rcfa

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  • San Francisco doctor charged with possessing child pornography in iCloud

    rcfarcfa
    crowley said:
    entropys said:
    StrangeDays said:
    narwhal said:
    I imagine this will inspire people who have those types of images to either delete them all or move to Android. And I assume Google will implement the same checks at some point so they don't become known as that type of platform. (Maybe they already are.) I can't really see this tech as being helpful to China, Russia, or other dictatorships since people tend not to store self-incriminating photos on their devices. Wait, China might want to find images of Tank Man or Tiananmen Square, since those things never happened. Well, never mind.
    Google, Microsoft, et all already have this…there just wasn’t any butthurt or whining about it. 

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

    https://protectingchildren.google/intl/en/

    So? Isn’t a reason to be an Apple user is they are not like those companies? Why I believe Apple even markets itself as thinking different.
    I don't believe "Think Different, shelter child abusers" is what they had in mind.
    Privacy is topic and value agnostic, for technical AND ethical reasons. 

    Either you have privacy, or you don’t.

    The LAW is NO STANDARD for ETHICS.
    Under communism being a capitalist was a capital offense.
    Under the Nazi regime being a Jew was good enough for a death sentence.
    Under certain African countries’ laws there’s death penalty on gay sex.

    Exactly how would you want privacy that both ethical and yet allows governments to catch what they consider criminal while not restricting Apple’s business to select few western countries?

    There’s only one stance: It is not Apple’s problem to fix. Apple is a tool maker, and modern computing devices are in essence brain prosthetics. Apple’s duty is to protect user’s privacy, not to catch bad guys.

    A gun manufacturer should make the most deadly guns; it’s not incumbent on them to decide who may or may not be shot.
    A maker of pen and paper must make sure, it writes well, the writing is lightfast and smudge proof; it’s not their task to prevent dubious texts from being written.

    And makers of printers should never have been allowed to print nearly invisible markings on printed output, that allow tracing the origins of printed pages. (Same goes for document formats… Which is why critical things should only be done in plain ASCII, human readable files without “ASCII-encoded BLOBS”)

    In an utterly wrong interpretation that it’s the tech industry’s task to make law enforcement’s jobs easier, privacy is being eroded small step by small step until its gone.

    Time to switch to GraphemeOS ….
    macplusplusbaconstangdarkvader

  • Researchers who built rudimentary CSAM system say Apple's is a danger

    rcfarcfa
    robaba said:
    rcfa said:
    The silly exculpatory listing of differences in the systems is useless.

    1Did Apple leave the Russian market when Russia demanded the installation of Russian government approved apps? 2Did Apple leave the Russian and Chinese markets, when Russia and China demanded that iCloud servers be located in their countries where government has physical access? 3Did Apple leave the Chinese market, when VPN apps were requested to be removed from the Chinese AppStore? 4Did Apple comply when Russia demanded that Telegram be removed from the Russian AppStore? 5Did Apple leave the UAE when VoIP apps were outlawed there?

    NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, and NO!

    And NO will be the answer if these countries require additional databases, direct notification (instead of Apple reviewing the cases), etc.

    Once this is baked into the OS, Apple has no leg to stand on, once “lawful” requests from governments are coming.
    1-Apple did not end up preloading the software that Russia demanded, only allowed for users to selectively load programs upon start up if they chose to.
    2-Apple is quickly moving to end-to-end encryption with an independent, third party go between which would completely eliminate the threat of Chinese (or Russian, or UAE) access to encrypted files on servers.
    3-New security system will be a built in VPN on steroids (end to end encryption, intermediate, independent 3rd part server shielding ID from Webhosts and sniffers, while preventing ISPs from knowing sites visited)
    4-don’t know
    5-see 3

    THIS IS WHY THEY ARE TAKING THE STEP TO SINGLE OUT CSAM NOW—SO THEY CAN STAMP IT OUT, WITHOUT PROVIDING A GATEWAY TO BAD ACTORS, STATE OR PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, WHILE ALLOWING AN UNPRECEDENTED LEVEL OF SECURITY / PRIVACY.
    First, what you write doesn’t become more correct or true because you write in all caps and bold.

