9 ms·

Saw a giant billboard with something along the lines of "Apple hosts child sex abuse imagery on iCloud. They are complicit." Really wonder what groups are putt

by kdottt 3y ago

Saw a giant billboard with something along the lines of "Apple hosts child sex abuse imagery on iCloud. They are complicit." Really wonder what groups are putting these up and where they're getting their funding. This was in California. It happens every few years, where organizations try to go after encryption or other privacies under the guise of public safety or "save the kids" type stuff, but I've never seen huge billboards like this before. Pretty jarring.

nachteilig 3y ago
I saw that and a car driving around with that on it in San Francisco and had the same thought. Who funds that and who is their real target audience? With the tech crowd you might need a bit more nuance.
max_ 3y ago
Could be the CIA launching a propaganda campaign as a way to weaken encryption.
- colpabar 3y ago
  What? The CIA (and every other US agency, except the police, sometimes) are the good guys, the good guys on the good news sites told me so.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Condition1952 3y ago
  Does the CIA need to weaken encryption? Don’t they have backdoors or front doors into each operating system connected to the power grid?
  - RIMR 3y ago
    No, lol. They don't. Maybe Windows, because Microsoft doesn't seem to care much about privacy, but Apple doesn't mess around. And if there were backdoors in Linux, we'd definitely know about it, because people are actively looking for stuff like that.
    - Sporktacular 3y ago
      This is just wrong. Apple's public position could differ from its actual one. And Hiding a backdoor (or hiding with the deniability of an innocent bug) in open source is possible. "we'd definitely know about it" is not how security works.
      - RIMR 3y ago
        There have been exhaustive third party reviews of the Linux kernel, nothing is impossible, but a government backdoor would be extremely hard to hide from the level of scrutiny that codebase is put under. I would certainly consider it unlikely enough that any suggestion to the contrary, without evidence, is just a conspiracy theory.
        Try1275 3y ago
        Could there be a backdoor on the hardware level?
        RIMR 3y ago
        I mean, yes, as we have already agreed, anything is possible, but I'm not in the business of believing things without evidence.
        Sporktacular 3y ago
        "we'd definitely know about it". Yes, but extremely hard is not the same as impossible. How many security 'bugs' can we be sure were unintentional? This is not just semantics. Complacency can come from over-confidence.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    The CIA's hacking tools were leaked in the Vault 7 leaks from WikiLeaks. They were fairly amateurish. The nearest component was some 0 days for smart tvs to turn them into wiretaps. It seems like the NSA really does get the focus for signals intelligence.
    - Canada 3y ago
      If those were amateur what does professional look like?
kevingadd 3y ago
Spyware companies would be a good guess. There's a lot of money to be made in helping abusers spy on their partners and/or kids by installing malware on their devices, and of course there's a big enterprise/govt market for that as well whether your goal is to capture dissidents, bust internal unions, or do a little industrial espionage.
bananapub 3y ago
https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1705666301216141546 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/17056663012161415...
- MerelyMortal 3y ago
  If I was Apple, I would be getting that torn down and suing immediately (or hiring their quasi-police force to tear it down with or without permission). I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service. Just because Apple willingly avoids knowing what their users store on iCloud does not mean they are taking the active role of allowing illegal content to be stored.
  - novok 3y ago
    Thats a striessand effect waiting to happen
  - schoen 3y ago
    There are lots of good reasons for Apple to avoid a defamation lawsuit about this. (1) Streisand effect (mentioned by another commenter) - it would generate tons of free publicity for their opponents. (2) Civil discovery - the defendant would get to demand access to Apple's internal e-mails about this issue in order to try to prove its case. (3) Possibly losing - even though this feels obviously intended to make people believe false things about Apple, a court might accept that there is some interpretation of "allows" and "complicit" that are protected criticisms of the company under some jurisdiction's defamation standard.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    Better to use your substantially larger ad budget to quietly outbid them on billboards in a way least likely to generate press on their billboard.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    > I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service. Encrocrypt and Cyberbunker probably had terms saying not to do illegal things... What matters is how they respond to problems as they are pointed out. If it would turn out that links to their hosting service keep popping up in child abuse cases, do they respond by deleting them piecemeal or do they put a system in place that tries to identify the content by fuzzy hash and flags it for proactive review? Do they actively cooperate with the countries' law enforcement where the picture got uploaded from? That sort of thing. That has infinitely more impact than "you wouldn't download a car" notices
mschuster91 3y ago
If in doubt, look towards churches. They're always neck deep in anything involving sex or sexuality, mostly to distract from their own considerable issues.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
