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Apple does not report you to law enforcement, as this article claims. The article also ignores human review. The article compares scanning to facial/object/sce

Apple does not report you to law enforcement, as this article claims. The article also ignores human review. The article compares scanning to facial/object/scene recognition, which it can’t do. The article talks about making it easier to find who took a photo, which is not the problem the Jan 6 sleuths were trying to solve. The article worries about China, but ignores that matchable photos must appear in multiple jurisdictions’ databases. The article also ignores the several points of third-party auditing and several layers of human reviews.

jcims 5y ago
What do you think the public reception would’ve been if this technology had been available last year, and multiple jurisdictions published hashes of images from the riots at the capitol? Or maybe, more directly, what do you think Apple employees reviewing these hits would do if those types of images started showing up in the triage list.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  What exactly do you think publishing hashes of Jan 6 pics would achieve? The photographers posted them publicly on Facebook and Twitter. That’s how we have them in the first place. The problem wasn’t knowing who took the photos, it was knowing who was in the photos. And that needs facial detection, which this system can’t do.
  - jcims 5y ago
    It would achieve exactly what the system is designed to do, mine personal devices for photos that authorities are aware of. Just because a lot of people were sloppy doesn’t mean every person was. However, my primary point is that there is no possibility of a technical control over the scope of the program. It’s a policy decision and is subject to explicit expansion or collusion/parallel construction.
    - robertoandred 5y ago
      Are you referring to non-sloppy people who didn't post their pictures? In that case, their pictures couldn't be found anyway.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    You can quickly build relational graphs if you know which devices contain media that shares hashes. Sure, theoretical danger and not how this is implemented as hashes are just compared locally. This is different from accessing peoples contact lists they upload anyway because you want to group people in information bubbles that not necessarily correspond with real life contacts. This is very valuable info, isn't Google trying something similar?
    - robertoandred 5y ago
      Hmm? Again, who took the photo isn't a secret. They happily posted them publicly.
jrm4 5y ago
No point you have made here suggests to me that we should worry or fight any less.
breput 5y ago
> Apple does not report you to law enforcement, as this article claims. The article also ignores human review. They do report you to a private organization who is primarily funded from the US Government and has zero interest in not passing along any information about potential child abusers. If you believe Apple, there will be a human review element. What sort of people would go after this kind of job? I can't imagine. And this group will also have a huge incentive to err on the side of reporting any potential abuse content. Edit: A legitimate, almost definitely "wants to the the right thing" private organization in the US. Have we heard about who gets notified in other jurisdictions?
- robertoandred 5y ago
  There are human reviewers at Google, Facebook, and every other organization that has to moderate content. Not a novel idea. And why would the NCMEC give law enforcement info about people they know are innocent?
  - breput 5y ago
    > There are human reviewers at Google, Facebook, and every other organization that has to moderate content. Not a novel idea. For unencrypted content uploaded to their servers. That makes it a "Them Problem". Apple's approach is to scan before it is uploaded (and like the article says, "for now" - this can change with only a configuration change for all we know). And this could be a per-jurisdiction option and again, no one would know. You have a point that this is not completely novel problem but do we have actual data on the number of real vs. false positives on the "everyone but Apple" group? Matthew Green probably would know but he doesn't[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1428382952858083332 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14283829528580833...
    - breput 5y ago
      There is an website[0] set up already to show to show how easy it is to find collisions with a photo of a beagle. The left side photos are all apparently kitten photos but what if it was a photo of the Nirvana baby and, as a human reviewer, you had no access to the right side photo because it was just a hash in an anonymous database? [0] https://thishashcollisionisnotporn.com/ https://thishashcollisionisnotporn.com/
diebeforei485 5y ago
NCMEC is a government entity[1] with unique law enforcement powers. 1. https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/14-3265/14-3265-2016-08-05.pdf https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/14-32...
- robertoandred 5y ago
  As your link states, its “law enforcement powers” are basically that it’s allowed to handle CSAM. NCMEC isn’t going to arrest you and charge you with a crime.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    This is a distinction without a difference, because the FBI, US Marshals, and others have agents who work full-time only with NCMEC, literally in the same office building. > Representatives of multiple law enforcement agencies have offices in the NCMEC building, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Postal Inspection Service ...
JimDabell 5y ago
There seems to be several misunderstandings in this article. For instance: > Your phone will run your images through NeuralHash, and compare to the list of forbidden hash codes. If there’s a match, some data will be uploaded to Apple’s servers when you upload the image. Your phone doesn’t know whether there is a match or not. There is no “if match then upload”. The safety voucher is attached to every iCloud upload, not just the matches. This is why Apple can’t just flip a setting and scan all your images regardless of whether you add them to iCloud or not. If they wanted to run this against all your images, they’d have to either upload all your images to iCloud (easy to spot; difficult for them to do without consent) or change the way this mechanism works (not “just flipping a setting”; if they wanted to scan all your images, then why build it this way in the first place?).
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Apple does not report you to law enforcement Technically, but not substantively, true since they report to the NCMEC, a government-funded government-established “private nonprofit” that is delegated a whole bunch of jobs for government, including gathering info on CSAM and distributing it to law enforcement for DoJ and processing child return/access requests under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction for the Department of State.

