[secondo]

It's quite easy to extrapolate this and in a few steps end up in a boring dystopia.

First it's iPhone photos, then it's all iCloud files, that spills into Macs using iCloud, then it's client side reporting of local Mac files, and somewhere along all other Apple hardware I've filled my home with have received equivalent updates and are phoning home to verify that I don't have files or whatever data they can see or hear that some unknown authority has decided should be reported.

What is the utopian perspective of this which counterbalances the risks for this to be a path worth taking?

[Santosh83]

> What is the utopian perspective of this which counterbalances the risks for this to be a path worth taking?

Apple takes care of everything for you, and they have your best interests at heart. You will be safe, secure, private and seamlessly integrated with your beautiful devices, so you can more efficiently consume.

What's not to like about a world where child crime, terrorism, abuse, radical/harmful content and misinformation can be spotted in inception and at the source and effectively quarantined?

[SilverRed]

No one here has a problem with the worst criminals being taken out. The problem is the scope creep that always comes after.

In 2021 and 2020 we saw people being arrested for planning/promoting anti lockdown protests. Not for actually participating but for simply posting about it. The scope of what "harmful content" is is infinite. You might agree that police do need to take action against these people but surely you can see how the scope creeped from literal terrorists and pedophiles to edgy facebook mums and how that could move even further to simple criticisms of the government or religion.

It's difficult to say how we draw the line to make sure horrible crimes go punished while still protecting reasonable privacy and freedom. I'm guessing apples justification here is that they are not sending your photos to police but simply checking them against known bad hashes and if you are not a pedophile, there will be no matches and none of your data will have been exposed.

[endgame]

We also saw the police query "check-in" databases which were pitched to the public as "for contact-tracing purposes only". Scope creep is inevitable.

[optimiz3]

Source? Most of these systems didn't disclose location.

[sdoering]

In Germany police went around and even looked at contact tracing lists (on paper) in restaurants [1]. Even while politicians still stated publicly that these lists were only used (or to be used) for contact tracing.

[1]: https://www.golem.de/news/hamburg-polizei-nutzt-corona-konta...

Also the partly state sponsored luca app (check in in locations, festivals, restaurants, concerts) that is privately developed (and riddled with security holes) is already in discussion to use the data on the people to better target them for concert tickets and the like [2].

[2]: https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2021/luca-app-ccc-fordert-bund...

So we see this data is already in abuse by the state and also by state sponsored private entities.

I believe, that this data, once collected, will only be (ab)used further in the future. In my experience it will be as with all data caches - somebody wants to create additional value from it.

[ValentineC]

Singapore:

https://fortune.com/2021/02/01/singapore-covid-data-tracetog...

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/police-can-a...

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/proposed-restrictions...

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/bill-limitin...

(Note that one mostly-united political party controls 89.2% of Singapore's legislature seats, and can pass any laws or amend its constitution to their liking.)

[nonlocutor]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urg...

[sharken]

Do you have sources for this ?

[endgame]

Australia, WA, check-in data: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urg...

Australia, WA, border pass data: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-17/g2g-app-data-accessed...

Australia, VIC, check-in data: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/police-sought-ac...

Australia, QLD, check-in data: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-29/queensland-coronaviru...

[sdoering]

See my answer to your sister comment from @optimiz3

In Germany police requested contact tracing lists from restaurants in investigations.

[sharken]

Thank you, it clearly shows that the German government cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

And the underlying desire for having this information will no doubt prolong the Corona restrictions longer than necessary, which is certainly not in the interest of German citizens.

[bississippi]

We also saw HN shadow banning entire IP CIDR blocks because they didn’t like argument against fleeting CDC guidance that was put forth or the Chinese lab origin theory in 2020. You can’t register from these CIDR blocks. If you had an account before the comments would just end up in a black hole. Dang can explain.

[dang]

That is false. So was your other false claim that I replied to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28093879).

Please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with.

[paulcarroty]

Any proofs will be great here.

[GaryTang]

@dang why?

[layoutIfNeeded]

@dang is that true? :O

[GaryTang]

Who will be accountable for the creeps at apple? Or their overlords in the government?

[sergiomattei]

I mean, Apple isn't too far from the Mac thing you mention. Since Catalina running an executable on macOS phones home and checks for valid signatures on their servers.

[quenix]

No, this is entirely different.

[raxxorrax]

> What is the utopian perspective of this

You will make Apple tons of money.

[feanaro]

> It's quite easy to extrapolate this and in a few steps end up in a boring dystopia.

It's only boring until we get another Hitler or equivalent.

[ChrisKnott]

> "What is the utopian perspective of this which counterbalances the risks for this to be a path worth taking?"

Basically victims of rape don't want imagery of their rape freely distributed as pornography. They consider that a violation of their rights.

It's interesting how many users in this thread are instinctively siding with the offenders in this, and not the victims. Presumably because they made it through their own childhoods without having imagery of their own abuse shared online.

[sdoering]

You are actually creating a false dichotomy here. There are more sides to this. And you are creating (as said a false) black and white image here.

I strongly believe that nobody wants to further victimize people by publicly showing images of their abuse.

And I believe very strongly that putting hundreds of millions of people under blanket general suspicion is a dangerous first step.

Imagine if every bank had to search all documents in safe deposit boxes to see if people had committed tax evasion (or stored other illegal things like blood diamonds obtained with child labor). That would be an equivalent in the physical world.

