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EFF Flew a Banner Over Apple Park During Last Apple Event to Protest CSAM Plans
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They already *do* decrypt all the files in iCloud photos and scan them there, iCloud photos arent protected from Apple unlike other iCloud data, that’s part of why the on device scanning (but only if you have icloud photos enabled) is so silly
This brings up a good question. Where is the skin in the game for Apple in all of this. Why are they interested in this CSAM at all? Is there some head executives at Apple whose had personal negative experiences around child pornography and is pushing for this? I'm really curious to know if any investigative journalism has been done on the history of this Apple and CSAM thing.
I'm ignorant of what these trial emails are referring to. Could you point me to some sources about this trial? I'm unaware of it.
Is that true? Could you point to a source. I was always under the impression that our own iCloud data is not accessible to anyone without the required electronic credentials.
Seems true!
Also, while there's a lot of fingers pointing at China -- and rightfully so -- we can't ignore the fact that the same thing can and does happen in the US. We only need to think back to the previous presidency to see how insanely authoritarian the US can be and in fact still has such types in congressional offices! So while we can point fingers at China, we can't ignore the fact that Apple, a US-based company, is also in dangerous territory when it comes to its own (our own) country.
1. It's great to see EFF wasting my 15 years of recurring annual donations I give them fight actual legal cases on behalf of people who can't defend themselves by hiring a Cesna and hauling a banner around all day
2. Given how many cars there are, looks like all EFF did was annoy the people who live around Apple Park and were instead having to deal with a plane flying overhead all day
This is giving me PETA vibes and I don't like it. They bullied Apple for years just to raise their own brand. EFF appears to be doing the same thing.
2. Given how many cars there are, looks like all EFF did was annoy the people who live around Apple Park and were instead having to deal with a plane flying overhead all day
This is giving me PETA vibes and I don't like it. They bullied Apple for years just to raise their own brand. EFF appears to be doing the same thing.
Forced by the FBI, NSA, etc. Apple is doing this in return for a publicity pass from the government agencies regarding Apple supporting terrorism, porn, and child endangerment. Apple & the government want a back door that publicly does not appear to be a back door.
That guy is explaining how he *thinks* the technology should work. But does not understand that technology has unforeseen consequences or gets hacked many many times every day. There are quite possibly seasoned hackers having a good laugh at him right now.
"Think of the children" is such a trope. On my favourite tech forum, they even have an icon of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Think of the children) that you can use to tag your posts. Because it's something that is used so often and so inappropriately.
No decent citizen wants to see CSAM shunted around the web. But there are ways and there are ways of detecting crime. This is the wrong way. Offenders don't just get this stuff out of the blue. They get on the dark web onto creepy forums, or they send their credit card details in a certain direction. Which the British police infiltrate, and use to catch them. It happens a lot, and I have have no problem at all with the police hijacking those deviant services, or chasing down payments to miscreants.
But that shouldn't be happening on my phone, as a matter of course, without my permission. In a way that puts way too much trust in external agencies.
The decision to implement this was not made recently but was already included as part of iOS 14.3 code. It’s not “if” but “when” this will be activated either publicly or privately.
The decision was finalized long before iOS 14 was released. It’s already out of Apple’s hands now and authorities higher up already had given the green light for this project. The delay is just smoke and mirrors to trick Apple users to think they are influencing the outcome.
Apple cannot back out of this now even if they wanted to. For the first time iOS users can opt out of a major release, this is unprecedented and has never been done before, this is the only recourse Apple could provide its users to slow down this forced implementation.
Don’t be surprised if Apple tries to thwart this decision from on high and provide an iOS 14.x IPSW for the newly released iPhone 13 and 14 and provide two years of updates for iOS 14 alongside iOS 15 and 16.
20 years from now the non-disclosure agreements that Cook was forced to sign will reveal he was on our side from the beginning and was trying to stop this by any means possible.
