Apple Confirms Detection of Child Sexual Abuse Material is Disabled When iCloud Photos is Turned Off

[JosephAW]

Wait until the employees who find positive hits get paid for each violation they find, they will be planting all kinds of data everywhere.

It’s that way now with those who are on parole. If a parole officer finds a violation they get paid a bonus.

 

[The Clark]

Wait until the employees who find positive hits get paid for each violation they find, they will be planting all kinds of data everywhere.

It’s that way now with those who are on parole. If a parole officer finds a violation they get paid a bonus.

I'm not for Apple doing this, but it's very clear you don't understand how things are implemented.

This is an absurdly out of touch take.

 

[ian87w]

Wait wait wait. I'm surprised with all the comments about themselves have nothing to hide. Remember how the same argument is used when people argued about privacy on other platforms. And now Apple defenders are using the same argument? WTF?

The problem with things like this is, you as an individual where you are promised on privacy, have no control on what is being used to judge you on your content. Hashes, machine learning, whatever, in the end there's a human in the chain putting the data in, and when there's a human involved, errors/ill intent will happen.

And remember, what is deemed okay/not okay by these invisible judges can change.

If you are okay with these kind of things, then you have not lived in a country/society with heavy censorship. Take example, my country, Indonesia, where even a lip-to-lip kiss is considered indecent, and is requirement for censorship on media. It's worse with the laws. In my country, if someone leaked an indecent video/photo that you took for yourself, even if you didn't intend to share it, you can be trialled and jailed.

Considering Apple put out to the world that they have technology like this, it's only a matter of time that governments of various countries requiring Apple to censor other things that they consider unlawful.

 

[iZac]

Apple isn’t policing what you store on your device, only what you upload to their cloud servers.

Yeah, I believe this is the exact legal culpability that Apple wants to avoid by implementing the feature.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the authorities found some awful humans were sharing this type of content via iCloud photo sharing and suddenly this became an absolute priority to block.

 

[benspratling]

I guess they're starting with child sex abuse images so people who complain that a private company is inserting spy software on a phone and reporting a customer to the government when he has information they don't like without his knowledge or warning or feedback or review possibilities seem like they're trying to hide child sex abuse instead of concerned that there would be a slippery slope from some governments..... cause if there's one thing we can all agree on after the last 1.5 years it's that there's never any slippery slopes.... right?

 

[benspratling]

If that were to happen I’d be here railing against it.

But as long as they’re just helping catch these sick freaks they have nothing but my support

Why do you think you'd find out about it before they storm your house at 3 in the morning? And given how fast we saw amazon, google, apple, Twitter, facebook collude to take down public information about news stories they don't like back in january, and why do you think we'll find out they stormed your house at 3 in the morning?

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

If you want to use the convenience of cloud things, you need to understand it’s a service and your data will be scanned. You don’t have to use it. Personally I love it. It’s saved my butt numerous times.
Whether it’s photos, dictation, email, music, media, and so on, for it to function at its best, FOR YOU, it needs to be looked over by bots and minions. If you chose to enter this arena, don’t be a creep. Everyone will find out.

 

[wigby]

I agree with darcyf that if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

That’s an understandable sentiment but a terrible law and tech policy because the definition of wrong bends to the will of the ruling class.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Better not take any of those cute photos if your little kids playing in the bath or the lake. In these enlightened times, that’s now considered sexual and you are a pedophile.

 

[DanTSX]

If you want to use the convenience of cloud things, you need to understand it’s a service and your data will be scanned. You don’t have to use it. Personally I love it. It’s saved my butt numerous times.
Whether it’s photos, dictation, email, music, media, and so on, for it to function at its best, FOR YOU, it needs to be looked over by bots and minions. If you chose to enter this arena, don’t be a creep. Everyone will find out.

We trust Apple to not be like the others.....


Nobody should find out. Apple should tell the feds to get a warrant and comply minimally with them.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

I agree with darcyf that if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Not 1776, not 1938, not 1969, not 1988, no, it’s 2021 and people are still trying to make this argument for the forfeiture of their own security and privacy. Bill Of Rights is obsolete. The culture is a failure. Perhaps you’re right, and the US really does need to throw itself on the fire to learn firsthand what everyone else learned about authoritarianism the hard way a century ago.

 

[ikir]

Sounds like I’ll be turning off iCloud.

Apple go ahead and release that 1TB iPhone.

Please, respect our privacy as consumers. Don’t be creepy.

It is an hash. It is mathematics not a visive inspection.

 

[ikir]

what’s next? scanning your stuff on iCloud for anti government materials for oppressive governments?

Hash is not an image. It is a database of hashes.