    Second:
    ad 1: Yes, Apple complied with the law, meaning they preloaded software, even it it’s just software that allows the installation/replacement of Apps. If the Russian law had been written differently, they wouldn’t have preloaded an installer, they would have preloaded apps.

    ad 2: Apple isn’t moving any more to e2e encryption than ever. The servers aren’t operated by “go betweens” but by local companies designed to shield Apple from liability. In other words, certain services offered by Apple in most of the world are offered under license by an independent local company. The countries have full access to their servers, encryption keys, etc. if they want; they could run the servers on special hypervisors that allow introspection during operations. They can pull data sets, and run cryptanalysis on it, etc. Just about every reason why server security is relevant is compromised.

    ad 3: Nice, if true; so far the workings are insufficiently documented. However….

    …none of that changes the key point: Apple will comply with local laws over abandoning a market. So if China declares the new VPN security system, you’re claiming Apple has planned, illegal, then that feature will simply be unavailable when location services detect your within China. Or China might mandate that they operate the VPN servers, so, great, you still have privacy against corporations, but the government will track with even more detail and ease of use all a user’s internet activity.

    And to get back to the original issue: if governments want additional or modified hash databases, Apple will bend and comply, which is why this on-device scanning is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen, as the only thing standing between Apple users and full-on Orwellian surveillance are a few Apple POLICIES, subject to change at any given time, at Apple’s or some government’s whim. There’s no significant TECHNICAL obstacle, and only fundamental technical obstacles can guarantee privacy.

    Privacy is content and value agnostic: either you have privacy, or you don’t; there’s no such thing as topic specific privacy.
    muthuk_vanalingam

  • Researchers who built rudimentary CSAM system say Apple's is a danger

    rcfarcfa
    foregoneconclusion said:
    DAalseth said: It can and will be used by governments to crack down on dissent. It’s not an if but a when. It will produce false positives, it’s not an if but a when. Apple’s privacy safeguards are a fig-leaf that will be ripped off by the first government that wants to.
    Governments that want to crack down on dissent will still do so regardless of whether Apple has CSAM hash scanning or not. They have the money to hire programmers just like Apple does. 
    What nonsense! The programmers don’t help, if data is encrypted! 
    They would need a zero-day exploit and hack each person’s phone to install their software, and not get detected in the process.
    Yes, with a few high value targets they might be able to do that, but they can’t routinely scan hundreds of millions of users’ phones for images mocking the President, religious leaders, leaked government documents, etc.
    So, yes, Apple’s infrastructure is ripe for abuse, and, no, a few government programmers can’t do what Apple is doing, not because they don’t have the skills, but because they don’t have access to the OS, signing keys, etc.
    muthuk_vanalingam

  • Researchers who built rudimentary CSAM system say Apple's is a danger

    rcfarcfa
    The silly exculpatory listing of differences in the systems is useless.

    Did Apple leave the Russian market when Russia demanded the installation of Russian government approved apps? Did Apple leave the Russian and Chinese markets, when Russia and China demanded that iCloud servers be located in their countries where government has physical access? Did Apple leave the Chinese market, when VPN apps were requested to be removed from the Chinese AppStore? Did Apple comply when Russia demanded that Telegram be removed from the Russian AppStore? Did Apple leave the UAE when VoIP apps were outlawed there?

    NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, and NO!

    And NO will be the answer if these countries require additional databases, direct notification (instead of Apple reviewing the cases), etc.

    Once this is baked into the OS, Apple has no leg to stand on, once “lawful” requests from governments are coming.
    mike54entropysxyzzy-xxxmuthuk_vanalingambyronlrhonin

  • Tech industry needs to rebuild user trust after privacy losses, says Tim Cook

    rcfarcfa
    mikethemartian said:
    Why does he always look like he is praying?
    Because the “woke” are the neo-puritans.
    “Wokeness” is a secular religion, hence the praying…
    georgie01elijahg