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> A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That's no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chine

> A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That's no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already uses content matching to identify dissident material. India enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest materials. This sums up the concern. CSAM is just the excuse because who would come out against protecting children, right? But this will absolutely be used for political purposes.

temp8964 5y ago
I don't understand this logic, why would authoritarian governments need to fake political dissident material as child porn for matching? The examples you quoted directly invalidate this argument. The authoritarian governments can directly ban political dissident materials, and they don't need child porn as the excuse.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ls612 5y ago
  Because the real concern isn’t that; it’s something like Apple vs FBI where the fact that Apple didn’t have a capability built have them a legal edge against a government with stronger rule of law.
- derefr 5y ago
  iMessage is E2E-encrypted; the only scanning of the content of the network a state adversary can do is by getting Apple to implement it for them, into the iMessage client. And Apple until now have had the excuse for not doing so, that they have no mechanism built into iMessage that would or could scan for such things, nor (as the excuse would go) is such a technology likely to be either “feasible” given the E2E-encrypted nature of the communications, or “palatable” to their audience (i.e. an argument like “people buy the iDevices in part because of advertised privacy benefits, so such state-level intrusions would lead to nobody buying iDevices, so nobody would be caught by this scheme anyway, so all you’re really doing by asking us to implement it is trying to destroy our company’s share price, probably to help your domestic phone market—and our government wouldn’t take kindly to that kind of market interference. So if you don’t want to be slapped with even more Huawei-like trade sanctions, kindly go away.”) The implementation of a CSAM scanner is a clear feasibility proof for the set of technologically-equivalent capabilities (e.g. dissident-material scanning.) The fact that Apple have implemented it, and that their users have accepted it and continued to use their iDevices, means Apple has no leg to stand on when denying governments the implementation of technological enforcement for “banning political dissident materials.”
  - dwaite 5y ago
    iMessage does not use the CSAM scanner, only the upload to iCloud Photos does. The iMessage feature is a local porn-ish detector on sent/received images with a click-through. It is only for children on family accounts, and if the child is under 13 a click-through is reported to the parent.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
The reason I think Apple went forward with it though is that, from their perspective, it's not like they are building a new tool for surveillance. It doesn't take many brain cells for a lawmaker to realize that they could mandate pre-screening of content. From Apple's perspective... for authoritarian governments like China or India... they are already able to mandate it and are likely to. So they shouldn't be factored into the "CSAM Scanning could be abused!" argument because it was already happening and going to happen, whether the tool exists or not. In which case, releasing the CSAM tool has only benefits for the abused and doesn't make a difference in preventing surveillance and privacy invasions because it was already going to occur. A cynical view but a possibility.
api 5y ago
The more I think about it, something that concerns me greatly is the silent use of this for political purposes. By silent I mean they don't arrest you or put you on any public lists. Instead they just gather information, lots of information, and they use it in future Cambridge Analytica style propaganda campaigns. I don't mean to imply that only Republicans would do this. After Trump's successful use of this kind of political propaganda every single political party and PR agency on the planet is working on duplicating it. Arresting people is old fashioned. Modern totalitarianism is built on disinformation, microtargeted propaganda, surveillance, and nudge theory.
- certeoun 5y ago
  What makes us better than China then? Our relative freedoms? What can we do about it? Princeton also did a study on America not being actually a democracy. I shared it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249091
  - DaftDank 5y ago
    Sorry for the off-topic question, but I've been wondering for a while and have been too afraid to ask: what does the green name signify here?
    - zargon 5y ago
      It means they're a newly registered user. (Not sure of the exact threshold, around a few days to a week.)
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Nothing makes a country better than another, in absolute. Although, some aspects of life may be more enjoyable in one or another, depending on your taste. I think most of us can agree living in an abundance of resources (waste!) with some mild political freedom where you're allowed to say anything as long as you don't try to change anything (see: COINTELPRO, Julian Assange, etc) like in the Global North, is more pleasant to live on a daily basis than a hunger-ridden autocracy like North Korea. But even that is debatable and i'm sure many north koreans would disagree. What can we do about it? Attack the system, day by day and bits by bits. Steal what you can from the rich to redistribute to the poor. Make cooperatives, whether as employees or volunteers, so that more and more people can quit wage exploitation and start to live again, "from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs" (old anarchist saying). Form collectives for all kinds of struggles affecting you and your loved ones: anti-patriarchy, anti-racism, accessibility... Don't accept anyone claiming they're above you. We're all in this together, and those who claim to seek authority to find solutions will create more problems than they will solve, no matter their good intentions. We need to build "power to the people", not "power over the people", as anyone who has studied some history of political repression in the early Soviet Union (and other "dictatorships of the proletariat") can learn. See also Emma Goldman's "Trotsky protests too much" or "There is no communism in Russia" on this topic. Organize. Organize. Organize.