Now add to this, as discussed elsewhere here, that the database in question contains not only BIlder of victims, but also perfectly legal images. This can lead to people "winning" a house search because they have perfectly legal data stored in their cloud.

Furthermore, this means that a single country's understanding of the law is applied to a global user community. From a purely legal point of view, this is an interesting problem.

And yes: I would like to see effective measures to make the dissemination of such material more difficult. At the same time, however, I see it as difficult to use a tool for this purpose that is not subject to any control by the rule of law and cannot be checked if the worst comes to the worst.

[srj]

Using your bank analogy for a second: banks already do report on activity to authorities who can then identify people to investigate based on patterns. I've heard that large transactions (>10k) or near-sized ones are flagged.

A great deal of skepticism is being given to the NCMEC database in these comments, which I'm surprised by as from what information I have I think this is being exaggerated. At the same time we have no idea whether Apple would even be using that database or another one that they may have created themselves.

[sdoering]

> I've heard that large transactions (>10k) or near-sized ones are flagged.

Thi sis transmission of funds and there are laws regulating the monitoring of those.

I used bank vaults were you put things into the vaults without the bank often times knowing what is in there. If they knew, they would need to report to authorities.

So Apple doing this scan would be the bank opening all vaults, scanning the contents and reporting things to the IRS (I think this is the tax thing in the US if I am not mistaken - in Germany it would be the Finanzamt).

[switch007]

> It's interesting how many users in this thread are instinctively siding with the offenders in this, and not the victims.

That is infantile. Painting people advocating privacy as siding with offenders is highly insulting.

[ChrisKnott]

This is a situation where different people's privacy is in conflict. What's infantile is claiming sole ownership of privacy advocacy while so-whating the worst privacy violation imaginable, from the victims' perspective.

[neolog]

That's an interesting point. However, I'm not sure victim privacy is the reason for CSAM regulations. Rather, it's reducing the creation of CSAM by discouraging its exchange. For example, suppose instead of deleting/reporting the images, Apple would detect and modify the images with Deepfake so the victim is no longer identifiable. That would protect the victim's privacy but wouldn't reduce the creation or exchange. The fact that such a proposal is ridiculous suggests that privacy isn't the reason for regulation and that reducing creation and exchange is.

[bostik]

There is an utterly perverse incentive to consider as well.

If the median shelf-life of abuse evidence is shortened, in that the item in question can no longer be forwarded/viewed/stored/..., what does that imply in a world where the demand remains relatively stable?

I despise the abusers for what they do, and the ecosystem they enable. But I also remember first having this argument more than ten years ago. If you, as a member of law enforcement or a child wellbeing charity, only flag the awful content but do not do anything else about it, you are - in my mind - guilty of criminal neglect. The ability to add an entry to a database is nothing more than going, "at least nobody else will see that in the future". That does NOTHING to prevent the creation of more such material, and thus implicitly endorses the ongoing abuse and crimes against children.

Every one of these images and videos is a piece of evidence. Of a horrifying crime committed against a child or children.

[feanaro]

The two sides proposed by your argument are only logically valid opposites if you can logically/mathematically guarantee that this technology will only ever be used for detecting photos depicting blatant and obvious sex abuse. Since you cannot, the entire argument is void. I'm not siding with abusers, I simply want arbitrary spies staying the hell away from my computers.

[furi]

I feel it's a little disingenuous to describe millions of innocent people being surveilled as "the offenders" because there are a handful of actual offenders among them.

[ChrisKnott]

I didn't do that...?

There's a small number of victims, a small number of offenders (but much more than "a handful"), and hundreds of millions of other users. This change is in the direct interest of victims, direct opposition to offenders.

Most normal people probably support the measures in solidarity with group 1, HN generally doesn't.

[furi]

...And direct opposition to those hundreds of millions of other users. Trying to fit this to a victims vs. offenders model is a deliberate attempt to turn those hundreds of millions of other users into uninvolved bystanders. They have been pushed out by the lack of space in the model for them and their right to not have their door kicked down based on the results of an algorithm and database they can't audit, which are susceptible to targeted adversarial attacks and authoritarian interference respectively.

[ChrisKnott]

It's in "direct" opposition to them in the same way drink driving laws are in "direct" opposition to people who have no intention of driving drunk.

It's a restriction on their liberty and privacy that they willingly support because of the overall positive effects.

Anyway I'll duck out of this now the driveby downvotes annoy me.

[furi]

If drunk driving laws were enforced by mandating a breathalyzer in every car and nobody really knew how the breathalyzer worked and also it maybe doubled as an instrument for the government to catch you doing fifteen other things then I might consider that a fair comparison.

But yes, there's a lot of drive-by engagement in this thread, thank you for at least engaging with it directly.

[trainsplanes]

Having private devices randomly snooped for forbidden materials is fine, okay. So why limit this to phones?

There are kidnapped children being locked inside homes. If you don't open your doors and accept weekly full home inspections, I think it's safe to say you support offenders and hate victims if you oppose this. I mean, we're all against people kidnapping and abusing children.

There's a small number of victims, a small number of offenders (but much more than "a handful"), and hundreds of millions of other home owners. This change is in the direct interest of victims, direct opposition to offenders.

[chobytes]

Presumptuous. I certainly dont want this pseudo-righteous power grab done for me.

[GaryTang]

What about the victims of the apple employees and government officials that exploit this?