macplusplus

killroy said:

macplusplus said:

omasou said:

macplusplus said:

Apple should shut down iCloud instead of developing a mass surveillance method for the government.

It is NOT a mass surveillance method for the government. It is a system for REPORTING CSAM and designed to be an advocate for and to protect children.

If we see or are aware of CSAM we should report it. Apple can SEE and be AWARE of CSAM w/o violating anyone's privacy and SHOULD report it.

OK. Why do they monitor my device from within? They can scan their servers for any abusive material. User backups on iCloud are stored unencrypted and law enforcement can always access those backups with a search warrant. They can perform the same CSAM hash checking on their iCloud servers as well.

The fact that they are bringing the monitoring right into my device shows that they might be following a totally different agenda than preventing child abuse. They may be trying to permanently implement something onto user devices which scope may extend to God knows where...

Because once it's on Apple servers they can't see it because it's encrypted. You have to see it before it's encrypted or it won't work.

crowley said:

macplusplus said:

9secondkox2 said:

crowley said:

newisneverenough said:

Apple completely screwed this up. It’s conceptually wrong from the start. I can’t believe this even got initiated as a project. It’s idiotic to try and excuse looking into private data by justifying the method of the technology. Apples entire stance before now is something I have supported. In this ridiculous step they’ve utterly failed. And should cancel this initiative. 

If it's being uploaded then it's not simply private data, it's data that the user is pushing into Apple's domain.  Why shouldn't Apple take steps to verify that they aren't being asked to host illegal photographs?

It’s MY data being stored. Supposedly with my privacy in mind. 

Not anymore. 

Goodbye iCloud storage. 

Nothing to hide. Also not willing to allow the first footstep into a slippery slope of “oh. Your data is only yours. Well, unless we find a reason for it not to be.@

It is your data and it is private but that privacy cannot prevent Apple from performing legally required checks and scans on their servers. This is one reason most of the iCloud data is not end-to-end encrypted. It is still encrypted, but with Apple's keys, not your own device keys. Practically unencrypted, from the user's point of view. And this is why law enforcement can access your iCloud data anytime by presenting a search warrant.

But scanning your iPhone is totally different. It is your property, not Apple's. You didn't rent that device from Apple, you bought it. And the child protection pretext falls short given the invasiveness of what they want to implement.

They aren't scanning your iPhone, they're scanning the photo that you want to put on their service.  They're refusing to even take it without first checking if it matches a known child abuse picture.  That seems fine to me.

9secondkox2 said:

crowley said:

newisneverenough said:

Apple completely screwed this up. It’s conceptually wrong from the start. I can’t believe this even got initiated as a project. It’s idiotic to try and excuse looking into private data by justifying the method of the technology. Apples entire stance before now is something I have supported. In this ridiculous step they’ve utterly failed. And should cancel this initiative. 

If it's being uploaded then it's not simply private data, it's data that the user is pushing into Apple's domain.  Why shouldn't Apple take steps to verify that they aren't being asked to host illegal photographs?

It’s MY data being stored. Supposedly with my privacy in mind. 

Not anymore. 

Goodbye iCloud storage. 

Nothing to hide. Also not willing to allow the first footstep into a slippery slope of “oh. Your data is only yours. Well, unless we find a reason for it not to be.@

omasou said:

macplusplus said:

Apple should shut down iCloud instead of developing a mass surveillance method for the government.

It is NOT a mass surveillance method for the government. It is a system for REPORTING CSAM and designed to be an advocate for and to protect children.

If we see or are aware of CSAM we should report it. Apple can SEE and be AWARE of CSAM w/o violating anyone's privacy and SHOULD report it.

StrangeDays said:

macplusplus said:

dewme said:

bulk001 said:

dewme said:

thrang said:

My take is this.

Apple saw the writing on the wall regarding government mandated back-doors. Doors that would all in all likelihood much more open with unfettered access to much if not all of your information. Perhaps begin he sense, the pressure were growing immense.

Perhaps, they decided to develop a content and technology around very narrow and focused one-way beacons (to avoid a mandated backdoor), initially to identify illegal and abhorrent possession and behavior. Perhaps evidence of murders, rapes, extortion, terrorism, may be other beacons that are sent out in the future.

