Poll of the Day > Apple plans to introduce software that scans users phones for Child Porn/Abuse

(+) Yeah! (+)

No, Its A Major Privacy Concern.

With things like this, it is rarely the stated function that is the scariest, it is how later governments can use it.

Think about it, if the surveillance technology we have today, existed before the 1950's or say the 1900's, equality for women, lgbt+ and based on race would have never become a thing.

Yes, fighting the possession and distribution of cp is a good thing, but at the cost of a backdoor that could be used at a later time based on what a later CEO/politician thinks is undesirable?

---

Judgmenl posted...

When I was a kid blah blah blah

When you were a kid, what? Teenagers didn't have sex?

---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Yes, fighting the possession and distribution of cp is a good thing, but at the cost of a backdoor that could be used at a later time based on what a later CEO/politician thinks is undesirable?

It is a fair and valid concern. Lets keep it in mind while we finally get a handle on all the very real harm and abuse that is being done to kids and start to get a handle on all this human trafficking, and then we can start debating hypothetical scenarios and figuring out how to protect people from those as well.

---

Mead posted...

It is a fair and valid concern. Lets keep it in mind while we finally get a handle on all the very real harm and abuse that is being done to kids and start to get a handle on all this human trafficking, and then we can start debating hypothetical scenarios and figuring out how to protect people from those as well.

Such glibness gets it in place and then later people can just say "it is already in place, why not use it?". Something can be wrong, even if the reason given is right.

It is far easier to get such a system in place, than it is to get rid of in time once its starts getting misused.

---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Such glibness gets it in place and then later people can just say "it is already in place, why not use it?". Something can be wrong, even if the reason given is right.

It is far easier to get such a system in place, than it is to get rid of in time once its starts getting misused.

then we will have to make a very big stink about it

but something MUST be done to curb all of this abuse and human slavery, and this is a tool in that arsenal

---

So the end justify the means?

---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

So the end justify the means?

sometimes, yes

it is something that always needs to be evaluated and debated I think but to me at least the ends very much justify the means in this situation

---

Mead posted...

sometimes, yes

it is something that always needs to be evaluated and debated I think but to me at least the ends very much justify the means in this situation

Then the follow up question, are you trusting coming generations not to misuse such a system, are you actively interested in further ways to implement the system (even if not explicitly mentioned by the current wording), or do you just not care about that?


---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Then the follow up question, are you trusting coming generations not to misuse such a system

no I think the powers that be always have to be held accountable or corruption will happen in dark areas that the public cannot see. Imo there needs to be a lot more transparency in society as a whole.

Nichtcrawler X posted...

are you actively interested in further ways to implement the system (even if not explicitly mentioned by the current wording), or do you just not care about that?

as long as it is about protecting vulnerable people from people who would harm them and there isnt a clear indication that other users will be negatively effected in meaningful ways then yes I think I would be in favor. It would depend on the ever changing situation at the time and what was being claimed.

---

why is anyone under the age of 12 taking pictures AND uploading them to the internet?
in a situation that is an emergency they could call 911
so what are we debating here?

this legit looks like an invasion of privacy and not the "oh no's!" we've been gettin here
you can't look at pictures of CP to begin with without working in law enforcement
this is extra judicial

---

thedicemaster posted...

AI isn't involved.
they don't detect new images.

your phone gets a list of "fingerprints" of confirmed bad images, and it makes a list of "fingerprints" of your images.
it then compares these lists to see if there are any matches.

I highly doubt there isn't some level of AI involved with this, but you are right about the "Fingerprints". Google tracker tags are one pixel big, and can fit into any picture or document. That is one of many style trackers.

Also in regards to it being run by the government and being inefficient. That is also true, but this is the USA. So naturally the private sector is involved and the government has them tracking things under certain guidelines (which are anything but transparent). With a combination of these sites and apps, all information can be gathered about you.

• Amazon knows everything you buy
• Google/Apple knows everywhere you go (both physically and digitally)
• Facebook/Snapchat/Social Media know all of your friends and network connections

Then you have all the other apps and companies, Microsoft, Uber, the rewards card from your grocery store, that newsletter you subscribe too...

My question regarding this specific use case designed to catch pedophiles, is how much of this is really software? At this point I have to start thinking about integrated hardware that's able to circumvent things like blockers because it's built into the phone.

I'm just saying the tech is already out and implemented, they are just improving it for specific purposes. If you have a problem with it, maybe we should collectively vote in more people who understand technology instead of the same old men. So that better laws and regulations can be written for these tech giants.

If you need me, you know where to find me.

---

Mead posted...

as long as it is about protecting vulnerable people from people who would harm them and there isnt a clear indication that other users will be negatively effected in meaningful ways then yes I think I would be in favor. It would depend on the ever changing situation at the time and what was being claimed.

That is the start of the slippery slope towards a police state and the eradication of increasing newly determined "undesirables".

Again, imagine such technologies being implemented before women's suffrage, before the decriminalization of homo-sexuality and while segregation was still a thing?

Any movement leading to what we consider completely normal and basic rights nowadays would have been squished before it could have garnered even any attention. We are not yet at the point where anything that is or should be morally acceptable, is also legal, thus there is potential danger in any step in such a surveillance direction.

---

Fine by me.