robertoandred 5y ago
Apple's system doesn't match content.
- vletal 5y ago
  You can do stuff like listing top K trending anti gov memes past day and blacklisting them. Thats definitely a content.
  - rgovostes 5y ago
    You cannot, because the models are shipped the OS image. Apple would have to publish a new OS update every day new memes come out. If you're talking about photo library scanning, people would have to be saving the memes to their photo libraries, cloud syncing would have to be on, and they would have to save lots of them. If you're talking about using the iMessage content scanning, this only applies to under-13 accounts, and it only notifies parents associated with the account. If you are suggesting that Apple would be compelled to modify either of these to do something else, why would they bother with these, which are built with many constraints and multiple levels of failsafes, rather than just implement a new feature? Governments could ban end-to-end encrypted chat like iMessage. They could demand the next iOS update uploads your saved social media passwords to them. It's not very plausible that anyone would want to modify _these_ features rather than just implement something more direct and harder to evade. Governments could make these demands at any point. They do not need to wait for this feature and then spring into action. The Chinese government did regarding where iCloud data is hosted for its citizens. The US government did regarding the San Bernardino iPhone case, and Apple fought back very publicly in court that any kind of modification of the OS was unacceptable.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      The image saving is migrated by using apps that autosave received images by default. I.E WhatsApp.
    - vletal 5y ago
      sed -i "s/day/month/" parent
sixothree 5y ago
This event here marks the end of privacy as a right. It’s over.
- lstamour 5y ago
  Privacy can only be maintained by policies and regulation, not by technology. This hashing and scanning client-side, broken as it might be, is merely a technology. Technology to ensure privacy, as established by corporations, can always be legally circumvented by governments and what they allow or require by policy for their region, if said government is part of a large enough market that companies have to pay attention to it. Therefore the only solution is global agreement to privacy as a human right… and that seems unlikely right now. Runner up would be individual alternative apps for privacy (such as a camera app) but those can be banned by policy depending on the region you’re in, or potentially subject to the same rules/policies. In a democracy, if you disagree, your only option is talking to lawmakers, those who decide on policy. But again, it would likely only affect your region…
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Apple brand is privacy against other companies competing with them. Apple has always had privacy concerns.
- entropicdrifter 5y ago
  It's been over for a long while for the average consumer
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    This is definitely false. You can relatively easily live with privacy. It just takes a little bit of effort. It's over if you don't care and take no action.
    - entropicdrifter 5y ago
      The average consumer is largely unaware that they've lost their privacy and if they are aware they mostly fail to grasp the severity. The average consumer already doesn't care and has taken no action.
sam0x17 5y ago
> pre-screening Pre-screening would be the kind way of implementing this feature. They could make it so if CSAM is detected, just don't upload those files to the cloud and delete them locally. Then they are still doing due-diligence to prevent that material from entering their cloud and to remove that material from circulation, but they don't get random people arrested for false positives. When they detect hash matches on a device, they are under zero legal obligation to do anything about it because it could easily be a false positive (as the public has demonstrated on HN and elsewhere), so they'd be in the clear with this approach. This will have the effect they desire without pissing tons of people off. Instead they have taken the aggressive stance of manual review + tipping off law enforcement, which goes against their entire mantra of protecting privacy. Your phone will now be an informant against you. If you are an activist or a whistleblower, a false positive could be enough to get your device searched and seized.
- certeoun 5y ago
  @sam0x17, are you aware of this finding?: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... > Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. Especially the part with "policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans" made me think that it is not only those elites who do this or businesses. Does this mean that the government (NSA) doesn't care what we want? They are allowed to essentially patronize us because we do not know any better? Can you explain to me why the NSA is spying on us despite it being unpopular? We didn't ask to be spied on, right? I don't understand politics or the role of government anymore. I am utterly confused. Politics is so contradictory I cannot wrap my head around it. Or perhaps, I am missing something?

