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I thought Apple’s approach was very promising. Unfortunately, instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly a

I thought Apple’s approach was very promising. Unfortunately, instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked and the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage about things that weren’t happening.

dmitrygr 1y ago
> instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked and the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage I would not care if it worked 100% accurately. My outrage is informed by people like you who think it is OK in any form whatever.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - dmitrygr 1y ago
    No amount of my device spying on me is acceptable, no matter how cleverly implemented. The fact that your comment said anything positive about it at all without acknowledging that it is an insane idea and should never be put into practice is what I was referring to.
    - JimDabell 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - dmitrygr 1y ago
        I read the whitepaper they published and worked at Apple at the time this idea was rightly pulled. I understand it perfectly fine and stand by my words.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> Unfortunately, instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked Folks did read. They guessed that known hashes would be stored on devices and images would be scanned against that. Was this a wrong guess? > the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage about things that weren’t happening. The thing that wasn't happening yet was mission creep beyond the original targets. Because expanding-beyond-originally-stated-parameters is thing that happens with far reaching monitoring systems. Because it happens with the type of regularity that is typically limited to physics. There were 2ndary concerns about how false positives would be handled. There were concerns about what the procedures were for any positive. Given Gov propensities to ruin lives now and ignore that harm (or craft a justification) later, the concerns seem valid. That's what I recall the concerned voices were on about. To me, they didn't seem outraged.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  > Folks did read. They guessed that known hashes would be stored on devices and images would be scanned against that. Was this a wrong guess? Yes. Completely wrong. Not even close. Why don’t you just go and read about it instead of guessing? Seriously, the point of my comment was that discussion with people who are just guessing is worthless.
  - Pulcinella 1y ago
    Why don't you just explain what you want people to know instead of making everyone else guess what you are thinking?
    - JimDabell 1y ago
      > Why don't you just explain what you want people to know instead of making everyone else guess what you are thinking? I’m not making people guess. I explained directly what I wanted people to know very, very plainly. You are replying now as if the discussion we are having is whether it’s a good system or not. That is not the discussion we are having. This is the point I was making: > instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked and the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage about things that weren’t happening. The discussion is about the ignorance, not about the system itself. If you knew how it worked and disagreed with it, then I would completely support that. I’m not 100% convinced myself! But you don’t know how it works, you just assumed – and you got it very wrong. So did a lot of other people. And collectively, that drowned out any discussion of how it actually worked, because you were all mad about something imaginary. You are perfectly capable of reading how it worked. You do not need me to waste a lot of time re-writing Apple’s materials on a complex system in this small text box on Hacker News so you can then post a one sentence shallow dismissal. There is no value in doing that at all, it just places an asymmetric burden on me to continue the conversation.
odo1242 1y ago
Among many many issues: Apple used neural networks to compare images, which made the system very exploitable. You could send someone an image where you invisibly altered the image to trip the filter, but the image itself looked unchanged. Also, once the system is created it’s easy to envision governments putting whatever images they want to know people have into the phone or changing the specificity of the filter so it starts sending many more images to the cloud. Especially since the filter ran on locally stored images and not things that were already in the cloud. Their nudity filter on iMessages was fine though (I don’t think it ever sends anything to the internet? Just contacts your parents if you’re a minor with Family Sharing enabled?)
- nullc 1y ago
  > once the system is created it’s easy to envision governments putting whatever images they want to know people have into the phone A key point is that the system was designed to make sure the database was strongly cryptographically private against review. -- that's actually where 95% of the technical complexity in the proposal came from: to make absolutely sure the public could never discover exactly what government organizations were or weren't scanning for.
nullc 1y ago
Sorry, but you're relaying a false memory. Conversation on the subject on HN and Reddit (for example) was extremely well informed and grounded in the specifics of the proposal. Just as an example, part of my responses here were to develop and publish a second-preimage attack on their hash function-- simply to make the point concrete that varrious bad scenarios would be facilitated by the existence of one.

dmitrygr 1y ago

> instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked and the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage I would not care if it worked 100% accurately. My outrage is informed by people like you who think it is OK in any form whatever.

