And how good is NCMEC's security? How resistant to hacking/tampering is the hash database at the source?
"“And God spake all these words, saying,...”
-- King James Bible, Exodus 20:1
Good enough for Moses, good enough for me.
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Apple Privacy Chief Explains 'Built-in' Privacy Protections in Child Safety Features Amid User Concerns
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-- King James Bible, Exodus 20:1
Good enough for Moses, good enough for me.
Isn't that really the point? It isn't anything like a legal investigation -- it's an opaque, proprietary algorithm which isn't subject to independent verification, acting with no warrant and no probable cause on a device Apple doesn't own.
"Unless" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
"And yes," he said with more than a hint of snark, "I'm fully aware that this is a literal English translation of the Hebrew 'vav conversive' construction and may therefore not be totally applicable to modern English prose. But I could not resist."
In a future post we'll discuss how common double negatives are in all Indo-European languages as well as the use of double superlatives for emphasis in Ancient Greek.
And when she grows up in a world without freedom, without privacy with wholesale surveillance, you tell her you did not stand up to be counted when you were happy to see it introduced by APPLE.
If you could ask some people in Germany whether they would have stood up to SURVEILLANCE etc. during the rise of Adolf Hitler, I think they would not have been so complacent.
Its always introduced in the name of safety.
Look up Reichstagsbrandverordnung as it was one of the key steps in eventually nullifying civil liberties making surveillance commonplace and privacy non existent. Germans even lost the right to mail or telephone privacy.
APPLE IS ENGAGING IN SURVEILLANCE...FACT
whatever excuse they use it does not alter it is SURVEILLANCE.
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The problem is people are missing what this is SURVEILLANCE whatever way you wish to look at it. Now the above diagram fails because it assumes there is a database of known CSAM image hashes and any database held by government in all its forms is not accessible by Apple.
It is suggested Apple will use the NCMEC database which contains many perfectly legal images and is not anywhere like a comprehensive database of child abuse images, but where it still disguises this is NOT about safeguarding children, as this will not do so.
This is the worst of all worlds it is Apple using Surveillance and in the guise of safeguarding children where it won't. If anything it will make crime detection harder for those who have that remit, and Apple do not. If Apple were so keen on helping fight crime, then why have they appeared on TV shouting from the rooftops that they WOULD NEVER compromise their customers or invade their privacy.
Any paedo will not then use iCloud, or would encrypt any images and go into more extreme measures to protect their awful deeds. This will make it harder for authorities, not easier.
No we should consider this for what it really is SURVEILLANCE...
Not just countries, the MPAA will probably want them to check videos too, and sue them for contributory infringement if they don’t.
Also, the main advantage Apple had over the competition was that they were the least bad commercial provider for security and privacy. With that eroding, their USP is undermined.
the important differnece is that currently it only happens to those images which are already uploaded, and if they’re ordered to add a few more hashes or alter the search path they can claim that’s too hard because they’d have to produce a system that can work on people’s phones or massively increase data requirements. With this, both those options become trivial.
Probably because CSAM scanning is something that has already been abused in other contexts, in particular ISPs, who suddenly had to add the hashes for a load of movies to their filtering once they started scanning for child porn (and imagine how unhappy they were, I don’t think).
You can turn that off, at least in Firefox.
Yeah... I am abandoning ship. I won't have companies scanning my files and building a portfolio on me. Since Apple is closed source software so far we have been using it built on trust but now we do not know what Monterey is doing in the background.
Maybe its time to donate to that Linux project that is making an M1 version: AsahiLinux
Maybe its time to donate to that Linux project that is making an M1 version: AsahiLinux
The more they try to explain it away, the less anyone believes it.
Can I ask people based in the US would you be happy if the hash list came from a country other than the US? Depending on the country I'd presume not. Therefore if this gets rolled out to other countries it would stand to reason that those countries would want their hash list to be a local one and not from the US, in fact local laws may require it. And then if that happened what is the divergence of those different hash lists? This could get very messy.
Per Apple's own privacy head, the hashes will be global as they are hard coded into iOS. The difference might be which hashes would be matched when the foreign iPhone connects to its respective regional iCloud service. Everything will still be hashed on the phone side, but for example, right now, only those with US iCloud accounts with icloud photos turned on will go through with the process (ie. Voucher captures for CSAM if there are any).
If we believe Apple, in theory, US iCloud photos users shouldn't be worried that Apple would be matching vouchers from matches from the, let's say, China hashes. But the scan will still be done as they are done on the phone. Questions should be asked for roaming iPhones of travelers or journalists in foreign countries. Definitely a lot of stuff to be explained.
I can’t do anymore than I am already doing. If Apple changes things after the release, I will re-evaluate and then determine my next move.
How long before Apple starts scanning our email? This is definitely a slippery slope. Tim Cook is an ******* and a hypocrite (I’ve never embraced him), and I no longer trust Apple when it comes to privacy, which is sad.
I also wonder why this is happening now, and why Apple suddenly came up with this. Who at Apple came up with this idea? Why? I too wonder if their hand is being forced, and the whole story is not being told.
Having said that, it’s time for me to go back to using my 35mm film SLR camera. And probably my Super 8mm film movie cameras and projectors as well. Before all this techo-digital crap that has been vomited out of Silicon-Valley, we didn’t have to worry about privacy. Now we worry about it constantly. Silicon Valley ushered in Big Brother, and nobody paid attention.
Apple already scans your iCloud email, for the exact same thing. They’ve been doing that for years.
They’ve also been doing this exact same thing in iCloud for years.
Even greater example of people that don’t understand what’s already happening on their device. Apple is already using on device scanning to scan every single photo on device as just one isolated example. It’s already using facial recognition, 3rd party data to identify objects and various other things. This extra scan is less invasive scanning wise than what the device is already doing and the methods they are using to match and identify are incredibly robust. Go read the published research papers before you make childish remarks.
As for all of you saying this is the start of a slippery slope, you have to be dumber than a brick if you think this is the start. The moment Apple allowed access to its servers to programs like Prism, it’s stored your encryption key with your data and when it included the ML chips many iPhone versions back you were already on a slope. Google will follow suit.
if your tin foil hats get to much for you, Nokia is still making some nice dumb phones or there are new OS’s such as CalyxOS that will suit you perfectly.
Oh and Apple has directly addressed the slippery slope argument in their documentation. If you don’t trust Apple, that’s cool, go find your open source alternatives 👋🏻
How so? I’ve NEVER heard of Apple scanning iCloud email or files people have stored in iCloud…for what? Are you talking about the facial recognition? What?
Just wait until innocent people are caught up in false flags. This is B.S., through and through. Perhaps you should send a letter to the EEF telling them they are making “childish remarks”. You OTHO, sound like someone who thinks they KIA.
It doesn’t matter how Apple spins it…the very notion of scanning any of your content goes against Apple’s position of being the ‘privacy’ company.
Sadly, that trust has been broken.
Sadly, that trust has been broken.
People like you is the reason human rights fail soon or later... see in a few words I describe your obsessive and pathetic behaviour for a company.