I don’t care if the headline is arguably inflammatory. Since when does Apple have the right to root about in my files with no warrant or probable cause? Oh, yes, they’ll have the obligatory consents to spying buried deep in their software updates.
I hope Apple users vote with their feet. I was already planning to move over to Linux when my current hardware became too memory constrained to use. Apple repudiating its (thin) claims to respect privacy only confirms this decision.
Here is a high level summary of the Apple scheme, courtesy the Financial Times:
Apple intends to install software on American iPhones to scan for child abuse imagery, according to people briefed on its plans, raising alarm among security researchers who warn that it could open the door to surveillance of millions of people’s personal devices.
Apple detailed its proposed system — known as “neuralMatch” — to some US academics earlier this week, according to two security researchers briefed on the virtual meeting.
The automated system would proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected, who would then contact law enforcement if the material can be verified. The scheme will initially roll out only in the US.
Apple confirmed its plans in a blog post, saying the scanning technology is part of a new suite of child protection systems that would “evolve and expand over time”. The features will be rolled out as part of iOS 15, expected to be released next month….
“It is an absolutely appalling idea, because it is going to lead to distributed bulk surveillance of . . . our phones and laptops,” said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge.
Although the system is currently trained to spot child sex abuse, it could be adapted to scan for any other targeted imagery and text, for instance, terror beheadings or anti-government signs at protests, say researchers. Apple’s precedent could also increase pressure on other tech companies to use similar techniques.
“This will break the dam — governments will demand it from everyone,” said Matthew Green, a security professor at Johns Hopkins University, who is believed to be the first researcher to post a tweet about the issue.
Alec Muffett, a security researcher and privacy campaigner who formerly worked at Facebook and Deliveroo, said Apple’s move was “tectonic” and a “huge and regressive step for individual privacy”.
Other technology experts were up in arms:
No matter how well-intentioned, @Apple is rolling out mass surveillance to the entire world with this. Make no mistake: if they can scan for kiddie porn today, they can scan for anything tomorrow.
They turned a trillion dollars of devices into iNarcs—*without asking.* https://t.co/wIMWijIjJk
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 6, 2021
The changes Apple announced today create a backdoor, so that iMessage will no longer provide #E2EE. They also create a dangerous precedent for allowing one account to essentially surveil another, leaving it vulnerable to abuse & scope-creep not only in the US, but around the ?.
— Center for Democracy & Technology (@CenDemTech) August 5, 2021
Porn is always the lead excuse to deploy privacy-crippling technologies. CSAM today, classified material next, and eventually, whatever any power deems "objectionable" tomorrow.
This playbook is so tired. Not fooled, @Apple https://t.co/IazmnCCXrB
— Տean Mꇃꓰlroy ? (@SeanMcElroy) August 5, 2021
Oh, and this part from the pink paper is lovely. Apple makes clear it will scan all your photos:
According to people briefed on the plans, every photo uploaded to iCloud in the US will be given a “safety voucher” saying whether it is suspect or not. Once a certain number of photos are marked as suspect, Apple will enable all the suspect photos to be decrypted and, if apparently illegal, passed on to the relevant authorities.
The claim that Apple will look only at hashes of existing photos is ridiculous, or more accurate, close to useless in practice and therefore clearly not even close to the full story. The people who are in the porn and underage human trafficking business are generating new images all the time. They can’t be found by comparison to an existing database. So fresh images will have to be examined for this program to deliver on its policing promises.
This tweet confirms the notion that Apple hasn’t come clean about what it is up to:
Porn is always the lead excuse to deploy privacy-crippling technologies. CSAM today, classified material next, and eventually, whatever any power deems "objectionable" tomorrow.
This playbook is so tired. Not fooled, @Apple https://t.co/IazmnCCXrB
— Տean Mꇃꓰlroy ? (@SeanMcElroy) August 5, 2021
Given that Apple will have to look at new photos for its spyware to deliver on its promise of finding illegal images, how will Apple’s software tell the difference between kiddie porn and parents’ and relatives’ photos of children in swimsuits at the beach or pool? Or toddlers splashing in a bathtub?
