[wegs]

I think one of the problems here is a reality and perception don't align:

- Apple has over a billion devices out there.

- Child abuse is a rare problem, but with over a billion devices, there will be enough of it for a lot of newsworthy stories.

- Child pornography takes just one abused child for an arbitrary number of viewers. Arguably, by the time you're limiting the number of viewers, most of the harm has been done.

On the whole, I'm not quite sure how the Apple plan will protect actual children from rape (except to somewhat reduce the secondary harm of distribution). I can clearly see how it will protect Apple from bad press, though -- people won't use iPhones to record that.

On the other hand, an investment in education, health care, reporting, and enforcement could significantly reduce the amount of child abuse, but with 7 billion people in the world, no expense would bring it to zero. So long as it's not zero, the potential for bad press is there. Indeed, usually if something happens a few times per year, it receives more bad press than if it happens a few times per day.

Apple has every incentive to be (1) seen as doing something (2) do things which protect its brand value. Apple has no incentive to invest in education, health care, reporting, and enforcement. Those seem like good things to do, but if anything, if a scandal comes up, those sorts of things are used to say "See, Apple new, and was trying to buy an out."

As a footnote, if we value all children equally, a lot of this is super-cheap. This is a good movie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_into_Brothels

And the problem it portrays could probably be solved with the same finances as the salaries of a few Apple engineers, and a focused, targeted effort to identify child prostitutes, help their families with the economics which force those kids to become child prostitutes, and get those kids into schools instead.

I'm guessing the $100k raised from this film will do more to protect kids than this whole Apple initiative will do.

[themaninthedark]

Ford has a large number of cars out there - Drunk driving is a rare problem but with a large number of cars there will be enough cases for there to be newsworthy stories. -Drunk driving just takes one driver to create an arbitrary number of deaths.

We would not accept having breathalyzers in every car.

Or to bring it closer to the child abuse problem: Would we accept cameras that take pictures of the occupants of the car to make sure that the minors in the care are not being trafficked?

[frickinLasers]

> We would not accept having breathalyzers in every car.

lol, that's not up to us. It's in the infrastructure bill.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/infrastructure-bill-could-requ...

[themaninthedark]

Oh for fucks sake.

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." - George Orwell

How long until general computing is given up due to hackers and piracy ala The right to read(https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)?

[DeadlockAsync]

There's a stipulation just above that portion of the bill where the Secretary of Transportation can determine that it is not possible to 'passively' determine if a driver is impaired and decline that rule so long as they issue a report to congress as to why.

[frickinLasers]

And I trust Buttigieg to give the issue a solid looking over, but aren't breathalyzers pretty well established as a positive indicator of driver impairment?

Though requiring the driver to blow into a straw doesn't seem particularly "passive"--whatever that means.

[gaspard234]

My coworker had a breathalyzer. Kombucha and mouthwash would pretty easily trigger the alarm.

But the text makes it seem like they would position cameras toward your face and do analysis on impairment indicators like eye movement.

[themaninthedark]

That is less invasive than making you blow. But there will always be edge cases.

Imagine a medical condition that makes it look like you are impaired. Now, you have to go to the dealer with a doctor's note to get this system disabled. Or when you want to rent a car.

Or, if there is a case when driving impaired would be better then the alternative. You and a friend are camping in the woods out of cell range, you both have some beers then one of you trips and gets a deep cut on the leg. Now you have to wait a couple hours before he can drive you to where you can get cell signal, hope you don't bleed out.

[HWR_14]

> We would not accept having breathalyzers in every car.

Funny you would bring that up. I think the new infrastructure bill requires that for cars built after 2029 (or some other "future, but not that far" date)

[dkonofalski]

That's not the same thing at all. This would be like your car reporting you to authorities if you get into it drunk, turn the key, and step on the gas. It does nothing unless you've committed a crime.

[themaninthedark]

All of the photos that you upload scanned and hashed. All of the hashes are either sent out for comparison to the database or checked locally.(I do not know which.) That means that for every picture you want to upload to iCloud, you must prove it is not abusive material.

So the equivalent is that for every single trip you take, you must prove you are not under the influence.

[dkonofalski]

That's not true. The photos you upload are hashed, yes, but they're not scanned. Only the hashes are compared and that's done locally. Apple never gets any of your content so your equivalency is completely false. Signatures only get sent if the hashes match known CSAM. Therefore, it's like your car reporting you if and only if you've broken the law.

[jodrellblank]

The equivalent is that for every single trip you take on public roads, you must prove you are following the public road rules - like you do with having to first obtain a driving license, registered car, car insurance, MOT (in the UK), road tax (UK), medical approval if you have certain health conditions.

If you're going to pay to use a hired car, expect to have to show the car hire company sufficient proof that you won't expose them to unnecessary risks. If you're going to pay to use a hired server to store your photos, why shouldn't you demonstrate to the owner that you aren't going to misuse their services or break their terms of service or break the law?

If you want to drive your car on your land, it doesn't need any of that.

[themaninthedark]

So we should mandate a scanner in the car that makes you input your planned route, takes a driver license, has a camera to do facial recognition. It will then connect to a DMV database that verifies the information is correct and then to the insurance database to verify coverage. Check the tax database to make sure that has been paid, check with a medical database to make sure that you don't have any conditions as well as making sure that you have not been prescribed any medicine that says not to operate heavy machinery.

