4 ms·

Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and r

Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. This application is optional you download and install it if you want it. Who in the right mind would download and install such an application that runs in background , uses your resources and reports you to the police, no advantages for you. So the equation is clear, the user has nothing to gain, a lot to lose if the system triggers and the user also needs to blindly trust(no way to check the hashes or the binaries) that the system will not be abused. If you are a person that strongly thinks Apple should handle CSAM then ask them why they did nothing until now? They collaborate with FBI/NSA on other stuff.

GeekyBear 5y ago
> Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. >The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.) https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-private-not-according-fine-print-1c8881731 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr... Google has been scanning everything in your account for the past decade as well. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple will only scan photos you post to iCloud Photos, and their system is set up in such a way that they cant see the scan results until a threshold of 30 matches is met, to protect you from being flagged to the government for a few false positives. (They do have a human verify there is a real issue, and that you haven't just somehow posted more than 30 false positives to iCloud) Google and Microsoft's systems have no such protection. Anyone who can issue a subpoena can maliciously use false positive data against you. We've seen the data trove companies like Google retain used to imprison innocent people before. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...
- simion314 5y ago
  >You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. You either do not understand or trying to avoid the question Is there a TurnMeToThePolice app for linux or windows ? and who installs it for free ? For server side makes 100% sense , I use Facebook,Gmail, Dropbox for free so I expect they will scan shit for stuff. For sharing files I am also expect that cloud providers will also scan and respond for copyright violation, makes sense , for stuff you post on Facebook I also expect they scan for porn or other stuff that is against their TOS. But it would be retarded to install something to scan my local files and report me to the police if I had nothing t6o gain from it , so you have already the iPhone, you paid for it, if Apple wants you to allow them to install this shit you should think, why? what I have to gain? Do I trust Apple and my government, what about the future government and the future Apple? The equation is that you gain nothing and the future is unclear so it is 100% a FACT that is a net negative for the user. Still nobody found an answer why Apple did not scan iCloud for CSAM? And why are they starting now with this "think different" way of doing it. If you are a think of the children person you should denounce the fact they did nothing so far , if you are a privacy kind of person you should ask why Apple is giving up now on privacy.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    > Still nobody found an answer why Apple did not scan iCloud for CSAM? They do.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      Nope. Apple prefers to keep that sort of data private, and a kiddie porn false positive is not the sort of data that should be vulnerable to misuse by anyone who issues a dragnet warrant. Google's data hordes are already widely abused today. >Google says geofence warrants make up one-quarter of all US demands https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/google-geofence-warrants/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/google-geofence-warrants/ Another example would be that Google scans all your photos to identify the people in them and retains that data on their servers, while Apple chooses to perform those sorts of actions on your own device without uploading it to their servers.
zo1 5y ago
I would just like to point out without diverging or causing too much of a "flame war", that this same line of thinking is the one us Libertarians point to regarding "voluntary" things like taxes. I.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? My overall point being: To the government, this is the same. It's a power imbalance and they don't see anything different because they think they have the right. We've opened up that can of worms a long time ago and it's important for us to realize it instead of continuously living in pretend-land where we think we have a "choice" over what government does.
- simion314 5y ago
  You gain something from taxes, like police to protect your big pile of money and villa. But from this scanning you gain nothing , Apple could have scan iCloud and caught the evil guys already if they exist so you can't claim that the society benefits from this when it could have implemented exactly like Google does it a few years ago.
- dudeman13 5y ago
  >.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? Those who would naturally cooperate in the prisoner dilema, those who believe society is better by having a government instead of going full anarchy, those who think humanity is better off if the strong protects the weak. So only the tiny subset of people who care about people instead of those who adhere to the "fuck you, I got mine" point of view.
  - zo1 5y ago
    I really didn't want to get into this, I just wanted to point out how we've already "breached" that whole "if you make this optional will people choose it" line. You're now attaching a moral argument about how only the "fuck you, I got mine" people will say no to taxes. And as a side note: I, as a libertarian/an-cap, would be perfectly fine with paying for all manner of things (with taxes) if I could choose how it was spent to some nominal degree. Here we are in a discussion about government surveillance, which would probably be a non-issue if we all just had the ability to slide that slider next to the "NSA Contribution" heading in our tax-contribution forms.
onethought 5y ago
The gain is, an Apple user can assume that Apple is not scanning their photo library for csam. Because the only time Apple start scanning is if the device gets 30 positive hash matches. Where as if they used another service, all their photos will be scanned all the time. There is a clear privacy gain here
- smolder 5y ago
  You're using the word "scanning" strangely here. Most people would consider the perceptual hash checking of all images to be "scanning".
  - onethought 5y ago
    A hash is a string comparison. No details (privacy) are leaked during that comparison. When your phone tells you it only has 1Gb of storage left, do you consider that “on device scanning”?
    - smolder 5y ago
      Checking an image against perceptual hashes is a little more than a string comparison, but that's moot. Also, "scanning" does not require anything be leaked for someone to call it that, which is again, almost definitely what the person you replied to meant when they used the word. Your insistence here that the word doesn't fit that situation is peculiar. Reporting filesystem stats is simply a bad analogy, it's not like checking image contents against perceptual hashes. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/scanning https://www.thefreedictionary.com/scanning 2. [Computers] To search (stored data) automatically for specific data.
- simion314 5y ago
  Hashes are generated for all images(I think some thumbnail is also generated ), then sent to Apple that checks each hash vs the secret database, the if(matches>=30) code runs on the server too. I would say the scan is on the device and the check is on the server to make sure the secret database of hashes does not get leaked. The image is never encrypted and if FBI (or the corresponding national agency)comes with a warrant your iCloud data will be fully readable.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> Imagine you use some OS, say Ubuntu or Windows and the company behind it canonical/Microsoft creates an application that scans your files for illegal shit and reports you to the government. You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. >The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.) https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-private-not-according-fine-print-1c8881731 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr... Google has been scanning everything in your account for the past decade as well. >a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-led-to-a-mans-arrest-for-child-porn-was-not-a-privacy-violation/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le... Apple will only scan photos you post to iCloud Photos, and their system is set up in such a way that they cant see the scan results until a threshold of 30 matches is met, to protect you from being flagged to the government for a few false positives. (They do have a human verify there is a real issue, and that you haven't just somehow posted more than 30 false positives to iCloud) Google and Microsoft's systems have no such protection. Anyone who can issue a subpoena can maliciously use false positive data against you. We've seen the data trove companies like Google retain used to imprison innocent people before. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre...