I know, there will be discussions over who makes the decisions, how is it vetted, errors, misuse, hacking, etc. But essentially, to me, Apple seeking to control the process of what they see are inevitable laws that they would need to comply with and with much worse outcomes for users. One way beacons that need to be further vetted to ensure no false positives is an effort to ameliorate law enforcement concerns while still protecting legitimate private information is perhaps a very good approach.

While it feels icky upon initially hearing about it, the more you think about it this way (and what government enforced alternatives might be), it may begin to make sense.

In terms of what defines when these future beacons will be sent out, Apple will like say ask for the pertinent laws to govern such beaconing, leaving up to elected leaders to clarify/legislate/vote what kind of content is considered severely harmful, how it is to be legally obtained, and utlimately leave it up to voters to support or oust those politicians in future elections. So in this case, there is a well defined hash database for this particular category. Apple then implements an on-device methodology that is designed to keep the rest of your data protected and unavailable for unrelated sniffing about while beaconing when there is a match.

As to other categories of hash matching, governments will need to figure that out which would be subjects to immense scrutiny  and public debate I'm sure...

There are caveats of course, but in principal this is how I see what has happened.

This largely echoes my sentiment expressed in another AI thread on the same topic. Those who wish to have unfettered access to the private information of ordinary citizens have long used the argument “what about the abused children?” to justify their requests that Apple open a back door for intrusive government spying on its own citizens. Apple is trying to take that card off the table, probably in hopes that it will quell the onslaught of requests. 

I think it’ll buy Apple some time, but not much. As more and more countries including the United States continue to radicalize against not only remote outsiders, but their fellow citizens who they now consider outsiders because they don’t embrace reality bending authoritarian despots, the requests for back doors will transform into demands for back doors that cannot be denied. 

I’m very much in favor of what Apple is proposing, but I’m equally concerned that what they are proposing will not be enough to keep the bigger issue of massive government intrusion through mandated back doors at bay. At some point we’ll all have to assume that privacy as we used to know it no longer exists. Nothing Apple is doing will change the eventual outcome if the embrace of authoritarianism and demonization of fellow citizens is allowed to grow. 

Child abuse and child pornography is the very definition of “what about the children”! And after you buy Apple some time and they don’t agree that their servers should host this content, then what? You going to sign up for Jitterbug service and use an old flip phone? I remember a Walmart or Walgreens reporting a mother who took her film in to be developed and there was a picture of her child partially naked and got her arrested and possibly flagged as a sex offender. This is not what is going on here. Unless your pictures matches those in the database no one is going to see it. While false positives are rare they will happen and if there is a criticism, it would be that Apple should explain better how the image will be reviewed and what action taken. To turn your “what about the children” thesis around though, what I don’t understand is the support for the very worse of society on this board in the name of their privacy. 

I’m 100% in favor, as I said in my post, about what Apple is doing. They are taking an argument that the government has been trying to use to justify forcing Apple to open back doors off the table - by helping to solve the child abuse problem. This is not a deflection, this is the way that people who truly care about solving problems go about solving them. They aren’t just saying, “I don’t buy into your argument” and ending up at a stalemate. They are saying, “we will negate your argument by solving that problem … so now let’s talk about why you still think you need that back door.”  

I’m totally behind Apple on this because they are doing the right thing wrt child abuse and they are removing an impediment that’s causing a stalemate on the larger issue of forced government surveillance. The inextricable linkage between the two is very evident in the posts . Doing nothing, as most posters are suggesting and the standard mode of operation, is not a valid option in my opinion. Whether you agree with what Apple is doing or not, these issues need to be discussed openly and not enter into an interminably entrenched ideological stalemate with no progress made on anything. Pragmatism has its time and place, and Apple is saying that time is now.

Just a positive and forced optimistic description of Apple's delicate situation. Or we can put it the other way: the Government can already monitor everything by deep packet inspection. Instead they want to pass the burden to Tim Apple... 

No, they can’t. E2E encryption prevents man in the middle. That’s the entire reason law enforcement doesn’t want encryption.