 

[DanTSX]

Hash is not an image. It is a database of hashes.

Correct.

But it doesn’t have to be CP.

This could identify all instances of a particular file on the system. And potentially flag the instances for administrative level removal.

 

[LeadingHeat]

What’s even the point? I feel like if you’re one of these people you were going to turn off iCloud right away to begin with.

I think this helps those kids who are tricked into sending/receiving lewd photos. Which happens all too often sadly. It’s despicable what’s happening to our youth.

 

[haruhiko]

Hash is not an image. It is a database of hashes.

Yeah thanks I know hash is not an image, but what is stopping a government to provide hashes of ‘child porn’ but actually are hashes for images depicting anti government activities? Or they can officially do it via a legislation to require Apple to report customers with illegal iCloud photos? See my other post above.

 

[iphoneZ]

Think Criminal.

 

[msp3]

“Child porn” today, politically incorrect speech tomorrow. How soon will Apple be scanning your phone for memes making fun of the police state, disagreeing with our political puppets and their media mouthpieces, and having the audacity to think for yourself and make independent choices?

 

[DanTSX]

“Child porn” today, politically incorrect speech tomorrow. How soon will Apple be scanning your phone for memes making fun of the police state, disagreeing with our political puppets and their media mouthpieces, and having the audacity to think for yourself and make independent choices?

If you can imagine it, it’s probably already occurring at some level.

Yet congress approves the PATRIOT act every year.....there were plenty of hints over the last 6 years that things like this were occurring, but each instance needed a complex alibi to make it appear that the data was collected via traditional methods or sources were flipped organically. And the moral cover was there too, with huge swaths of the country voluntarily in a state of mass hysteria over Trump.

I feel sorry and a bit resentful for anyone who fell for it...

 

[Wildkraut]

You should read how file hashing works and how it's used to identify CSAM. No one "peruses" your pictures. Your pictures produce a unique hash value using either the MD5 or SHA hash, which doesn't reveal anything about the content of your photo - that hash is then compared to a very large database of known CSAM hash values. If there's a match, it kicks out a report to the appropriate LE agency (in the US, it usually goes to a local ICAC).

There has only ever been one SHA-1 hash collision in history, when scientists at google and CWI Amsterdam spent a ton of CPU/GPU time trying to do it using a formula, and they were successful only once in what was nine quintillion attempts. So it's pretty accurate!

You, too. CSAM doesn’t use a traditional 1:1 hash algorithms like md5 or sha-1, which are broken algorithms btw. They use Fuzzy Hashing and calculate the distance between hashes to determine if a photo is related to another photo. Setting the right threshold is what makes it difficult, a too loose threshold leads to false positive, a too strict threshold leads to false negatives. They prefer to run into false positives than into false negatives, simply because false negatives leads to potentially unflagged positive csam photos.

 

[laz232]

I am not

What's next....constant gps readings and location data being sent to the police if you are over speed limits; hackers instead of merely locking you out of files, not download these images on your devices with a bitcoin ransom; images/text that are against a political regime now result in arrest warrants....you name it

Especially given the hate crime law's now in place in certain countries: if someone sends me a joke or I misgender a person in a message exchange then that is de facto illegal in certain western "democracies".
Those technology- and the short-sighted public acquiescence - will make potential criminals of us all (see the laws against "the party" that Stalin -era USSR had in place)

 

[Jim Lahey]

Mission creep is definitely the problem here. It’s only a matter of time before the likes of the FBI attempt to exert influence over such systems in order to target and monitor political dissidents. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

[Fred Zed]

Bye bye “privacy “.
As mentioned , they always use a valid initial reason to infringe on our privacy and liberties for the long haul.

 

[Steve121178]

Considering Apple put out to the world that they have technology like this, it's only a matter of time that governments of various countries requiring Apple to censor other things that they consider unlawful.

Already been happening for a few years in the UK with pressure put on YouTube & social media companies to ban individuals who go against the establishment.

At first social media companies were reluctant, but now they can't act quick enough. In fact, Facebook has put itself in a position to dictate what people can and cannot say on its platform. That's very dangerous.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Bye bye “privacy “.
As mentioned , they always use a valid initial reason to infringe on our privacy and liberties for the long haul.

Agreed. Today it’s child abuse, tomorrow it’s terrorists. Day after that, the definition of terrorist is expanded.

In good conscience it’s difficult to reasonably oppose something like this but, in the end, purveyors of child abuse are not using iCloud to circulate their material. This may identify some low hanging fruit but it probably won’t solve any problems. And so then another idea is put in place. Et cetera, et cetera…next thing you know you’re doing a stretch in the slammer for saving a Joe Biden meme on your iPad.