> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28097508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28097508 Apple's system and ones like it likely create an incentive to abus

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28097508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28097508 Apple's system and ones like it likely create an incentive to abuse more children I'm surprised more people haven't noticed this counterproductive dynamic. A static database of "burnt" CSAM helps create an extra premium for new images – either via expert camouflaging of older images, or the creation of fresh images not yet in the NCMEC's database. Is 'whack a mole' against old imagery a game worth playing, if it creates incentives for more victimization? Further: while the NCMEC database is supposedly secret, knowing its contents would be quite valuable to CSAM rings. The sorts of law-enforcement agencies involved, & quasi-governmental NGOs like NCMEC, often have poor computer security, or face insider threats from the very criminals they target. Any level of serecy the database is alleged to have should be considered conjectural, contingent, and fragile. In particular, there seems a strange mismatch of "millions" of automated reports each year from Facebook (& maybe others) to NCMEC, with hardly any followup arrests/convictions to follow. (Maybe: zero?) Might CSAM rings be using throwaway accounts to bulk-probe the NCMEC database, in an 'oracle attack', to deduce its contents? Might Apple's system increase the potential avenues for such probes? Fill an old Aple device with CSAM until you see it phone-home with an upload of thumbnails for Apple personnel to review. Apple may have created a system that, while effectively unreviewable by legitimate researchers because of Apple's secrecy of methods & databases, & the legal peril of probing its behavior with actual CSAM, still lets criminal researchers learn a lot to help craft their illegal behavior. But hey, Apple then gets to assuage grandstanding Senators & Attorneys General with the boast: "We're firing as many nonsense unprosecutable events at NCMEC as Facebook does. We're doing something!"