temp8964 5y ago

I don't understand this logic, why would authoritarian governments need to fake political dissident material as child porn for matching? The examples you quoted directly invalidate this argument. The authoritarian governments can directly ban political dissident materials, and they don't need child porn as the excuse.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ls612 5y ago
Because the real concern isn’t that; it’s something like Apple vs FBI where the fact that Apple didn’t have a capability built have them a legal edge against a government with stronger rule of law.
derefr 5y ago
iMessage is E2E-encrypted; the only scanning of the content of the network a state adversary can do is by getting Apple to implement it for them, into the iMessage client. And Apple until now have had the excuse for not doing so, that they have no mechanism built into iMessage that would or could scan for such things, nor (as the excuse would go) is such a technology likely to be either “feasible” given the E2E-encrypted nature of the communications, or “palatable” to their audience (i.e. an argument like “people buy the iDevices in part because of advertised privacy benefits, so such state-level intrusions would lead to nobody buying iDevices, so nobody would be caught by this scheme anyway, so all you’re really doing by asking us to implement it is trying to destroy our company’s share price, probably to help your domestic phone market—and our government wouldn’t take kindly to that kind of market interference. So if you don’t want to be slapped with even more Huawei-like trade sanctions, kindly go away.”) The implementation of a CSAM scanner is a clear feasibility proof for the set of technologically-equivalent capabilities (e.g. dissident-material scanning.) The fact that Apple have implemented it, and that their users have accepted it and continued to use their iDevices, means Apple has no leg to stand on when denying governments the implementation of technological enforcement for “banning political dissident materials.”
- dwaite 5y ago
  iMessage does not use the CSAM scanner, only the upload to iCloud Photos does. The iMessage feature is a local porn-ish detector on sent/received images with a click-through. It is only for children on family accounts, and if the child is under 13 a click-through is reported to the parent.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

The reason I think Apple went forward with it though is that, from their perspective, it's not like they are building a new tool for surveillance. It doesn't take many brain cells for a lawmaker to realize that they could mandate pre-screening of content. From Apple's perspective... for authoritarian governments like China or India... they are already able to mandate it and are likely to. So they shouldn't be factored into the "CSAM Scanning could be abused!" argument because it was already happening and going to happen, whether the tool exists or not. In which case, releasing the CSAM tool has only benefits for the abused and doesn't make a difference in preventing surveillance and privacy invasions because it was already going to occur. A cynical view but a possibility.

api 5y ago

The more I think about it, something that concerns me greatly is the silent use of this for political purposes. By silent I mean they don't arrest you or put you on any public lists. Instead they just gather information, lots of information, and they use it in future Cambridge Analytica style propaganda campaigns. I don't mean to imply that only Republicans would do this. After Trump's successful use of this kind of political propaganda every single political party and PR agency on the planet is working on duplicating it. Arresting people is old fashioned. Modern totalitarianism is built on disinformation, microtargeted propaganda, surveillance, and nudge theory.

certeoun 5y ago
What makes us better than China then? Our relative freedoms? What can we do about it? Princeton also did a study on America not being actually a democracy. I shared it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249091
- DaftDank 5y ago
  Sorry for the off-topic question, but I've been wondering for a while and have been too afraid to ask: what does the green name signify here?
  - zargon 5y ago
    It means they're a newly registered user. (Not sure of the exact threshold, around a few days to a week.)
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Nothing makes a country better than another, in absolute. Although, some aspects of life may be more enjoyable in one or another, depending on your taste. I think most of us can agree living in an abundance of resources (waste!) with some mild political freedom where you're allowed to say anything as long as you don't try to change anything (see: COINTELPRO, Julian Assange, etc) like in the Global North, is more pleasant to live on a daily basis than a hunger-ridden autocracy like North Korea. But even that is debatable and i'm sure many north koreans would disagree. What can we do about it? Attack the system, day by day and bits by bits. Steal what you can from the rich to redistribute to the poor. Make cooperatives, whether as employees or volunteers, so that more and more people can quit wage exploitation and start to live again, "from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs" (old anarchist saying). Form collectives for all kinds of struggles affecting you and your loved ones: anti-patriarchy, anti-racism, accessibility... Don't accept anyone claiming they're above you. We're all in this together, and those who claim to seek authority to find solutions will create more problems than they will solve, no matter their good intentions. We need to build "power to the people", not "power over the people", as anyone who has studied some history of political repression in the early Soviet Union (and other "dictatorships of the proletariat") can learn. See also Emma Goldman's "Trotsky protests too much" or "There is no communism in Russia" on this topic. Organize. Organize. Organize.

