News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

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 @08:45PM (#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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
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?

[ Parent | on HN ]
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...

[ Parent | on HN ]