The decision was finalized long before iOS 14 was released. It’s already out of Apple’s hands now and authorities higher up already had given the green light for this project. The delay is just smoke and mirrors to trick Apple users to think they are influencing the outcome.
Apple cannot back out of this now even if they wanted to. For the first time iOS users can opt out of a major release, this is unprecedented and has never been done before, this is the only recourse Apple could provide its users to slow down this forced implementation.
Don’t be surprised if Apple tries to thwart this decision from on high and provide an iOS 14.x IPSW for the newly released iPhone 13 and 14 and provide two years of updates for iOS 14 alongside iOS 15 and 16.
20 years from now the non-disclosure agreements that Cook was forced to sign will reveal he was on our side from the beginning and was trying to stop this by any means possible.
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Ah yes, the bait and catch response, claim ignorance and ask for sources but because your too lazy to go look for them and when the member does not produce those sources, you go and complain to the mod's that the site rules have been broken.
It is scanning your photos for child porn - this "it's not scanning your photos it just compares the hashes" claim is meaningless. They are using "perceptual hashes" - an image recognition/machine learning technique designed so that "visually similar" images will produce the same hash, regardless of cropping, scaling, changes in image quality etc. False positives are inevitable and the risk can only be measured experimentally - you really, really have to trust Apple on the reliability, especially when it comes to "we only send an alert after multiple matches" - which doesn't necessarily help because your personal photo collection is not a random collection of images, most people will have loads of "visually similar" images of children/pets/homes/posessions.
It is highly likely that any software that can identify your friends' faces and pets in your photos is also "just comparing hashes".
These are very different from "cryptographic hashes" - the sort of thing you'd use for checking the authenticity of a downloaded file. Those check that files are identical to the original, and are designed so that a tiny change to the file will change the hash, with a negligible (and mathematically computable) risk of false positives. They'd be useless for detecting known porn images, because cropping, rescaling or tweaking the image, even slightly, would lead to a different hash.
The only mitigation is that, Apple have said, that the scanning will only be done on images that you are about to upload to iCloud Photos - and having unencrypted, photos stored on someone else's server scanned for known illegal images is probably unavoidable, so we're really talking about the "line in the sand" crossed by doing the scanning on the users' phone instead of on the server.
Er....ok. I wasn't picking a fight at all. Sorry you read it that way.
I am ignorant of these trial emails. I'm assuming court trials?
I don't think that matters, I'm sure all the important people have seen it just like we have. Sometimes, to protest something, you have to keep stuffing it in their face, and the press obliges.
That's a weak argument. I can use my iPhone to take pictures of my pet gecko. Someone else can use it to produce CSAM. The same technology, different uses. Should we not have cameras or the internet or drugs or cars or anything because they can be abused? Do we take down the internet because foreign governments use it to oppress their people?
I'm not saying those are all equivalent to Apple's plan to scan for known CSAM. All I'm saying is that is a poor argument against Apple's plan.
Apple made a big stink... and now all the creeps have stopped using ANY Apple products to distribute CSAM.
Let them stay on the Dark Web where they belong.
Maybe this was Apple's plan all along...
Thank you! I didn't know "trials" was referring to the ongoing battle with Epic games etc.
Interesting read. This then gets into the territory of whether the issue of bad actors in the Apple ecosystem (per child pornography) is actually an Apple problem. Do companies have obligations about their consumer's behaviour....
That would be like Greenpeace protesting about whaling ships using disposable plastic harpoons.
Pretty sure that the EFF would like to see Google - who's entire business model is based ib selling your personal data to the highest bidder - wiped from the face of the Earth. Apple, OTOH, have previously made a big noise about how much they care about privacy, so they're being called out for hypocrisy.
Then stop saying 'show me sources' and instead say something like 'I do not know about the trials you refer to, can you explain them to me or point me in the direction where I can read them for myself'. just typing 'show me sources' is very confrontational.
We remember! However what they do isn't near as bad as what Apple is proposing. (for now)
