chadbag

crowley said:

entropys said:

In a Twitter thread Monday, Corellium COO and security specialist Matt Tait detailed why the government couldn't just modify the database maintained by the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to find non-CSAM images in Apple's cloud storage. For one, Tait pointed out that NCMEC is not part of the government. Instead, it's a private nonprofit entity with special legal privileges to receive CSAM tips.

I don’t recall anyone arguing that though. There is no need for that. This is more that a government actor can force Apple to use the OS feature that uses the hash to be used for other databases, other purposes to identify people it doesn’t like. Not CSAM. Whoever the evil bastard that came up with “won’t someone think of the children” as the McGuffin for this outrageous bit of overreach deserves a medal. A Big Brother medal.

This could not be more literally about children. You have absolutely no evidence that there is any motivation for this beyond what Apple has publicly stated.  Calling an attempt to help reduce child abuse, and the circulation of child abuse material a "McGuffin" is in very bad taste indeed.

It doesn't matter if Apple is 100% truthful and says this is only l for th children etc. It doesn't change the fact that they've installed  the plumbing that can be easily changed to do a million other things.  Policies change. Leadership changes. What Apple says today is irrelevant tomorrow.  

And btw. The Franklin quote is exactly relevant and the sort of thing he had in mind (not that he could foresee today's technology for the specific example). At the time he was talking about governmental intrusions and illusionary safety and Apple is obviously not the government.  But by laying the foundation they make it really easy for the government to repurose their "good cause work against child abuse" into something else. 

Mike Wuerthele said:

I guess all I can say here is Apple knowing that a file has 0s and 1s in it is not the same as knowing those 0s and 1s are a picture of a palm tree, and then a picture of a dog, and then a living room shoot.

I expect it is a bit more complicated that that, in order for it to work.   I am not an expert on how this hashing works at the low level -- being a SW engineer for close to 35 years I understand the theory of hashing, but not the low level details -- especially of so-called "fuzzy" hashing.   

To be useful, this needs to be able to identify photos irrespective of their format, size, etc.  Apple gets a list of hashes for known offensive CSAM images.  A simple hash as has been described here could be foiled by a simple 1-pixel change to the photo, assuming the photo was the exact same format, size, quality, as the original.  If presumed bad guy has a known photo, as a PNG at 600x800 and the NCMEC made the hash on the same photo in JPG at 89% quality at 750x1000, the hashes, if done on the source file bit-stream, won't be anywhere near the same.  But I expect that this system would in fact identify this photo.

Which means the simple bit stream hash being bandied about here is not correct.  For one, they call it a "fuzzy hash" or something like that, which implies that similar images (or the same image in different sizes, formats, and maybe some obsfucation) would indeed match.

I expect the photos are actually opened, format read and the photo normalized in some manner, so that the general features of the photo are more or less the same, and then some fancy "fuzzy" hash is made of this image to be compared against a "fuzzy" hash made by NCMEC in a similar manner.

I have never played this game but everyone who is frustrated by this should make it publicly know to Nintendo (for example On Twitter) their frustration with this model.  And if you mean it, how it means you won't be spending money on other Nintendo games because they can just go away at Nintendo's whim after they've taken your money.  They need to get a lot of feedback. 

This is a stupid suit.  

However, the fact that the peeson/organization/company bringing the suit is a so-called "non-practicing entity" is irrelevant.  

darkvader said:

Apple should not have to host any app they don't like in their app store.

Apple should not be allowed to prevent me from installing any app I like on MY iPhone.

There's a very simple solution here.  Apple MUST be forced to allow device owners to install software from any source they choose.  It's the same issue in the Epic case, I would never suggest that Apple should be forced to host Epic's software, but if Epic wants to distribute software outside of Apple's app store, any mechanism Apple uses to prevent that is clearly and blatantly an illegal abuse of their monopoly of the iOS software market.

It's time for antitrust law to come down HARD on Apple.

Blah blah blah blah blah.  Whatever. 

No. There are no anti-trust issues.  Apple never sold you an open system.  They sold you a system with access to the app store.   anti-trust doesn't mean what you think it means I guess