jcims 5y ago

What do you think the public reception would’ve been if this technology had been available last year, and multiple jurisdictions published hashes of images from the riots at the capitol? Or maybe, more directly, what do you think Apple employees reviewing these hits would do if those types of images started showing up in the triage list.

robertoandred 5y ago
What exactly do you think publishing hashes of Jan 6 pics would achieve? The photographers posted them publicly on Facebook and Twitter. That’s how we have them in the first place. The problem wasn’t knowing who took the photos, it was knowing who was in the photos. And that needs facial detection, which this system can’t do.
- jcims 5y ago
  It would achieve exactly what the system is designed to do, mine personal devices for photos that authorities are aware of. Just because a lot of people were sloppy doesn’t mean every person was. However, my primary point is that there is no possibility of a technical control over the scope of the program. It’s a policy decision and is subject to explicit expansion or collusion/parallel construction.
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    Are you referring to non-sloppy people who didn't post their pictures? In that case, their pictures couldn't be found anyway.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  You can quickly build relational graphs if you know which devices contain media that shares hashes. Sure, theoretical danger and not how this is implemented as hashes are just compared locally. This is different from accessing peoples contact lists they upload anyway because you want to group people in information bubbles that not necessarily correspond with real life contacts. This is very valuable info, isn't Google trying something similar?
  - robertoandred 5y ago
    Hmm? Again, who took the photo isn't a secret. They happily posted them publicly.

jrm4 5y ago

No point you have made here suggests to me that we should worry or fight any less.

breput 5y ago

> Apple does not report you to law enforcement, as this article claims. The article also ignores human review. They do report you to a private organization who is primarily funded from the US Government and has zero interest in not passing along any information about potential child abusers. If you believe Apple, there will be a human review element. What sort of people would go after this kind of job? I can't imagine. And this group will also have a huge incentive to err on the side of reporting any potential abuse content. Edit: A legitimate, almost definitely "wants to the the right thing" private organization in the US. Have we heard about who gets notified in other jurisdictions?

robertoandred 5y ago
There are human reviewers at Google, Facebook, and every other organization that has to moderate content. Not a novel idea. And why would the NCMEC give law enforcement info about people they know are innocent?
- breput 5y ago
  > There are human reviewers at Google, Facebook, and every other organization that has to moderate content. Not a novel idea. For unencrypted content uploaded to their servers. That makes it a "Them Problem". Apple's approach is to scan before it is uploaded (and like the article says, "for now" - this can change with only a configuration change for all we know). And this could be a per-jurisdiction option and again, no one would know. You have a point that this is not completely novel problem but do we have actual data on the number of real vs. false positives on the "everyone but Apple" group? Matthew Green probably would know but he doesn't[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1428382952858083332 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14283829528580833...
  - breput 5y ago
    There is an website[0] set up already to show to show how easy it is to find collisions with a photo of a beagle. The left side photos are all apparently kitten photos but what if it was a photo of the Nirvana baby and, as a human reviewer, you had no access to the right side photo because it was just a hash in an anonymous database? [0] https://thishashcollisionisnotporn.com/ https://thishashcollisionisnotporn.com/

diebeforei485 5y ago

NCMEC is a government entity[1] with unique law enforcement powers. 1. https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/14-3265/14-3265-2016-08-05.pdf https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/14-32...

robertoandred 5y ago
As your link states, its “law enforcement powers” are basically that it’s allowed to handle CSAM. NCMEC isn’t going to arrest you and charge you with a crime.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  This is a distinction without a difference, because the FBI, US Marshals, and others have agents who work full-time only with NCMEC, literally in the same office building. > Representatives of multiple law enforcement agencies have offices in the NCMEC building, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Postal Inspection Service ...

JimDabell 5y ago

There seems to be several misunderstandings in this article. For instance: > Your phone will run your images through NeuralHash, and compare to the list of forbidden hash codes. If there’s a match, some data will be uploaded to Apple’s servers when you upload the image. Your phone doesn’t know whether there is a match or not. There is no “if match then upload”. The safety voucher is attached to every iCloud upload, not just the matches. This is why Apple can’t just flip a setting and scan all your images regardless of whether you add them to iCloud or not. If they wanted to run this against all your images, they’d have to either upload all your images to iCloud (easy to spot; difficult for them to do without consent) or change the way this mechanism works (not “just flipping a setting”; if they wanted to scan all your images, then why build it this way in the first place?).

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Apple does not report you to law enforcement Technically, but not substantively, true since they report to the NCMEC, a government-funded government-established “private nonprofit” that is delegated a whole bunch of jobs for government, including gathering info on CSAM and distributing it to law enforcement for DoJ and processing child return/access requests under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction for the Department of State.