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Sounds alright to me. Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, and terrorists and paedophiles using end-to-end encrypted

by finned 3y ago

Sounds alright to me. Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, and terrorists and paedophiles using end-to-end encrypted chat systems to cover their tracks. This seems like a reasonable compromise that won't affect most users, while also not mandating any specific technical solution, leaving the implementation up to subject matter experts. These type of restrictions are always going to be somewhat difficult to fully realise due to the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet, but at least the UK is trying to do what's right for its own citizens. Which is quite an unusual yet welcome action for the current Government.

__alexs 3y ago
Subject matter experts have unanimously said such a technology is not possible to implement safely.
- finned 3y ago
  [dead]
  - __alexs 3y ago
    I was obviously being rhetorical. "Fixable in practice" is really not a sufficient rebuttal when the people tasked with actually building this stuff have given clear and specific reasons why building this stuff safely is impossible. That the government think it's totally fine if the government have the power to listen in on everything is not especially surprising. The problem is most people don't actually trust the government with this power.
    - finned 3y ago
      Pointing out that specific objections are fixable in practice is just a summary point - they wrote a detailed paper on this topic, which is worth reading in full: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf Do you have a reasonable counterargument to any of the points they make in this work?
      - __alexs 3y ago
        And yet Apple killed CSAM scanning months after this paper was published. Perhaps because the paper does nothing (and admits as much) to counter the issues that Apple raised about actually building and operating such a technology safely. I am familiar with this area of technology but by no means an expert. However the vast majority of people who appear to actually have experience building and running these systems all seem to disagree with the government that this is actually cool and safe and generally give much better explanations as to why that's the case than the government do. And so I side with them. Citing more vague government sources that don't directly contradict the work of the people building the things isn't a very convincing argument to me.
        finned 3y ago
        Apple makes its choices for commercial reasons, so it will be interesting to see if they choose to introduce their client-side CSAM scanning for UK customers, or pull iMessage from this market like they threatened (which was probably an empty threat). If they go for the former, and implement their system in line with the principles that Levy and Robinson set out, would you change your mind? As this would be an indication that actually it can work in the field, if the political will is there.
        __alexs 3y ago
        No it would be an indication that Apple like money more than the privacy and safety of their users which would not be entirely surprising.
      - pera 3y ago
        The paper you are citing does not support your argument here, I would suggest you to read for instance section 6.3 where they include some of the common concerns regarding client-side scanning, or the conclusion of section 7 ("Why AI and Machine Learning are not the answer").
        __alexs 3y ago
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Spam is an interesting choice, given that the US Republicans are having a lawsuit about Google spam filtering blocking their campaign emails. Regardless of the merits of the particular case, the possibility of doing so exists and this is bad enough even when it is a private company and isn't being kept secret by court order like LavaBit, nor likewise when we have evidence of agents misusing their powers to spy on people they fancy AKA "LOVEINT", nor likewise when we have evidence of legally required technological measures becoming abusable by hackers e.g. the downgrade attacks to the 40-bit "export grade" cyphers from the 90s still popping up in the 2010s.
neilalexander 3y ago
> Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, and terrorists and paedophiles using end-to-end encrypted chat systems to cover their tracks When you come up with an approach that doesn't involve breaking the system for literally everyone else, please let us know. There isn't anyone who would dispute that these issues are serious but hammering backdoors (of which clientside scanning is effectively one) into encrypted chat systems is not and never will be the answer. It is not the case that if you put a backdoor into WhatsApp that the criminals suddenly have nowhere to go. They will simply move to lesser-known and possibly even more effective platforms instead, ones that are outside the scope of regulation. Perhaps they'll just build their own. It isn't exactly difficult to do — all of the necessary pieces are out there as open-source. What we absolutely cannot accept is that all of the mass-market platforms become broken to the point that everyone else, including the less technical users who don't know about the alternatives, can no longer trust them.
Moldoteck 3y ago
With this type of measures, uk's internet will be just as safe as china's!!! What an achievement! Uk should also implement social score, this will also be done to protect the citizens from dangers! Maybe even some camps where people that are potentially dangerous/unwanted (afaik party said this about migrants, one of the reasons reason Brexit happened) would be isolated from good citizens. This internet act is also a perfect first step for detecting ill intented journalists, how they dare uncover corruption schemes, everything parliament does is for their citizens! Long live the queen!(ups) Long live the king(I mean parliament)!
kwhitefoot 3y ago
> Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, Does it? At least some other countries don't seem to have a problem with children accessing pornography. I don't know if the children simply don't do it or that they are sufficiently well educated and secure in their society that they can see it and understand that real life is not like that.
- smcn 3y ago
  Children in the UK are born without parents, so it's a valid point by OP.
- ComposedPattern 3y ago
  Children, who don't experience sexual desire, are not interested in pornography. Whenever I encountered lewd content as a child, my reaction was always "uggh... adults are so gross" and I'd skip over it if I could. Children don't seek out pornography, and they spend almost all their time online on platforms like YouTube that don't host pornography that they might see inadvertently. And if they did see porn for whatever reason – why is this supposed to be such a big deal? As far as I can tell, the harm that comes from a child seeing porn is that they'll be grossed out. It seems roughly as bad as seeing the corpse of a rabbit that was run over by a car – a shame, but not something that we need to Do Something About. People act like encountering sexual content will somehow warp children's minds and make them homosexuals or deviants or something, but as far as I know this isn't based on any scientific evidence. It's entirely about adults' feelings.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I guess the fundamental is that pornography is embarrassing for the adults (as in, the collective of adults). So we try to hide it?
Peroni 3y ago
>Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content The solution for this exists. It's the same solution that prevents young children from accessing a bottle of bleach and drinking it. Parental responsibility and education.

