Apple to implement CSAM in the name of stopping child pornography

[rooster]

Kinda like the patriot act. Hard to argue against something that scans your phone for CP but this article does a good job of explaining to potential for abuse by say a government that wants to target opposition.

Scanning for child abuse images can be problematic for Apple - 9to5Mac

A report this morning said that Apple is set to announce that it will begin scanning for child abuse images on iPhones ...

www.google.com

 

[phylodog]

A government that wants to target opposition.

Come on man, that would never happen, it’s for the children.

If they can scan your photos remotely, they can send them as well. Might have to go back to a flip phone w/no camera.

 

[indykid]

George Orwell would be screaming "I warned you" and "I told you so!"

 

[Tombs]

It'd be great if they had bots scanning websites for it.

But people's private phones? Whew that is one gigantic leap towards total dystopia.

 

[bwframe]

Going back years, I never could understand how any conservative would support Apple/Tim Cook?

From RFRA to the modern day, Apple and Tim Cook have hated us. Any gun owner should know better than to support Apple...

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun control 'insanity' after mass shootings

Cook says he's "heartbroken" about the weekend mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

www.cnbc.com

Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun violence 'insanity' after 2 mass shootings within 24 hours killed 29 people

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results," Tim Cook tweeted of the two US shootings over the weekend.

www.businessinsider.com

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says US Needs Gun Control

Apple CEO Tim Cook says it's "insanity" that lawmakers have not made bipartisan efforts to enact gun control in the United States.

www.ibtimes.com

 

[rooster]

Going back years, I never could understand how any conservative would support Apple/Tim Cook?

For a long time Apple has been the gold standard in encryption and privacy.

No I got nothing to hide but I don’t like the idea of some low level analyst a la Snowden potentially having access to my phone.

 

[Mongo59]

What could go wrong with a .gov reviewing all your conversations?

 

[KLB]

Going back years, I never could understand how any conservative would support Apple/Tim Cook?

From RFRA to the modern day, Apple and Tim Cook have hated us. Any gun owner should know better than to support Apple...

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun control 'insanity' after mass shootings

Cook says he's "heartbroken" about the weekend mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

www.cnbc.com

Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun violence 'insanity' after 2 mass shootings within 24 hours killed 29 people

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results," Tim Cook tweeted of the two US shootings over the weekend.

www.businessinsider.com

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says US Needs Gun Control

Apple CEO Tim Cook says it's "insanity" that lawmakers have not made bipartisan efforts to enact gun control in the United States.

www.ibtimes.com

I don't have one, but it isn't like the alternative is any better.

 

[ditcherman]

Going back years, I never could understand how any conservative would support Apple/Tim Cook?

From RFRA to the modern day, Apple and Tim Cook have hated us. Any gun owner should know better than to support Apple...

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun control 'insanity' after mass shootings

Cook says he's "heartbroken" about the weekend mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

www.cnbc.com

Tim Cook calls US inaction on gun violence 'insanity' after 2 mass shootings within 24 hours killed 29 people

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results," Tim Cook tweeted of the two US shootings over the weekend.

www.businessinsider.com

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says US Needs Gun Control

Apple CEO Tim Cook says it's "insanity" that lawmakers have not made bipartisan efforts to enact gun control in the United States.

www.ibtimes.com

Who doesn’t hate us?
Who is standing up for our rights, as far as tech provider?

*sent from my iPhone

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I don't have any Apple products other than an old clicky-wheel ipod that has no connectivity features. Apple stores a lot of data via their iCloud thing. That's billed as a benefit if you lose your phone and need to restore the data to a new phone or the like. However it also means that you don't own a copy of the data. Apple stores it, Apple (mostly) owns it and you agree to it with the terms of service.

Now, this thing will not "scan" photos. That's driving finishing nails with a sledge hammer. It compares "fingerprints", as explained in the article. That's nothing new and is how copyright striking software works, how LE scans for CP, etc. so it's a little breathless that gov't could suddenly use this "new" technology inappropriately. I'd be shocked if China doesn't already do so.

 

[KLB]

I don't have any Apple products other than an old clicky-wheel ipod that has no connectivity features. Apple stores a lot of data via their iCloud thing. That's billed as a benefit if you lose your phone and need to restore the data to a new phone or the like. However it also means that you don't own a copy of the data. Apple stores it, Apple (mostly) owns it and you agree to it with the terms of service.

Now, this thing will not "scan" photos. That's driving finishing nails with a sledge hammer. It compares "fingerprints", as explained in the article. That's nothing new and is how copyright striking software works, how LE scans for CP, etc. so it's a little breathless that gov't could suddenly use this "new" technology inappropriately. I'd be shocked if China doesn't already do so.

You are a bit off base BBI. The issue is not in the technology that does the scanning. It is in Apple doing it in the first place. It is a small stretch to imagine a government adding fingerprints for things they find subversive.

 

[Leadeye]

Trying to understand how this works. Apple has a library of kiddie porn that they use to compare other pictures to, looking for similarities?

