4 ms·

The lowest of the low hanging political points scoring fruit will be picked. I make this point on HN each time it comes up: Dealing with actual CSA requires ac

The lowest of the low hanging political points scoring fruit will be picked. I make this point on HN each time it comes up: Dealing with actual CSA requires actual people going to investigate actual reports of children's living conditions out in the real world, not "scanning digital files". Seems obvious when you say it like that, but the alternative seems to still score heavily on the political scale. Ironically, spending more money on "scanning digital files" takes away from resources that could prevent those digital files from being created in the first place, so all the additional time, money, and effort towards combatting CSAM is time, money, and effort specifically _not_ working against stopping CSA. It's categorically _not_ protecting the children. Teachers, in Australia at least, have mandatory reporting where any kind of abuse is suspected. The heart-breaking irony is that the resources to investigate the reports are so scarce that they can only respond to reports where the child's life is in immediate danger. Caveat: the above was true a few years ago, I genuinely don't know if it's still true. What I do know is that 'social work' isn't suddenly a high paying job, so I doubt resource availability has changed much. There is no easy answer to this. It's entirely nuance.

EagnaIonat 3mo ago
> Seems obvious when you say it like that, That's exactly what happens. CSAM has two parts to it. The first is the known and most horrific videos of CP out there. These aren't shared, instead only hashes are used to determine if the image/video matches. It's next to impossible to get an mis-hit on that. The second is nudity and age detection AI. Apple has this on their devices, but warns the user before sharing not reporting. It normally takes more than one hit to get flagged for investigation. At that point law enforcement are informed and take over. The majority of investigations are children sending naked pictures of themself to their friends. So it is absolutely being used as the purpose to protect children and it's amazing how many people don't realise how it works when they are very transparent about it. Of course it is not without its issues that need to fixed. For example providers will just ban the person before it's determined if they broke a law or not.
- basilikum 3mo ago
  What you are describing is indiscriminate mass surveillance. There is absolutely nothing stopping Apple or whoever maintains that listof hashes from putting things other than child abuse on there, like dissident memes for example. It also requires devices to run this spyware without a way to disable it. The natural consequence of this is to ban everything but government approved, restricted OSes and to outlaw devices capable of running anything but these. Mandatory CSAM scanning is part of the war on general computing and privacy.
  - EagnaIonat 3mo ago
    > Apple or whoever maintains that listof hashes from putting things other than child abuse on there, like dissident memes for example. That's the common argument and it's wrong. The hash database is regulated and used worldwide. To get the hashes of what you mention into the database requires numerous people signing off on it. It is also a 1:1 match, not a "dissident said X" type meme match. > It also requires devices to run this spyware without a way to disable it. All scanning is done on the cloud. Apple operating system has a nudity detector when posting images, but it only warns you the dangers of doing it before you hit send. There is no spyware. In fact when Apple tried to protect peoples data from those scans before everyone lost their mind. Forced Apple to remain keeping users data accessible on the cloud. The truth is, if your government is determined to spy on its population there are much easier and less intrusive methods of doing so.
    - basilikum 3mo ago
      > The hash database is regulated and used worldwide. To get the hashes of what you mention into the database requires numerous people signing off on it. So, it's correct. What you're describing is a policy, not a technical limitation. The technical infrastructure allows exactly that. Policies can and will be changed and bypassed. > It is also a 1:1 match, not a "dissident said X" type meme match. So you can maintain a list of dissident memes just like you can maintain a list of CSAM. There is absolutely nothing technologically differentiating CSAM from images with dissenting political content. The database is an arbitrary list of material deemed hostile. Only putting CSAM on it is a pinky promise that will be broken. > All scanning is done on the cloud. Because there was so much backlash against putting spyware in devices, not because they didn't try. > Forced Apple to remain keeping users data accessible on the cloud. What are you talking about? > The truth is, if your government is determined to spy on its population there are much easier and less intrusive methods of doing so. Why is such a large political faction in the EU continuing to push for this surveillance in the form of Chat Control then? You are just stating this with no facts to back it up against all the evidence to the contrary.
Thlom 3mo ago
Children also need to understand that they have been abused and know who they can talk to for them to be able to report abuse to a trusted adult. Unfortunately that requires children to learn about sexuality and autonomy which for some reason conservatives think is abuse to teach children.
- WarmWash 3mo ago
  Part of the problem is that the topic is so radioactive, that coming forward with a story of abuse, and the legal/media circus that follows, really puts the abuse center stage in people's view of you. Most people absolutely do not want their most defining attribute to be "person whose family member raped them", even if it comes with extreme sympathy and understanding. For many, probably most victims, they just want to forget about it and let it vanish into the past, and ideally someone else who was abused by that person comes out and has them jailed.