[jodrellblank]

If you are going to hire someone else's car[1], you will need to provide them with your driver's license and the person at the desk will do "face recognition" to check whether it's your license, and they will check with some kind of database - at least their own to see if you've been banned from their premises, maybe a DMV one or their insurance to see if you have points on your license for previous driving related convictions which will affect their decision to lend you a car. Since it's their car they will deal with tax, but they will ask you if you have medical conditions which will affect your driving (or make you read the terms and sign that you haven't). And they will do all this in advance of you hiring their car, and after you're done they will check over the car looking to see if you misused it, and will keep a record of use so if they get informed about a speeding ticket or parking fine in future, it goes to you to pay it.

So ... this is your hellish dystopia, your "boot stomping on a human face forever", Hertz rent-a-car?

[1] analogous to you using Apple's iCloud servers.

[throwavocado]

> On the whole, I'm not quite sure how the Apple plan will protect actual children from rape (except to somewhat reduce the secondary harm of distribution).

You bring up the distinction between "possession offenses" (i.e., a person who has CSAM content) and "hands-on offenses" (i.e., a person who abuses children and possibly, but not necessarily, produces CSAM). Detecting possession offenses (as Apple's sytem does) has the second-order effect of finding hands-on offenders because hands-on offenders tend to also collect CSAM and form large libraries of it. So finding a CSAM collection is the best way to find a hands-on offender and stop their abuse. Ideally, victims would always disclose their abuse so that the traditional investigatory process could handle it -- but child sexual abuse is special in that offenders are skilled in manipulating children and families in order to avoid detection.

I think that the case of USA v. Rosenchein [0] is a good example because it shows the ins and outs of how the company->NCMEC->law enforcement system tends to work and how it leads to hands-on offenders. It's higher profile than most, perhaps because the defendant (a surgeon), seems to have plenty of resources for fighting the conviction on constitutional grounds (as opposed to actually claiming innocence). But the mechanism leading to the prosecution is by no means exceptional.

Caveat: Not a lawyer.

[0] https://www.anylaw.com/case/usa-v-rosenchein/d-new-mexico/11...

[wegs]

No. This is not true, and I think I provided a good reference to that effect (it's really quite a good documentary too). A US surgeon engaging in child abuse is a statistical anomaly in the world of child sexual abuse. The best way to find child sexual abuse is to hop onto an airplane, and go to a region of the developing world where child sexual abuse is rampant.

It's not all hard to find such places. Many children are abused at scale, globally. I think few of those kids are getting filmed or turned in CSAM.

I'm also not at all sold on your claim that hands-on offenders tend to collect CSAM materials either, but we have no way to know.

I am sold on the best way of reducing actual abuse involves some combination of measures such as:

1) Fighting poverty; a huge amount of exploitation is for simple economic reasons; people need to eat

2) Providing social supports, where kids know what's not okay, and have trusted individuals they can report it to

3) Effective enforcement everywhere (not just rich countries)

4) Places for such kids to escape to, which are safe and decent. Kids won't report if the alternative is worse

... and so on. In other words, building out a basic social net for everyone.

[browningstreet]

We already live in a police state. The federal, state and local infrastructure and resources are mind bogglingly massive. They have laws granting them near carte blanche rights and actions.

We are citizens of our country and we deserve a dignified existence. We are supposed to have rights, and they're being worn away, formally and informally, by our governments and megacorps acting like NGOs.

I'm sympathetic to the overwhelming horrors of drunks, drunk driving, violent actors, child abuse, child porn, economic crimes, etc.

I've done my calculus, and I got my vaccine and I wear my mask in the current circumstances of our pandemic. But in a similar calculus, what Apple has planned to subject a huge portion of our population to, by din of their marketshare in mobile and messaging. I personally can't accept the forces at play in this Apple decision, and I'm continually baffled by those who think this is overblown.

[frickinLasers]

I'd like to subscribe to your blog.

So what's next? There might be some time left to secure our rights on Mars...

[jodrellblank]

Have you imagined what a near-future Mars colony will be like? You can't live on the surface, so it will be as high-tech and enclosed and cramped as a space station; an air-tight pressure vessel with no escape. It will have limited energy and resources so there will likely be rationing. It will be vulnerable to any pressure breach or loss of power, so can take no risks with mechanical failure, bad actors, disease spread, etc. so it will likely be sensored and surveilled all over. It will likely be funded in large part or entirely by private investors. Musk has estimated $500k for a ticket to go there and people have estimated $3Bn/year for 30 years to keep a base running with no economic return from that.

No government, no police, no Wild West "run them out of town" option. You think they're going to want to spend $500,000 return flight cost to send potential criminals away or just "let them be" in an environment like that?

The idea that you might be able to go there and "demand your freedom" without being a billionaire owner of the colony is ill-thought-out. Subjects will have no leverage and no options, and leaders will have billions sunk into it and demand obedience like a Navy Submarine.

[frickinLasers]

Yes, I've thought about it. I was kind of hoping for a better suggestion.

However, I'd rather voluntarily subject myself to a dictatorship like that than believe all my life I have rights that are sacred, only to look up and find myself in an authoritarian panopticon.

I do harbor fantasies of some day collaborating on a new system of government, or at least laying the groundwork. It's not going to be Musk's planet forever, and the first generation of Martians will be volunteers who want the project to succeed. Which makes it more like the 13 original colonies than the Wild West.

[ummonk]

> Child pornography takes just one abused child for an arbitrary number of viewers.

This is the thing that privacy advocates seem to ignore. Measures taken to reduce child abuse won’t reduce the circulation of whatever CASM does get created.

Some even seem to think, a la the ACLU, that viewing child abuse material is a victimless crime, and only the creators of the CASM should be punished.