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> On-device scanning is desirable What are the benefits? It would tell Apple (and hence law enforcement) who had copies of existing, known CSAM. I guess that w

by nomilk 4y ago

> On-device scanning is desirable What are the benefits? It would tell Apple (and hence law enforcement) who had copies of existing, known CSAM. I guess that would help catch such people. But such individuals would also have strong incentive to simply turn of iCloud to completely avoid detection. What are the risks? Apple employees rummaging through your photos (after 30 NeuraHash matches, a human reviewer would go in and check your photos, and as some analysts pointed out, hash matches can be spurious, that is, completely different photos can have the same hash by coincidence). Over time, would the program expand beyond CSAM? Consider the intersection of countries in which Apple sells iPhones and countries that criminalise being LGBTQ [1] [1] https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/ https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-crimin...

lathiat 4y ago
All of your concerns are valid for "should Apple do CSAM scanning at all" and I share those. However my argument is specfically to the OPs point that they should just scan the photos "in the cloud" and not "on your device". But the reality is they were only scanning photos that were being uploaded to the cloud, they were just doing it on your device so that Apple doesn't need to have a server that can decrypt your photos to do it in the cloud. Which is what most others (including Google) do.
JimDabell 4y ago
> as some analysts pointed out, hash matches can be spurious, that is, completely different photos can have the same hash by coincidence I think you might have misinterpreted whatever those analysts wrote. The chances of thirty images all coincidentally matching both perceptual hashes is essentially nil.
theshrike79 4y ago
The human reviewer can't "go in and check your photos". The human reviewer would've gotten "reduced quality images" of the matches and would make a decision based on those. And yes, people could've just turned off iCloud. That's how encryption works.

by nomilk 4y ago

lathiat 4y ago

All of your concerns are valid for "should Apple do CSAM scanning at all" and I share those. However my argument is specfically to the OPs point that they should just scan the photos "in the cloud" and not "on your device". But the reality is they were only scanning photos that were being uploaded to the cloud, they were just doing it on your device so that Apple doesn't need to have a server that can decrypt your photos to do it in the cloud. Which is what most others (including Google) do.

JimDabell 4y ago

> as some analysts pointed out, hash matches can be spurious, that is, completely different photos can have the same hash by coincidence I think you might have misinterpreted whatever those analysts wrote. The chances of thirty images all coincidentally matching both perceptual hashes is essentially nil.

theshrike79 4y ago

The human reviewer can't "go in and check your photos". The human reviewer would've gotten "reduced quality images" of the matches and would make a decision based on those. And yes, people could've just turned off iCloud. That's how encryption works.