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In 2007 a photo album came to light of guards at Auschwitz relaxing at a resort not far from a death camp, with gas chambers and ovens and such, the details of

In 2007 a photo album came to light of guards at Auschwitz relaxing at a resort not far from a death camp, with gas chambers and ovens and such, the details of which they were well aware. In the photos they can be seen laughing, smiling, making funny faces, singing and joking about running out of blueberries. Historians asked; how could these people be so callous? How could they disconnect and compartmentalize like that? What went wrong with that generation? Why didn’t they care? Now today we know certain things to be true. If Apple, the world’s largest company, deploys this scanning technology on a billion handsets then many offenders will be caught and they will go to jail, and as a consequence a large number of children will be spared the type of abuse that totally destroys lives. Those victims lose everything. I’d wager that for the majority of people on this forum, if they witnessed an adult sexually assault a child in person then they would intervene. Even if considerable risk was involved. There’s plenty of reward in saving a helpless child. But take that reward away, without the incentive, different colors show. Do you care so little about the wellbeing of children you’d let child rapists walk free around the community rather than let a company scan your cellphone for contraband? Perhaps we need to think less about how much we trust the government we elected or fear the potential negative future consequences of technology, and think more about being remembered as a human being that simply cared for others. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/laughing-at-auschwitz-1942/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/laughing-at-auschwitz-1942/

cbna12 5y ago
It is not clear that these measures will reduce actual criminal activities in the first place. Then, same as anyone can plant heroin in your apartment, anyone can plant "evidence" on your iPhone. Possession laws are extremely dangerous. In the simplest case, someone sends you a spam with an attachment that ends up on iCloud. Physical problems need to be addressed at the physical level, even if that means that the authorities have to get up from their comfortable chairs again and have to stop staring at monitors.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  It's worse than that IMO. Apple has (very publicly) announced that existing CSAM can get scanned for, so it's dangerous to possess it. Newly-created CSAM, however, is much safer, since until it gets added to a database these perceptual hashes will be less likely to detect it. So Apple is indirectly encouraging the creation of new CSAM. Of course Apple's scanning isn't the only thing that encourages such creation, but it's a newly publicized thing.
eloeffler 5y ago
I don't know where you're trying to go with this comparison. Do you think those guards would have been persecuted if their cameras would have surveilled their photos? Or are you implying that people that oppose Apple's indiscriminate scanning of personal data are as bad as these Nazi murderers? Child abuse happens within families in the majority of cases. People who commercialize child abuse will move to a different platform if they even If you really want to enforce policies that protect children from abuse then you'll have to speak up for improved social work, professionalized points of contact for school children and so on and so on. I'm not a professional in this field but I'm sure there is a lot of literature on this. The implication of what Apple does, on the other hand, is officially giving up on protecting their users' data. If people oppose this, they don't oppose protecting children. They oppose a policy that has no proven effectiveness against child abuse while having high potential to becoming a generalized surveillance tool.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Although I'm more skeptical than the OP, you have to realize: the idea that the majority of society currently accepts is that privacy is less important than protecting children. Are those in opposition to the scanning of personal data willing to argue against the idea that the proliferation of CSAM directly leads to child abuse? Unless there is hard evidence that refutes such a claim, nothing about Apple's policy is going to change. And not only Apple's policy, but the policies of all other tech companies and the governments of dozens of countries throughout the world that compel the creation of those policies and the related laws. Personally, I believe that those policies have good intentions, and that ending them will cause great harm to children on a significant scale.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    Please don't take this to imply I'm calling you out personally, because as far as I can tell, you're just stating a position you believe is common, not your own position. Almost all child abuse happens at the hands of parents and siblings. The simplest way to prevent it isn't to scan photos on iPhone. Most people at this point have webcams and microphones in their homes. Device vendors could simply make these always on and flag recordings of possible abuse to manually review and send to law enforcement. As far as I can tell, exactly no one thinks we should do this. But it's completely analogous. People who abuse children often have recording devices of some sort near them. Forcing those recording devices to automatically scan and detect abuse in their data streams would almost certainly prevent some amount of abuse. It is trivial to stop any and all crime with a sufficiently invasive police state, provided you redefine covert surveillance and the psychological harm done to people who know they are always being watched as not being crimes. So why do we accept some panopticons and not others? What is the actual difference here? People have a right to privacy and we have a formal process whereby law enforcement need to convince a judge of probable cause and only then can they be surveilled to find evidence against them. It has never been acceptable in American jurisprudence to just surveil everyone in case they might be a criminal. When did that change? Obviously, there is a tradeoff here. We allow people privacy and dominion in their homes. As a result, stronger people who live with weaker people quite often abuse them. Great harm to children and spouses and girlfriends and pets on a significant scale absolutely happens because we allow presumption of innocence and privacy in one's own home. But that has always been considered worth it.
LocalH 5y ago
Do you care so little about personal liberty that you'll allow anyone to erode it as long as they say they're doing it "for the children"?
- threshold 5y ago
  I think we’re a pretty innovative generation and we can build technologies that strike a careful balance between protecting personal liberties and keeping our children safe. Both are highly important. The ‘all or nothing’ ‘here comes the 1984 dystopia’ argument is fear mongering. Let’s give Apple a chance and see if they can pull it off.
  - LocalH 5y ago
    The issue is not what people will do today. The issue is what future generations will do. Are you comfortable with handing the keys to complete dystopia over to people who haven't even been born yet?
    - threshold 5y ago
      Future generations will inherit a very different world with new challenges, and this is the very least of them. It wasn’t that long ago biometrics were being called the doorway to dystopia and the mark of the devil. Now fingerprint scanners and facial recognition hardware is in every device and we all benefit from the convenience. Apple didn’t create an online database of our faces and fingerprints and give it to the US government so everywhere we go and everything we touch gets recorded forever. Why would they need to when we all posted our photographs on Facebook for the world to download anyway? See you’re actually dealing with superstition and prophecy of doom. Those memetic structures rely on genetic behavioral traits derived from when religious influence created selective pressure. Those psychological hooks are being commandeered by stories/memes that mimic superstition and religion. So I’m saying you don’t have objectivity.
foxfluff 5y ago
If the existence of iCloud correlated with a surge in child abuse, maybe you'd have a point. Believe it or not, child abuse predates the iPhone. And "has nude pics" -> "is rapist" isn't exactly sound logic.