I find this stuff very alarming. The reporting in TFA about European politics (and the recent Heat Initiative pressure campaign here in the US) illustrate how much unaccountable dark money is flowing into these causes. I don’t think that there are huge pools of anonymous donor cash looking to influence child-safety campaigns for the sake of anyone caring about children, because that’s not typically how altruistic donors donate their money. Instead I think it’s likely that some commercial interests see a lucrative financial opportunity in this private data (either selling AI-based scanning tools, or mining it directly as a service.) This data is currently locked up with big firms like Apple and Meta, who are (for various reasons) leaning towards encrypting it rather than exploiting its contents, and the way to solve this problem involves passing laws through naive legislatures who don’t understand what they’re doing. And frankly that possibility worries me much more than where I thought we were previously - which was just a boring dispute between government and tech firms.
standardUser 3y ago
The first thing that comes to mind is the conservative movements growing obsessions with pedophilia, real and imagined. It has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Let's stick with "real" for a moment. There is absolutely nothing about real pedophilia that makes it a far-right-only concern. In fact, with the left's concern about sexual abuse of women, they ought to also care about sexual abuse of minors.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    You are asserting that people who are not far-right do not care about the abuse of minors, which is a nonsensical belief with no connection to reality and completely undermines whatever point you're trying to make. But it is a good example of the over-the-top rhetoric being used around this exact issue.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      I am not claiming what you say I am. You said: "It [pedophilia] has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion." I am claiming that pedophilia motivates many people, not just the far right. It is beyond me how you could misread that claim into something that would lead you to reply as you did. [Edit: My use of "ought to" may be the problem. The left, based on their positions, should be emotionally, viscerally motivated to oppose pedophilia. If they aren't, then that is an inconsistency in their position. But I think that they (or at least many of them) are motivated. So, to sum up, I'm not sure why you singled out the far-right in your initial statement.]
      - standardUser 3y ago
        "...they ought to also care about sexual abuse of minors." That implies they do not care about the sexual abuse of minors, but they ought to. "There is absolutely nothing about real pedophilia that makes it a far-right-only concern" And implying that anyone, anywhere would think that it is a "far-right only concern" is absurd framing. It's make-believe nonsense.
osamagirl69 3y ago
These are from Heat initiative. The campaign was covered pretty well when it broke earlier this month[1] >The campaign is being led by Sarah Gardner, who was >previously the vice president for external affairs at >Thorn, a nonprofit founded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore >to combat child sexual abuse online. Ms. Gardner raised >money from a number of child safety supporters, including >the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Oak >Foundation. [...] >Two investors -- Degroof Petercam, a Belgian asset manager, and Christian >Brothers Investment Services, a Catholic investment firm -- will submit a >shareholder proposal this month that would require Apple to provide a detailed >report on how effective its safety tools were at protecting children. FWIW the picture on the billboard is AI generated [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/technology/child-sex-abuse-imagery-apple-safety-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/technology/child-sex-abus...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sbuk 3y ago
  May be the Catholic investment firm should sort out their own back yard before making demands of any other entity...
  - Aachen 3y ago
    I'm not in favor of public scaremongering like spreading half-truths about a random other company on a billboard, but I will say that perfect is the enemy of good. You can say "sort out your own back yard" about virtually anything. If you believe that what they do is good, it doesn't matter so much if their own back yard is sorted out, it's still good. If you don't, then not, and it still doesn't matter what their own state of affairs looks like.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      In the case of the Catholic Church, it’s completely fair to call out their hypocrisy.
xp84 3y ago
Pretty weird. I mean, I guess since SD cards can be used to host it, SanDisk is also complicit. And you can use the open Wi-Fi at the airport to send it, so JFK airport is complicit. Just how many entities are obligated to scan all bits for these illegal sequences of ones and zeroes? Why not actually focus more effort on the twisted people who create the content by abusing minors and less on a global dragnet for all communications?
- jbuhbjlnjbn 3y ago
  Absolutely. We already know why the interest groups focus on the communications, instead of proven ways. Because it is a false flag operation. The topic is used as a vehicle to undermine private encrypted communication.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wkat4242 3y ago
They should go after the US postal service too. The companies that make fibre cabling. Phone manufacturers. All complicit in their twisted narrative.
vGPU 3y ago
That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

by kdottt 3y ago

nachteilig 3y ago

I saw that and a car driving around with that on it in San Francisco and had the same thought. Who funds that and who is their real target audience? With the tech crowd you might need a bit more nuance.

