deputize such a system, where is the flood of cases built off of evidence gathered this way?
- sandworm101 5y ago>> Every AV (antivirus) software system Mine doesn't. If Ubuntu or ClamAV is scanning all my photos and reporting the results to Canonical against my will then I will soon be having words with Mr. Linus.
- snowwrestler 5y agoIf law enforcement can force software companies to adapt their software to serve law enforcement purposes, why aren’t Ubuntu or ClamAV doing so already? What makes them better at resisting requests from law enforcement than Apple?
- MichaelGroves 5y agoCanonical and ClamAV aren't trying to curry favor with the US government to stave off antitrust action.