 

[KLB]

Trying to understand how this works. Apple has a library of kiddie porn that they use to compare other pictures to, looking for similarities?

The Government does. Each one has a "fingerprint" which is a way to identify a file without actually opening it. This is how most of your anti-virus software finds viruses.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

You are a bit off base BBI. The issue is not in the technology that does the scanning. It is in Apple doing it in the first place. It is a small stretch to imagine a government adding fingerprints for things they find subversive.

I understand that. China already has access to Apple's iCloud database for China. They don't need Apple to scan, they already can do it on their own.

Governments aren't providing the 'fingerprints', the non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is. Apple is not reporting to governments, they are reporting to the same non-profit and it's then up to the non-profit to notify LE after "manual verification", by which I assume a human verifies it.

And this only applies to things on the iCloud, not anything only on your device.

 

[Leadeye]

Hard to imagine doing that for a living.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Trying to understand how this works. Apple has a library of kiddie porn that they use to compare other pictures to, looking for similarities?

Not exactly. Computers don't actually send pictures any more than records contain sound. They encode data which is then reconstructed by the receiving computer or by a needle and speaker system, respectively.

So you have a database with chunks of known "code" that belongs to a CP image. The system then scans for those chunks. It would be like knowing the groove pattern for a few seconds specific to a given record vs knowing what the song is or sounds like. Sort of, that's an oversimplification.

That's why some videos on YouTube of copyrighted material are mirrored (left changed to right) or music contains a few blank spots. It changes the code/groove the programs look for. The video is basically the same, the code/groove is different. The 'checksum' is what those programs look for, I believe.

 

[Leadeye]

Not exactly. Computers don't actually send pictures any more than records contain sound. They encode data which is then reconstructed by the receiving computer or by a needle and speaker system, respectively.

So you have a database with chunks of known "code" that belongs to a CP image. The system then scans for those chunks. It would be like knowing the groove pattern for a few seconds specific to a given record vs knowing what the song is or sounds like. Sort of, that's an oversimplification.

That's why some videos on YouTube of copyrighted material are mirrored (left changed to right) or music contains a few blank spots. It changes the code/groove the programs look for. The video is basically the same, the code/groove is different.

I understand that aspect of the transmission of the data, what I can't understand is how you can sort out the differences enough without actually comparing pictures. At the end of the day nobody wants to send the cops to the wrong phone.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I understand that aspect of the transmission of the data, what I can't understand is how you can sort out the differences enough without actually comparing pictures. At the end of the day nobody wants to send the cops to the wrong phone.

Well, humans don't need to compare to a database. If I show you a picture of a tree, you know it's a tree without comparing it to known pictures of trees.

But here's the truth. LE isn't going to be sent to anyone's phone over a few photos, even if they are obviously CP. CP is so prevalent and resources so limited that very few 'downloaders' are ever pursued. Prolific 'uploaders' are the target.

 

[rooster]

Now, this thing will not "scan" photos. That's driving finishing nails with a sledge hammer. It compares "fingerprints", as explained in the article. That's nothing new and is how copyright striking software works, how LE scans for CP, etc. so it's a little breathless that gov't could suddenly use this "new" technology inappropriately. I'd be shocked if China doesn't already do so.

Ok so the big difference between this and the tech you are talking about is that this is client side. Meaning that the scanning is happening on your iPhone. Yea they claim that it only compares the code of known CP against the code of the photos in your phone but then Apple goes on to say that they can notify you when any photo with nudity gets sent or received on your child’s phone, even if it’s not in the database. This means that they have a machine algorithm scanning photos on your phone. It’s allegedly only turned on on kids phones by the parents.....

that means that they have broken and put in a backdoor into their own “secure” message program.

Sure the back door is only open right now for parents allegedly but how long before those communications are just being read by low level analysts and beat cops on a fishing expedition.

personally I think this is a net loss for Law enforcement. Those that are the real bad guys are gonna be driven further away from mainstream tech and onto more secure systems that can’t be cracked. Osama bin laden used couriers for years to do his business.

 

[KLB]

I understand that. China already has access to Apple's iCloud database for China. They don't need Apple to scan, they already can do it on their own.

Governments aren't providing the 'fingerprints', the non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is. Apple is not reporting to governments, they are reporting to the same non-profit and it's then up to the non-profit to notify LE after "manual verification", by which I assume a human verifies it.

And this only applies to things on the iCloud, not anything only on your device.

Apple says Device:

Apple repeatedly underscores that its method of detecting CSAM is designed with user privacy in mind. In plain English, Apple is essentially analyzing the images on your device to see if there are any matches against a database of known CSAM images provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Apple explains:

Before an image is stored in iCloud Photos, an on-device matching process is performed for that image against the unreadable set of known CSAM hashes. This matching process is powered by a cryptographic technology called private set intersection, which determines if there is a match without revealing the result. Private set intersection (PSI) allows Apple to learn if an image hash matches the known CSAM image hashes, without learning anything about image hashes that do not match. PSI also prevents the user from learning whether there was a match.