max_ 3y ago

Could be the CIA launching a propaganda campaign as a way to weaken encryption.

colpabar 3y ago
What? The CIA (and every other US agency, except the police, sometimes) are the good guys, the good guys on the good news sites told me so.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Condition1952 3y ago
Does the CIA need to weaken encryption? Don’t they have backdoors or front doors into each operating system connected to the power grid?
- RIMR 3y ago
  No, lol. They don't. Maybe Windows, because Microsoft doesn't seem to care much about privacy, but Apple doesn't mess around. And if there were backdoors in Linux, we'd definitely know about it, because people are actively looking for stuff like that.
  - Sporktacular 3y ago
    This is just wrong. Apple's public position could differ from its actual one. And Hiding a backdoor (or hiding with the deniability of an innocent bug) in open source is possible. "we'd definitely know about it" is not how security works.
    - RIMR 3y ago
      There have been exhaustive third party reviews of the Linux kernel, nothing is impossible, but a government backdoor would be extremely hard to hide from the level of scrutiny that codebase is put under. I would certainly consider it unlikely enough that any suggestion to the contrary, without evidence, is just a conspiracy theory.
      - Try1275 3y ago
        Could there be a backdoor on the hardware level?
        RIMR 3y ago
        I mean, yes, as we have already agreed, anything is possible, but I'm not in the business of believing things without evidence.
      - Sporktacular 3y ago
        "we'd definitely know about it". Yes, but extremely hard is not the same as impossible. How many security 'bugs' can we be sure were unintentional? This is not just semantics. Complacency can come from over-confidence.
- monocasa 3y ago
  The CIA's hacking tools were leaked in the Vault 7 leaks from WikiLeaks. They were fairly amateurish. The nearest component was some 0 days for smart tvs to turn them into wiretaps. It seems like the NSA really does get the focus for signals intelligence.
  - Canada 3y ago
    If those were amateur what does professional look like?

kevingadd 3y ago

Spyware companies would be a good guess. There's a lot of money to be made in helping abusers spy on their partners and/or kids by installing malware on their devices, and of course there's a big enterprise/govt market for that as well whether your goal is to capture dissidents, bust internal unions, or do a little industrial espionage.

bananapub 3y ago

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1705666301216141546 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/17056663012161415...

MerelyMortal 3y ago
If I was Apple, I would be getting that torn down and suing immediately (or hiring their quasi-police force to tear it down with or without permission). I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service. Just because Apple willingly avoids knowing what their users store on iCloud does not mean they are taking the active role of allowing illegal content to be stored.
- novok 3y ago
  Thats a striessand effect waiting to happen
- schoen 3y ago
  There are lots of good reasons for Apple to avoid a defamation lawsuit about this. (1) Streisand effect (mentioned by another commenter) - it would generate tons of free publicity for their opponents. (2) Civil discovery - the defendant would get to demand access to Apple's internal e-mails about this issue in order to try to prove its case. (3) Possibly losing - even though this feels obviously intended to make people believe false things about Apple, a court might accept that there is some interpretation of "allows" and "complicit" that are protected criticisms of the company under some jurisdiction's defamation standard.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Better to use your substantially larger ad budget to quietly outbid them on billboards in a way least likely to generate press on their billboard.
- Aachen 3y ago
  > I doubt Apple "allows" it. Apple probably even forbids it in their Terms of Service. Encrocrypt and Cyberbunker probably had terms saying not to do illegal things... What matters is how they respond to problems as they are pointed out. If it would turn out that links to their hosting service keep popping up in child abuse cases, do they respond by deleting them piecemeal or do they put a system in place that tries to identify the content by fuzzy hash and flags it for proactive review? Do they actively cooperate with the countries' law enforcement where the picture got uploaded from? That sort of thing. That has infinitely more impact than "you wouldn't download a car" notices

mschuster91 3y ago

If in doubt, look towards churches. They're always neck deep in anything involving sex or sexuality, mostly to distract from their own considerable issues.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