---

I like how it doesn't go to the police directly as evidence but goes to some goons to do with as they wish lmao sounds like someone at Apple just wants to pad out their illegal stash.
---

Can't say I'm ever a fan of someones privacy being intruded upon by corporate suits. Discord is stalking my DMs for example so I don't really bother with that platform.

---

EvilMegas posted...

Living up to the CP lover tag I gave you.

he must be a zeus alt, since he defended sunnys repugnant pro-sex with minors stance, ok?

---

I'm imagining a 14 year old sending dick picks to people he hates in hoping they get sent to prison

---

Cannot fucking wait to see the targeted ads Apple directs at known pedophiles

---

wwinterj25 posted...

Can't say I'm ever a fan of someones privacy being intruded upon by corporate suits. Discord is stalking my DMs for example so I don't really bother with that platform.

I literally say shit like 'jihad' every day on Discord, what the hell are you doing on there for them to track you??

---

Zareth posted...

I'm imagining a 14 year old sending dick picks to people he hates in hoping they get sent to prison

this kid at my school took a picture of his balls and showed it to everyone in the hallway during passing

---

this isnt whats happening. this is speculation on top of speculation. read the actual article lol

---

Mead posted...

then we will have to make a very big stink about it

By the time we've found out it's been misused it's already too late for that.

---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

That is the start of the slippery slope towards a police state and the eradication of increasing newly determined "undesirables".

There is a concern to be sure but I think you are greatly over exaggerating it

---

Better still is that not only are they scanning your images against other whatever child abuse databases, but those images will be sent to Apple personnel for verification. I haven't touched computer forensics in seven years, but something tells me they haven't figured out how to get code to identify whether or not similar images are actually duplicates. Sure, they can look at the image syntax, but if they do that then something as simple as changing a few pixels would mean the syntax is different - requiring verification. In forensics tools that I've used, they had software that could scan for things like humans/bodies, but it was lightyears away from being able to use without visual verification of the images. It was only ever used for identifying potential images on a drive. At the end of the day, some Apple employee is gonna have to look at your nudes or hideously worse - actual CP.

Not only are they scanning your phones but they're also building a backdoor into their encryption. So I hope you don't like having rights against search and seizure on your phone because that's going out the window where Apple historically has said they literally could not unlock an encrypted phone if they wanted to.

---

Porque no los dos?

I'm not exactly going to be shedding any tears over anyone who gets caught thanks to this, but it is a significant privacy overreach and I am concerned about the precedent set.

---

Nichtcrawler X posted...

That is the start of the slippery slope towards a police state and the eradication of increasing newly determined "undesirables".

Again, imagine such technologies being implemented before women's suffrage, before the decriminalization of homo-sexuality and while segregation was still a thing?

Any movement leading to what we consider completely normal and basic rights nowadays would have been squished before it could have garnered even any attention. We are not yet at the point where anything that is or should be morally acceptable, is also legal, thus there is potential danger in any step in such a surveillance direction.

+ 1. If you give the powers that be a hammer, everything will look like a nail.

---

some clarification has been released.
there are actually 2 separate filters, for different purposes.

an AI that detects adult content you send or receive through the messaging app or search for in siri:
this is only active for minors that are part of a family group/account, and only when an adult in the group enables it.
this will produce a warning that is not shared with authorities or apple, if the minor is under 12 it'll be sent to adults in the group, if the minor is older it'll only be shown on the minor's device.
this AI "learns" and will analyze the actual content, and flags any mature content.
I think the siri part is always on for everyone, but only produces a warning for the user.("this search query may result in offensive results, are you sure you want to perform this search?")

and a fingerprint check for icloud photo library uploads:
this most likely uses a technology similar to tineye.com or soundcloud, it reduces a photo's core details to a series of numbers that are unique to that photo and any minor edits of it(mirrors, resizes, crops, color shifts, etc.)
this fingerprint is compared to a list of fingerprints of confirmed "bad" photos.
if a photo matches a fingerprint an encrypted copy and an unencrypted thumbnail are put in an encrypted vault in your icloud, this encrypted vault cannot be decrypted by anyone until it "overflows"(when a certain amount of flagged images are put into it)
when the "vault" is full it gets sent to a team of Apple employees who can then decrypt it and check the thumbnails to see wether there are any false positives, they never get access to the full sized images and apple estimates that there's a chance of 1 in 1 trillion every year that there will be enough false positives to fill up such a vault.
only after that the decrypted vault will be sent for final verification to the only organization in the US allowed to process these "bad" images, and from there the authorities will be notified.
Apple promises that they'll refuse any request or order from governments to add other types of "unwanted images" to the database for this filter.

the full sized images and apple estimates that there's a chance of 1 in 1 trillion every year that there will be enough false positives to fill up such a vault.

hmmmm

---

thedicemaster posted...

some clarification has been released.
there are actually 2 separate filters, for different purposes.

an AI that detects adult content you send or receive through the messaging app or search for in siri:
this is only active for minors that are part of a family group/account, and only when an adult in the group enables it.
this will produce a warning that is not shared with authorities or apple, if the minor is under 12 it'll be sent to adults in the group, if the minor is older it'll only be shown on the minor's device.

it should only go to 1-2 devices that would be designated for that. an older sibling could be an adult on the account, so sending it to all the adults in the group is a bad idea
---

Blighboy posted...

Cannot fucking wait to see the targeted ads Apple directs at known pedophiles

Like what? Ads to the FBI?