cbna12 5y ago

It is not clear that these measures will reduce actual criminal activities in the first place. Then, same as anyone can plant heroin in your apartment, anyone can plant "evidence" on your iPhone. Possession laws are extremely dangerous. In the simplest case, someone sends you a spam with an attachment that ends up on iCloud. Physical problems need to be addressed at the physical level, even if that means that the authorities have to get up from their comfortable chairs again and have to stop staring at monitors.

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
It's worse than that IMO. Apple has (very publicly) announced that existing CSAM can get scanned for, so it's dangerous to possess it. Newly-created CSAM, however, is much safer, since until it gets added to a database these perceptual hashes will be less likely to detect it. So Apple is indirectly encouraging the creation of new CSAM. Of course Apple's scanning isn't the only thing that encourages such creation, but it's a newly publicized thing.

eloeffler 5y ago

I don't know where you're trying to go with this comparison. Do you think those guards would have been persecuted if their cameras would have surveilled their photos? Or are you implying that people that oppose Apple's indiscriminate scanning of personal data are as bad as these Nazi murderers? Child abuse happens within families in the majority of cases. People who commercialize child abuse will move to a different platform if they even If you really want to enforce policies that protect children from abuse then you'll have to speak up for improved social work, professionalized points of contact for school children and so on and so on. I'm not a professional in this field but I'm sure there is a lot of literature on this. The implication of what Apple does, on the other hand, is officially giving up on protecting their users' data. If people oppose this, they don't oppose protecting children. They oppose a policy that has no proven effectiveness against child abuse while having high potential to becoming a generalized surveillance tool.

nonbirithm 5y ago
Although I'm more skeptical than the OP, you have to realize: the idea that the majority of society currently accepts is that privacy is less important than protecting children. Are those in opposition to the scanning of personal data willing to argue against the idea that the proliferation of CSAM directly leads to child abuse? Unless there is hard evidence that refutes such a claim, nothing about Apple's policy is going to change. And not only Apple's policy, but the policies of all other tech companies and the governments of dozens of countries throughout the world that compel the creation of those policies and the related laws. Personally, I believe that those policies have good intentions, and that ending them will cause great harm to children on a significant scale.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  Please don't take this to imply I'm calling you out personally, because as far as I can tell, you're just stating a position you believe is common, not your own position. Almost all child abuse happens at the hands of parents and siblings. The simplest way to prevent it isn't to scan photos on iPhone. Most people at this point have webcams and microphones in their homes. Device vendors could simply make these always on and flag recordings of possible abuse to manually review and send to law enforcement. As far as I can tell, exactly no one thinks we should do this. But it's completely analogous. People who abuse children often have recording devices of some sort near them. Forcing those recording devices to automatically scan and detect abuse in their data streams would almost certainly prevent some amount of abuse. It is trivial to stop any and all crime with a sufficiently invasive police state, provided you redefine covert surveillance and the psychological harm done to people who know they are always being watched as not being crimes. So why do we accept some panopticons and not others? What is the actual difference here? People have a right to privacy and we have a formal process whereby law enforcement need to convince a judge of probable cause and only then can they be surveilled to find evidence against them. It has never been acceptable in American jurisprudence to just surveil everyone in case they might be a criminal. When did that change? Obviously, there is a tradeoff here. We allow people privacy and dominion in their homes. As a result, stronger people who live with weaker people quite often abuse them. Great harm to children and spouses and girlfriends and pets on a significant scale absolutely happens because we allow presumption of innocence and privacy in one's own home. But that has always been considered worth it.

LocalH 5y ago

Do you care so little about personal liberty that you'll allow anyone to erode it as long as they say they're doing it "for the children"?

threshold 5y ago
I think we’re a pretty innovative generation and we can build technologies that strike a careful balance between protecting personal liberties and keeping our children safe. Both are highly important. The ‘all or nothing’ ‘here comes the 1984 dystopia’ argument is fear mongering. Let’s give Apple a chance and see if they can pull it off.
- LocalH 5y ago
  The issue is not what people will do today. The issue is what future generations will do. Are you comfortable with handing the keys to complete dystopia over to people who haven't even been born yet?
  - threshold 5y ago
    Future generations will inherit a very different world with new challenges, and this is the very least of them. It wasn’t that long ago biometrics were being called the doorway to dystopia and the mark of the devil. Now fingerprint scanners and facial recognition hardware is in every device and we all benefit from the convenience. Apple didn’t create an online database of our faces and fingerprints and give it to the US government so everywhere we go and everything we touch gets recorded forever. Why would they need to when we all posted our photographs on Facebook for the world to download anyway? See you’re actually dealing with superstition and prophecy of doom. Those memetic structures rely on genetic behavioral traits derived from when religious influence created selective pressure. Those psychological hooks are being commandeered by stories/memes that mimic superstition and religion. So I’m saying you don’t have objectivity.

foxfluff 5y ago

If the existence of iCloud correlated with a surge in child abuse, maybe you'd have a point. Believe it or not, child abuse predates the iPhone. And "has nude pics" -> "is rapist" isn't exactly sound logic.