I find this stuff very alarming. The reporting in TFA about European politics (and the recent Heat Initiative pressure campaign here in the US) illustrate how much unaccountable dark money is flowing into these causes. I don’t think that there are huge pools of anonymous donor cash looking to influence child-safety campaigns for the sake of anyone caring about children, because that’s not typically how altruistic donors donate their money. Instead I think it’s likely that some commercial interests see a lucrative financial opportunity in this private data (either selling AI-based scanning tools, or mining it directly as a service.) This data is currently locked up with big firms like Apple and Meta, who are (for various reasons) leaning towards encrypting it rather than exploiting its contents, and the way to solve this problem involves passing laws through naive legislatures who don’t understand what they’re doing. And frankly that possibility worries me much more than where I thought we were previously - which was just a boring dispute between government and tech firms.

standardUser 3y ago

The first thing that comes to mind is the conservative movements growing obsessions with pedophilia, real and imagined. It has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Let's stick with "real" for a moment. There is absolutely nothing about real pedophilia that makes it a far-right-only concern. In fact, with the left's concern about sexual abuse of women, they ought to also care about sexual abuse of minors.
- standardUser 3y ago
  You are asserting that people who are not far-right do not care about the abuse of minors, which is a nonsensical belief with no connection to reality and completely undermines whatever point you're trying to make. But it is a good example of the over-the-top rhetoric being used around this exact issue.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    I am not claiming what you say I am. You said: "It [pedophilia] has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion." I am claiming that pedophilia motivates many people, not just the far right. It is beyond me how you could misread that claim into something that would lead you to reply as you did. [Edit: My use of "ought to" may be the problem. The left, based on their positions, should be emotionally, viscerally motivated to oppose pedophilia. If they aren't, then that is an inconsistency in their position. But I think that they (or at least many of them) are motivated. So, to sum up, I'm not sure why you singled out the far-right in your initial statement.]
    - standardUser 3y ago
      "...they ought to also care about sexual abuse of minors." That implies they do not care about the sexual abuse of minors, but they ought to. "There is absolutely nothing about real pedophilia that makes it a far-right-only concern" And implying that anyone, anywhere would think that it is a "far-right only concern" is absurd framing. It's make-believe nonsense.

osamagirl69 3y ago

These are from Heat initiative. The campaign was covered pretty well when it broke earlier this month[1] >The campaign is being led by Sarah Gardner, who was >previously the vice president for external affairs at >Thorn, a nonprofit founded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore >to combat child sexual abuse online. Ms. Gardner raised >money from a number of child safety supporters, including >the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Oak >Foundation. [...] >Two investors -- Degroof Petercam, a Belgian asset manager, and Christian >Brothers Investment Services, a Catholic investment firm -- will submit a >shareholder proposal this month that would require Apple to provide a detailed >report on how effective its safety tools were at protecting children. FWIW the picture on the billboard is AI generated [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/technology/child-sex-abuse-imagery-apple-safety-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/technology/child-sex-abus...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sbuk 3y ago
May be the Catholic investment firm should sort out their own back yard before making demands of any other entity...
- Aachen 3y ago
  I'm not in favor of public scaremongering like spreading half-truths about a random other company on a billboard, but I will say that perfect is the enemy of good. You can say "sort out your own back yard" about virtually anything. If you believe that what they do is good, it doesn't matter so much if their own back yard is sorted out, it's still good. If you don't, then not, and it still doesn't matter what their own state of affairs looks like.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    In the case of the Catholic Church, it’s completely fair to call out their hypocrisy.

xp84 3y ago

Pretty weird. I mean, I guess since SD cards can be used to host it, SanDisk is also complicit. And you can use the open Wi-Fi at the airport to send it, so JFK airport is complicit. Just how many entities are obligated to scan all bits for these illegal sequences of ones and zeroes? Why not actually focus more effort on the twisted people who create the content by abusing minors and less on a global dragnet for all communications?

jbuhbjlnjbn 3y ago
Absolutely. We already know why the interest groups focus on the communications, instead of proven ways. Because it is a false flag operation. The topic is used as a vehicle to undermine private encrypted communication.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wkat4242 3y ago

They should go after the US postal service too. The companies that make fibre cabling. Phone manufacturers. All complicit in their twisted narrative.

vGPU 3y ago

That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.