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A comment on Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom. Parent comment

Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by tzs on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @08:01PM (#28228764)
Apple does not need to be able to audit the database to discover that it is not a CSAM database. Matches are reviewed by Apple before being reported to the authorities, so they would see that they are getting matches on non-CSAM material.

They wouldn't necessarily be able to tell if it was a false positive matching real CSAM material or a true positive matching illegitimate material in the databases put there by a government trying to misuse it, but they don't need to know whether it is or not. They just need to see that it isn't CSAM and so does not need to be reported.

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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by gambiting on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @08:14PM (#28228862)
That's even worse - so now apple is deciding whether to report something even if it matches the data provided by the government. It's not their role to judge the contents, only whether the match is correct or not, otherwise even with actual CSAM content, are they going to be making judgement calls? What if the system matches loli content which I imagine is in that database but legal in places? Are they going to then get the user's location(!!!!) To see whether it's legal there or not, or....guess? Or what? Because the only way to make this system work is to report every match and then let actual law enforcement figure out if it's illegal or not.

So yeah, the entire system is fucked and shouldn't exist. Apple is not law enforcement and them saying "we'll just prescreen every submission" is actually worse, not better.

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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by tzs on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @08:45PM (#28229063)
> It's not their role to judge the contents, only whether the match is correct or not.

Which is what they would be doing.

Some government gives Apple a purported CSAM hash database, which Apple only accepts because it is a CSAM database. An image gets a match. Apple looks at it and it is not CSAM. Therefore, unless the government lied to them about the database, it must be a false positive and gets rejected as an incorrect match.

The rejection is not because Apple judged the content per se. They just determined that it must be a false positive given the government's claims about the database.

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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by gambiting on Thursday August 19, 2021 @02:50AM (#28231107)
My point was, what if you have content in there that is CSAM in some places but isn't in others(for instance - drawings). If apple employees report it to authorities in a state where it isn't illegal, they just suspended your account and reported you to authorities without any reason. So like I said, then you get into this trap of - do apple employees start judging whether the match "should" count? What if a picture isn't actually pornographic but made it into the database(say a child in underwear, maybe it's there because of a connection to an abuse case, but it isn't a picture of abuse per se). Again, is this random person at apple going to be making judgement calls about validity of matches against a government provided database? Because again, I don't believe this can ever work. Maybe those are edge cases, sure, but my point is that as soon as you allow some apple employee to make a judgement, you are introducing new risks.
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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by alwillis on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:15AM (#28231226)
My point was, what if you have content in there that is CSAM in some places but isn't in others(for instance - drawings). If apple employees report it to authorities in a state where it isn't illegal, they just suspended your account and reported you to authorities without any reason.

The only CSAM Apple will flag has to come from multiple organizations in different jurisdictions; otherwise, those hashes are ignored.

And since no credible child welfare organization is going to have CSAM that matches stuff from the worst places, there's no simple or obvious way to get them to match.

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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by gambiting on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:11AM (#28231525)
>>The only CSAM Apple will flag has to come from multiple organizations in different jurisdictions; otherwise, those hashes are ignored.

Have they actually said they would do that? I was under the impression that they just use the database of hashes provided by the American authority on prevention of child abuse.

>>And since no credible child welfare organization is going to have CSAM that matches stuff from the worst places

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, can you expand?

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Re:Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user priv... by zimpenfish on Thursday August 19, 2021 @05:29AM (#28231893)
> Have they actually said they would do that?

In [1], "That includes a rule to only flag images found in multiple child safety databases with different government affiliations — theoretically stopping one country from adding non-CSAM content to the system."

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/13/22623859/apple-icloud-pho...

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