by finned 3y ago

__alexs 3y ago

Subject matter experts have unanimously said such a technology is not possible to implement safely.

finned 3y ago
[dead]
- __alexs 3y ago
  I was obviously being rhetorical. "Fixable in practice" is really not a sufficient rebuttal when the people tasked with actually building this stuff have given clear and specific reasons why building this stuff safely is impossible. That the government think it's totally fine if the government have the power to listen in on everything is not especially surprising. The problem is most people don't actually trust the government with this power.
  - finned 3y ago
    Pointing out that specific objections are fixable in practice is just a summary point - they wrote a detailed paper on this topic, which is worth reading in full: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf Do you have a reasonable counterargument to any of the points they make in this work?
    - __alexs 3y ago
      And yet Apple killed CSAM scanning months after this paper was published. Perhaps because the paper does nothing (and admits as much) to counter the issues that Apple raised about actually building and operating such a technology safely. I am familiar with this area of technology but by no means an expert. However the vast majority of people who appear to actually have experience building and running these systems all seem to disagree with the government that this is actually cool and safe and generally give much better explanations as to why that's the case than the government do. And so I side with them. Citing more vague government sources that don't directly contradict the work of the people building the things isn't a very convincing argument to me.
      - finned 3y ago
        Apple makes its choices for commercial reasons, so it will be interesting to see if they choose to introduce their client-side CSAM scanning for UK customers, or pull iMessage from this market like they threatened (which was probably an empty threat). If they go for the former, and implement their system in line with the principles that Levy and Robinson set out, would you change your mind? As this would be an indication that actually it can work in the field, if the political will is there.
        __alexs 3y ago
        No it would be an indication that Apple like money more than the privacy and safety of their users which would not be entirely surprising.
    - pera 3y ago
      The paper you are citing does not support your argument here, I would suggest you to read for instance section 6.3 where they include some of the common concerns regarding client-side scanning, or the conclusion of section 7 ("Why AI and Machine Learning are not the answer").
      - __alexs 3y ago
- ben_w 3y ago
  Spam is an interesting choice, given that the US Republicans are having a lawsuit about Google spam filtering blocking their campaign emails. Regardless of the merits of the particular case, the possibility of doing so exists and this is bad enough even when it is a private company and isn't being kept secret by court order like LavaBit, nor likewise when we have evidence of agents misusing their powers to spy on people they fancy AKA "LOVEINT", nor likewise when we have evidence of legally required technological measures becoming abusable by hackers e.g. the downgrade attacks to the 40-bit "export grade" cyphers from the 90s still popping up in the 2010s.

neilalexander 3y ago

> Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, and terrorists and paedophiles using end-to-end encrypted chat systems to cover their tracks When you come up with an approach that doesn't involve breaking the system for literally everyone else, please let us know. There isn't anyone who would dispute that these issues are serious but hammering backdoors (of which clientside scanning is effectively one) into encrypted chat systems is not and never will be the answer. It is not the case that if you put a backdoor into WhatsApp that the criminals suddenly have nowhere to go. They will simply move to lesser-known and possibly even more effective platforms instead, ones that are outside the scope of regulation. Perhaps they'll just build their own. It isn't exactly difficult to do — all of the necessary pieces are out there as open-source. What we absolutely cannot accept is that all of the mass-market platforms become broken to the point that everyone else, including the less technical users who don't know about the alternatives, can no longer trust them.

Moldoteck 3y ago

With this type of measures, uk's internet will be just as safe as china's!!! What an achievement! Uk should also implement social score, this will also be done to protect the citizens from dangers! Maybe even some camps where people that are potentially dangerous/unwanted (afaik party said this about migrants, one of the reasons reason Brexit happened) would be isolated from good citizens. This internet act is also a perfect first step for detecting ill intented journalists, how they dare uncover corruption schemes, everything parliament does is for their citizens! Long live the queen!(ups) Long live the king(I mean parliament)!

kwhitefoot 3y ago

> Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, Does it? At least some other countries don't seem to have a problem with children accessing pornography. I don't know if the children simply don't do it or that they are sufficiently well educated and secure in their society that they can see it and understand that real life is not like that.

smcn 3y ago
Children in the UK are born without parents, so it's a valid point by OP.
ComposedPattern 3y ago
Children, who don't experience sexual desire, are not interested in pornography. Whenever I encountered lewd content as a child, my reaction was always "uggh... adults are so gross" and I'd skip over it if I could. Children don't seek out pornography, and they spend almost all their time online on platforms like YouTube that don't host pornography that they might see inadvertently. And if they did see porn for whatever reason – why is this supposed to be such a big deal? As far as I can tell, the harm that comes from a child seeing porn is that they'll be grossed out. It seems roughly as bad as seeing the corpse of a rabbit that was run over by a car – a shame, but not something that we need to Do Something About. People act like encountering sexual content will somehow warp children's minds and make them homosexuals or deviants or something, but as far as I know this isn't based on any scientific evidence. It's entirely about adults' feelings.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I guess the fundamental is that pornography is embarrassing for the adults (as in, the collective of adults). So we try to hide it?

Peroni 3y ago

>Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content The solution for this exists. It's the same solution that prevents young children from accessing a bottle of bleach and drinking it. Parental responsibility and education.