EagnaIonat 3mo ago

> Seems obvious when you say it like that, That's exactly what happens. CSAM has two parts to it. The first is the known and most horrific videos of CP out there. These aren't shared, instead only hashes are used to determine if the image/video matches. It's next to impossible to get an mis-hit on that. The second is nudity and age detection AI. Apple has this on their devices, but warns the user before sharing not reporting. It normally takes more than one hit to get flagged for investigation. At that point law enforcement are informed and take over. The majority of investigations are children sending naked pictures of themself to their friends. So it is absolutely being used as the purpose to protect children and it's amazing how many people don't realise how it works when they are very transparent about it. Of course it is not without its issues that need to fixed. For example providers will just ban the person before it's determined if they broke a law or not.

basilikum 3mo ago
What you are describing is indiscriminate mass surveillance. There is absolutely nothing stopping Apple or whoever maintains that listof hashes from putting things other than child abuse on there, like dissident memes for example. It also requires devices to run this spyware without a way to disable it. The natural consequence of this is to ban everything but government approved, restricted OSes and to outlaw devices capable of running anything but these. Mandatory CSAM scanning is part of the war on general computing and privacy.
- EagnaIonat 3mo ago
  > Apple or whoever maintains that listof hashes from putting things other than child abuse on there, like dissident memes for example. That's the common argument and it's wrong. The hash database is regulated and used worldwide. To get the hashes of what you mention into the database requires numerous people signing off on it. It is also a 1:1 match, not a "dissident said X" type meme match. > It also requires devices to run this spyware without a way to disable it. All scanning is done on the cloud. Apple operating system has a nudity detector when posting images, but it only warns you the dangers of doing it before you hit send. There is no spyware. In fact when Apple tried to protect peoples data from those scans before everyone lost their mind. Forced Apple to remain keeping users data accessible on the cloud. The truth is, if your government is determined to spy on its population there are much easier and less intrusive methods of doing so.
  - basilikum 3mo ago
    > The hash database is regulated and used worldwide. To get the hashes of what you mention into the database requires numerous people signing off on it. So, it's correct. What you're describing is a policy, not a technical limitation. The technical infrastructure allows exactly that. Policies can and will be changed and bypassed. > It is also a 1:1 match, not a "dissident said X" type meme match. So you can maintain a list of dissident memes just like you can maintain a list of CSAM. There is absolutely nothing technologically differentiating CSAM from images with dissenting political content. The database is an arbitrary list of material deemed hostile. Only putting CSAM on it is a pinky promise that will be broken. > All scanning is done on the cloud. Because there was so much backlash against putting spyware in devices, not because they didn't try. > Forced Apple to remain keeping users data accessible on the cloud. What are you talking about? > The truth is, if your government is determined to spy on its population there are much easier and less intrusive methods of doing so. Why is such a large political faction in the EU continuing to push for this surveillance in the form of Chat Control then? You are just stating this with no facts to back it up against all the evidence to the contrary.

Thlom 3mo ago

Children also need to understand that they have been abused and know who they can talk to for them to be able to report abuse to a trusted adult. Unfortunately that requires children to learn about sexuality and autonomy which for some reason conservatives think is abuse to teach children.

WarmWash 3mo ago
Part of the problem is that the topic is so radioactive, that coming forward with a story of abuse, and the legal/media circus that follows, really puts the abuse center stage in people's view of you. Most people absolutely do not want their most defining attribute to be "person whose family member raped them", even if it comes with extreme sympathy and understanding. For many, probably most victims, they just want to forget about it and let it vanish into the past, and ideally someone else who was abused by that person comes out and has them jailed.