cyanite

Since it’s speculation at this point, I’d say we deal with it if and when it happens. I also don’t see how this doesn’t apply even worse to doing cloud side scanning, like companies otherwise do. Is that out of control? Is there any evidence of that?

None of this makes the system useless or harmful. Also, it’s not Apple’s algorithm. The actual hash list Apple will use is not accessible to the device.

Best for whom? (Also, we don’t know the exact hash list Apple will use).

> The whole discussion seems to center around what Apple intends to do on-device, ignoring what others are already doing in the cloud. Isn't this strange?

Very strange. Especially when this on-device technique means that Apple needs to access far less data than when doing it on the cloud.

> Are you actually arguing in good faith here at all?

Are you? Because you just seemed to claim that it could match against innocent pictures of your naked children, but this tells me that you don’t understand that this system looks for known pictures, not for something that looks like naked children.

Edit: if you do, apologies, but then I’d say that Apple has suggested that it’s a low resolution version of the picture. This should be contrasted with server side scanning, where the server accesses all pictures fully.

Technical nitpick: the hashes are not hashed (again), but rather cryptographically blinded. This is not reversible, so seems like a hash, but computations can be done on it which result can in some cases be seen by the server. This is actually all very clever, and described in a paper by Apple, linked from the technical summary article.

Apple says they expect to use 30 as the threshold.

Security researchers and hackers routinely look at the code on the device, though.

> China-hosted China-decryptable datacenters.

China hosted, yes, but Apple denies China-decryptable, so that’s speculation unless you have a good source.

I’d say that it’s not, and that many people think it is is because they haven’t fully read or understood the technical description of the system.

But what you should do is read the documents yourself.

Apple doesn’t “call the police”, though, they contact the center for child abuse or whatever it’s called, who will then presumably verify the picture.

> The amount of misinformation in this thread (and in the other responses to you) is out of control.

True it’s not perfect here, but you should see Reddit, then :p. People there hardly even know what they are mad about.

The hash table is blinded on the device, and the device never knows if a given image is a hit or not. This is well documented.

It seems to me that the vast majority of people in forums don’t actually know how this system is implemented. Although people definitely seem more informed here than on Reddit.

Maybe we can worry about things when and if they are implemented? If you don’t trust Apple it’s a moot discussion anyway.

All major cloud photo library providers do this scan server side, yes. This way offers more privacy for the end user… but evidently most people don’t realize that.

That’s a different scenario. That’s for it happening by chance, not on purpose. At any rate, the “matching” images are reviewed (or a “visual derivative” is).

I hope not, since doing the scans like this offers much more privacy for the user. Even when the user is too ignorant (sorry) to realize this.

But this will be evident by reading and understanding the technical description.

This system could still work with an e2e encrypted cloud library. However, it’s currently not e2e.

Yes, and if you read (and understand) the technical implementation, it certainly does offer more privacy. But yeah for people who don’t, it often seems much worse.

We can take that discussion if and when that happens.

There is a lot of speculation about things that haven’t happened in that comment.

I’d argue that #2 is good, since it offers much more privacy than scanning in the cloud. This is based on reading and understanding the technical summary and paper linked from there.

No. Only pictures being uploaded to iCloud Photo Library are being scanned.

How have they demonstrated that they will compromise your privacy? They compromise it less than the systems scanning on the cloud, since like this most of the match is only known to the device and not the cloud.

If you don’t trust Apple to not lie, then the entire discussion becomes a bit moot, I think, since then they could pretty much do anything, with or without this system.

This pretty much sums this entire drama up, I think.

Perception aside, Apple’s system is somewhat better for privacy, since Apple needs to access much less data server side.

They essentially do the same, just in the cloud meaning they access all images directly.

That’s an oversimplified and misleading description of how the system works, but ok. I recommend reading the technical description, or even the paper linked from that: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

> You are aware that a lot of CSAM are close ups of say pussies for example, and human anatomy can look very similar?

I doubt images that look quite generic will make it into those hash sets, though.