JimDabell 1y ago
[flagged]
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  No amount of my device spying on me is acceptable, no matter how cleverly implemented. The fact that your comment said anything positive about it at all without acknowledging that it is an insane idea and should never be put into practice is what I was referring to.
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - dmitrygr 1y ago
      I read the whitepaper they published and worked at Apple at the time this idea was rightly pulled. I understand it perfectly fine and stand by my words.

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago

> Unfortunately, instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked Folks did read. They guessed that known hashes would be stored on devices and images would be scanned against that. Was this a wrong guess? > the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage about things that weren’t happening. The thing that wasn't happening yet was mission creep beyond the original targets. Because expanding-beyond-originally-stated-parameters is thing that happens with far reaching monitoring systems. Because it happens with the type of regularity that is typically limited to physics. There were 2ndary concerns about how false positives would be handled. There were concerns about what the procedures were for any positive. Given Gov propensities to ruin lives now and ignore that harm (or craft a justification) later, the concerns seem valid. That's what I recall the concerned voices were on about. To me, they didn't seem outraged.

JimDabell 1y ago
> Folks did read. They guessed that known hashes would be stored on devices and images would be scanned against that. Was this a wrong guess? Yes. Completely wrong. Not even close. Why don’t you just go and read about it instead of guessing? Seriously, the point of my comment was that discussion with people who are just guessing is worthless.
- Pulcinella 1y ago
  Why don't you just explain what you want people to know instead of making everyone else guess what you are thinking?
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    > Why don't you just explain what you want people to know instead of making everyone else guess what you are thinking? I’m not making people guess. I explained directly what I wanted people to know very, very plainly. You are replying now as if the discussion we are having is whether it’s a good system or not. That is not the discussion we are having. This is the point I was making: > instead of reading about how it actually worked, huge amounts of people just guessed incorrectly about how it worked and the conversation was dominated by uninformed outrage about things that weren’t happening. The discussion is about the ignorance, not about the system itself. If you knew how it worked and disagreed with it, then I would completely support that. I’m not 100% convinced myself! But you don’t know how it works, you just assumed – and you got it very wrong. So did a lot of other people. And collectively, that drowned out any discussion of how it actually worked, because you were all mad about something imaginary. You are perfectly capable of reading how it worked. You do not need me to waste a lot of time re-writing Apple’s materials on a complex system in this small text box on Hacker News so you can then post a one sentence shallow dismissal. There is no value in doing that at all, it just places an asymmetric burden on me to continue the conversation.

odo1242 1y ago

Among many many issues: Apple used neural networks to compare images, which made the system very exploitable. You could send someone an image where you invisibly altered the image to trip the filter, but the image itself looked unchanged. Also, once the system is created it’s easy to envision governments putting whatever images they want to know people have into the phone or changing the specificity of the filter so it starts sending many more images to the cloud. Especially since the filter ran on locally stored images and not things that were already in the cloud. Their nudity filter on iMessages was fine though (I don’t think it ever sends anything to the internet? Just contacts your parents if you’re a minor with Family Sharing enabled?)

nullc 1y ago
> once the system is created it’s easy to envision governments putting whatever images they want to know people have into the phone A key point is that the system was designed to make sure the database was strongly cryptographically private against review. -- that's actually where 95% of the technical complexity in the proposal came from: to make absolutely sure the public could never discover exactly what government organizations were or weren't scanning for.

nullc 1y ago

Sorry, but you're relaying a false memory. Conversation on the subject on HN and Reddit (for example) was extremely well informed and grounded in the specifics of the proposal. Just as an example, part of my responses here were to develop and publish a second-preimage attack on their hash function-- simply to make the point concrete that varrious bad scenarios would be facilitated by the existence of one.