simion314 5y ago
>You don't have to imagine it. This has literally been happening for the past decade. You either do not understand or trying to avoid the question Is there a TurnMeToThePolice app for linux or windows ? and who installs it for free ? For server side makes 100% sense , I use Facebook,Gmail, Dropbox for free so I expect they will scan shit for stuff. For sharing files I am also expect that cloud providers will also scan and respond for copyright violation, makes sense , for stuff you post on Facebook I also expect they scan for porn or other stuff that is against their TOS. But it would be retarded to install something to scan my local files and report me to the police if I had nothing t6o gain from it , so you have already the iPhone, you paid for it, if Apple wants you to allow them to install this shit you should think, why? what I have to gain? Do I trust Apple and my government, what about the future government and the future Apple? The equation is that you gain nothing and the future is unclear so it is 100% a FACT that is a net negative for the user. Still nobody found an answer why Apple did not scan iCloud for CSAM? And why are they starting now with this "think different" way of doing it. If you are a think of the children person you should denounce the fact they did nothing so far , if you are a privacy kind of person you should ask why Apple is giving up now on privacy.
- sbuk 5y ago
  > Still nobody found an answer why Apple did not scan iCloud for CSAM? They do.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    Nope. Apple prefers to keep that sort of data private, and a kiddie porn false positive is not the sort of data that should be vulnerable to misuse by anyone who issues a dragnet warrant. Google's data hordes are already widely abused today. >Google says geofence warrants make up one-quarter of all US demands https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/google-geofence-warrants/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/google-geofence-warrants/ Another example would be that Google scans all your photos to identify the people in them and retains that data on their servers, while Apple chooses to perform those sorts of actions on your own device without uploading it to their servers.

zo1 5y ago

I would just like to point out without diverging or causing too much of a "flame war", that this same line of thinking is the one us Libertarians point to regarding "voluntary" things like taxes. I.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? My overall point being: To the government, this is the same. It's a power imbalance and they don't see anything different because they think they have the right. We've opened up that can of worms a long time ago and it's important for us to realize it instead of continuously living in pretend-land where we think we have a "choice" over what government does.

simion314 5y ago
You gain something from taxes, like police to protect your big pile of money and villa. But from this scanning you gain nothing , Apple could have scan iCloud and caught the evil guys already if they exist so you can't claim that the society benefits from this when it could have implemented exactly like Google does it a few years ago.
dudeman13 5y ago
>.e. If you asked people to voluntarily sign up for taxes, "who in their right mind would" do so? Those who would naturally cooperate in the prisoner dilema, those who believe society is better by having a government instead of going full anarchy, those who think humanity is better off if the strong protects the weak. So only the tiny subset of people who care about people instead of those who adhere to the "fuck you, I got mine" point of view.
- zo1 5y ago
  I really didn't want to get into this, I just wanted to point out how we've already "breached" that whole "if you make this optional will people choose it" line. You're now attaching a moral argument about how only the "fuck you, I got mine" people will say no to taxes. And as a side note: I, as a libertarian/an-cap, would be perfectly fine with paying for all manner of things (with taxes) if I could choose how it was spent to some nominal degree. Here we are in a discussion about government surveillance, which would probably be a non-issue if we all just had the ability to slide that slider next to the "NSA Contribution" heading in our tax-contribution forms.

onethought 5y ago

The gain is, an Apple user can assume that Apple is not scanning their photo library for csam. Because the only time Apple start scanning is if the device gets 30 positive hash matches. Where as if they used another service, all their photos will be scanned all the time. There is a clear privacy gain here

smolder 5y ago
You're using the word "scanning" strangely here. Most people would consider the perceptual hash checking of all images to be "scanning".
- onethought 5y ago
  A hash is a string comparison. No details (privacy) are leaked during that comparison. When your phone tells you it only has 1Gb of storage left, do you consider that “on device scanning”?
  - smolder 5y ago
    Checking an image against perceptual hashes is a little more than a string comparison, but that's moot. Also, "scanning" does not require anything be leaked for someone to call it that, which is again, almost definitely what the person you replied to meant when they used the word. Your insistence here that the word doesn't fit that situation is peculiar. Reporting filesystem stats is simply a bad analogy, it's not like checking image contents against perceptual hashes. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/scanning https://www.thefreedictionary.com/scanning 2. [Computers] To search (stored data) automatically for specific data.
simion314 5y ago
Hashes are generated for all images(I think some thumbnail is also generated ), then sent to Apple that checks each hash vs the secret database, the if(matches>=30) code runs on the server too. I would say the scan is on the device and the check is on the server to make sure the secret database of hashes does not get leaked. The image is never encrypted and if FBI (or the corresponding national agency)comes with a warrant your iCloud data will be fully readable.