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Thank you for this perspective. I've never worked at an organization of this magnitude, so I am definitely lacking some perspective. > It's also clear Apple pu

Thank you for this perspective. I've never worked at an organization of this magnitude, so I am definitely lacking some perspective. > It's also clear Apple put a lot of thought into addressing the privacy concerns for this. Technologically, it's sophisticated, impressive. I'm not sure about this. How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc?

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Apple says their protection against authoritarian governments is that an image must appear in two or more government CSAM databases to be scanned. So if a corrupt politician adds something to the database, it won't be scanned unless a different government adds the same image. Now, will China follow this? Probably not. But Apple's defense there is that China could have directly ordered them to build this scanning tool at anytime in the last decade anyway. It's not like China has a magical new tool for invading privacy when they could have (and actually have) just ordered tools to be built as desired.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. It's not clear to me whether Apple's approach is truly sufficient to preserve the privacy and safety of iPhone users that whole governments are out to get. But it definitely looks to me like they thought hard about it and have given it a go.
- ArtDev 5y ago
  Maybe Apple already built the tool and was like "let's use this tool we already have but just targets specific child porn images". That actually makes them sound more reasonable.. kinda.
- cge 5y ago
  >Now, will China follow this? Probably not. It's quite possible that countries would do the same thing interested parties on both sides are accused of doing with membership and voting in the International Whaling Commission: find countries that have no interest in the matter either way, and buy their support (or in this case, their addition of images to databases), which can be quite cheap when the matters don't actually affect the country.
- hu3 5y ago
  Was cooperation between two contries considered?
- sfifs 5y ago
  And of course it's absolutely unprecedented for two governments to ever collaborate /s "Five Eyes" ring a bell?
matwood 5y ago
> I'm not sure about this. How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc? As it's setup today it can't be. The list is the intersection of at least 2 jurisdictions, and is only checked when items are going to iCloud. Of course this could change, but it's important to recognize what it is now vs. speculation about what it could become.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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shadowfiend 5y ago
A perceptual hash by itself is neither sophisticated nor impressive. Apple could have just applied a client-side perceptual hash and auto-reported you and disabled your device. That is not what they have done, and pretending the solution's sophistication is limited to the sophistication of a percetual hash seems either incurious or disingenuous—I'm assuming the former. Either way, it makes it difficult to engage with your argument.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  A searing and possibly legit indictment... what can I say... > incurious Hurts to read this. But maybe you're right: my mind kind of shut off when I read the abstract (client side scanning). I can't say I've looked into the details.
cvwright 5y ago
If you're not impressed by the perceptual hash, then you should at least be impressed by their implementation of the private set intersection. That's something that not a lot of companies could pull off. It doesn't make the whole system any less fundamentally flawed, but I think the technical "Wow!" factor certainly helped many people be OK with it. In this view, the shiny new PSI system is a trojan horse for the totally unaccountable and opaque hash set that they've feeding into it.
Closi 5y ago
> How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc? It's pretty sophisticated when you look at everything implemented and also consider the infrastructure / review pipelines that are required. See the link below: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model_Review_of_Apple_Child_Safety_Features.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model... It's based on perceptual hashing, but the whole end-to-end system is clearly sophisticated when operating on Apple's scale.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Apple says their protection against authoritarian governments is that an image must appear in two or more government CSAM databases to be scanned. So if a corrupt politician adds something to the database, it won't be scanned unless a different government adds the same image. Now, will China follow this? Probably not. But Apple's defense there is that China could have directly ordered them to build this scanning tool at anytime in the last decade anyway. It's not like China has a magical new tool for invading privacy when they could have (and actually have) just ordered tools to be built as desired.

wpietri 5y ago
For sure. It's not clear to me whether Apple's approach is truly sufficient to preserve the privacy and safety of iPhone users that whole governments are out to get. But it definitely looks to me like they thought hard about it and have given it a go.
ArtDev 5y ago
Maybe Apple already built the tool and was like "let's use this tool we already have but just targets specific child porn images". That actually makes them sound more reasonable.. kinda.
cge 5y ago
>Now, will China follow this? Probably not. It's quite possible that countries would do the same thing interested parties on both sides are accused of doing with membership and voting in the International Whaling Commission: find countries that have no interest in the matter either way, and buy their support (or in this case, their addition of images to databases), which can be quite cheap when the matters don't actually affect the country.
hu3 5y ago
Was cooperation between two contries considered?
sfifs 5y ago
And of course it's absolutely unprecedented for two governments to ever collaborate /s "Five Eyes" ring a bell?

matwood 5y ago

> I'm not sure about this. How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc? As it's setup today it can't be. The list is the intersection of at least 2 jurisdictions, and is only checked when items are going to iCloud. Of course this could change, but it's important to recognize what it is now vs. speculation about what it could become.

deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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shadowfiend 5y ago

A perceptual hash by itself is neither sophisticated nor impressive. Apple could have just applied a client-side perceptual hash and auto-reported you and disabled your device. That is not what they have done, and pretending the solution's sophistication is limited to the sophistication of a percetual hash seems either incurious or disingenuous—I'm assuming the former. Either way, it makes it difficult to engage with your argument.

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
A searing and possibly legit indictment... what can I say... > incurious Hurts to read this. But maybe you're right: my mind kind of shut off when I read the abstract (client side scanning). I can't say I've looked into the details.

cvwright 5y ago

If you're not impressed by the perceptual hash, then you should at least be impressed by their implementation of the private set intersection. That's something that not a lot of companies could pull off. It doesn't make the whole system any less fundamentally flawed, but I think the technical "Wow!" factor certainly helped many people be OK with it. In this view, the shiny new PSI system is a trojan horse for the totally unaccountable and opaque hash set that they've feeding into it.

Closi 5y ago

> How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc? It's pretty sophisticated when you look at everything implemented and also consider the infrastructure / review pipelines that are required. See the link below: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model_Review_of_Apple_Child_Safety_Features.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model... It's based on perceptual hashing, but the whole end-to-end system is clearly sophisticated when operating on Apple's scale.