robertoandred 5y ago

Apple's system doesn't match content.

vletal 5y ago
You can do stuff like listing top K trending anti gov memes past day and blacklisting them. Thats definitely a content.
- rgovostes 5y ago
  You cannot, because the models are shipped the OS image. Apple would have to publish a new OS update every day new memes come out. If you're talking about photo library scanning, people would have to be saving the memes to their photo libraries, cloud syncing would have to be on, and they would have to save lots of them. If you're talking about using the iMessage content scanning, this only applies to under-13 accounts, and it only notifies parents associated with the account. If you are suggesting that Apple would be compelled to modify either of these to do something else, why would they bother with these, which are built with many constraints and multiple levels of failsafes, rather than just implement a new feature? Governments could ban end-to-end encrypted chat like iMessage. They could demand the next iOS update uploads your saved social media passwords to them. It's not very plausible that anyone would want to modify _these_ features rather than just implement something more direct and harder to evade. Governments could make these demands at any point. They do not need to wait for this feature and then spring into action. The Chinese government did regarding where iCloud data is hosted for its citizens. The US government did regarding the San Bernardino iPhone case, and Apple fought back very publicly in court that any kind of modification of the OS was unacceptable.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    The image saving is migrated by using apps that autosave received images by default. I.E WhatsApp.
  - vletal 5y ago
    sed -i "s/day/month/" parent

sixothree 5y ago

This event here marks the end of privacy as a right. It’s over.

lstamour 5y ago
Privacy can only be maintained by policies and regulation, not by technology. This hashing and scanning client-side, broken as it might be, is merely a technology. Technology to ensure privacy, as established by corporations, can always be legally circumvented by governments and what they allow or require by policy for their region, if said government is part of a large enough market that companies have to pay attention to it. Therefore the only solution is global agreement to privacy as a human right… and that seems unlikely right now. Runner up would be individual alternative apps for privacy (such as a camera app) but those can be banned by policy depending on the region you’re in, or potentially subject to the same rules/policies. In a democracy, if you disagree, your only option is talking to lawmakers, those who decide on policy. But again, it would likely only affect your region…
ipaddr 5y ago
Apple brand is privacy against other companies competing with them. Apple has always had privacy concerns.
entropicdrifter 5y ago
It's been over for a long while for the average consumer
- rowanG077 5y ago
  This is definitely false. You can relatively easily live with privacy. It just takes a little bit of effort. It's over if you don't care and take no action.
  - entropicdrifter 5y ago
    The average consumer is largely unaware that they've lost their privacy and if they are aware they mostly fail to grasp the severity. The average consumer already doesn't care and has taken no action.

sam0x17 5y ago

> pre-screening Pre-screening would be the kind way of implementing this feature. They could make it so if CSAM is detected, just don't upload those files to the cloud and delete them locally. Then they are still doing due-diligence to prevent that material from entering their cloud and to remove that material from circulation, but they don't get random people arrested for false positives. When they detect hash matches on a device, they are under zero legal obligation to do anything about it because it could easily be a false positive (as the public has demonstrated on HN and elsewhere), so they'd be in the clear with this approach. This will have the effect they desire without pissing tons of people off. Instead they have taken the aggressive stance of manual review + tipping off law enforcement, which goes against their entire mantra of protecting privacy. Your phone will now be an informant against you. If you are an activist or a whistleblower, a false positive could be enough to get your device searched and seized.

certeoun 5y ago
@sam0x17, are you aware of this finding?: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... > Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. Especially the part with "policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans" made me think that it is not only those elites who do this or businesses. Does this mean that the government (NSA) doesn't care what we want? They are allowed to essentially patronize us because we do not know any better? Can you explain to me why the NSA is spying on us despite it being unpopular? We didn't ask to be spied on, right? I don't understand politics or the role of government anymore. I am utterly confused. Politics is so contradictory I cannot wrap my head around it. Or perhaps, I am missing something?