Those of you who put your faith in AI surely remember that facial ID databases have been found to suck at identifying people of color because they were trained on whites. The variables involved in looking at photos of bodies (partial, full, partially to not clothed, from many angles, in many settings) are at least a couple of orders of magnitude more than matching faces, even before you get to trying to discern sexual versus benign intent.1
And if you think the real pros, the ones with large databases of dirty kiddie photos, won’t easily be able to circumvent Apple’s spying, you are smoking something strong. Remember, Apple claims to be relying substantially on hashes of existing photos. All the bad guys need to do is create an analogue gap. Print the images, photograph them with actual film, and then scan the new clean replicas. I am sure the mavens could find less a less time-consuming approach that would also defeat hash-searching.
Twitterati are concerned about abuses. Accusing an ex of pedophile tendencies is a slam dunk winner in custody battles. And this isn’t an idle concern. One colleague, who was blowing the whistle on top level financial players who also had spook connections, was most worried about a target planting kiddie porn on his laptop and filing a criminal report. He’d done enough research to conclude that this was a real point of vulnerability and he could do nothing to prevent it. Apple is about to make this easy.
And how long until someone spoofs pictures that generate the same fingerprints as porn in the database, but are not? Either to grief the recipients or law enforcement. This is gonna be an interesting one to follow. Especially coming from privacy hero Apple.
— #BLM ?Eric?️?Brophy?️ (@emb3rz) August 5, 2021
Experts also pointed out that it would be easy for Apple to increase the scope of its data hoovering:
“All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts.” https://t.co/Ou87E69IXG
— Paul Mozur 孟建國 (@paulmozur) August 6, 2021
Others were put off at the idea that Apple was putting itself in the porn acquisition business to do its new job properly:
Either apple has copious amounts of child porn that they used to train their algorithm, or they're going to just be making shit up to go through your phone.
— Kodahn Barbaric (@KodahnB) August 5, 2021
Your humble blogger is arguably less exposed to this new Apple spying than anyone in the US who has opened up and turned on their Apple devices. I do not take photographs except very rarely with film. I do not have a tablet. I don’t use any “cloud”, including iCloud or “cloud” backup for this website because there is no reason to think any company providing me free or cheap services will do other than treat me as the product. I have only a dumbphone and eagerly look forward to getting a new improved dumbphone soon:
Even so, I find the very premise of this scheme, despite my lack of immediate exposure, to be so offensive than I am hastening my plans to abandon Apple products permanently. Once Apple uses law enforcement as an excuse to root around in your digital files, you are kidding yourself if you think you have anything resembling privacy left.
.@tim_cook @Apple Broad, 1984-style surveillance of the masses is wrong, no matter how good your intentions may be. It is a vile betrayal of Apple's very soul.https://t.co/zAAGptDPZZ
— Bryan Jones (@bdkjones) August 5, 2021
I hope Apple customers depart en masse. Apple has asked for it.
___
1 Apple’s solution is to have real humans review photos flagged by the AI. Um, it was humans at Facebook who decided to remove the Pulitzer Prize winning Vietnam War photo of a naked napalmed girl running towards the photographer as porn? Do you really want Apple employees or worse contractors rooting through photos of your children?
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Up till now I used Apple because it appeared to be more concerned with selling HW than the data (unlike Google). I paid premium for it, and trust me, given recently Apple’s SW went as crappy as MS in its heydays (and now occasionally too), so it’s not a painless thing to do. Part of it was Apple deciding what’s good for its users and what’s not based on their feel and not evidence (cf multiple mouse buttons).
If now Apple decides what’s good for users to have on their phone or not, I may have to reconsider. I just wish there was more options than going with spy-agency (Google) that will sell your data to anyone, or patronising Apple. And no, I don’t consider Huawei’s new OS a win, as it’ll be just another spy agency.
I’ve mostly used Apple products for the same reason – I never had any illusions about privacy, but they have always seemed to be the least worse of a very small selection. Most people really do have very little choices. And as a lazy user I’ve not been as strict as I should be in keeping things private and off the cloud.
I am very surprised though about how transparent they have been with this, does anyone really buy the supposed reason? It undermines one of their key selling points now that their software and hardware is no longer clearly the best (not that it has been for a while).
Zero migration and its a hedge fund.
I’ve kept most of my things off the cloud, except that I found recently Apple put all my photos there just by having the cloud enabled (which you have to do, if you want to have some family sharing stuff, like time monitoring for my daughter’s phone).
It’s getting worse and worse.
Vlade, I believe that’s the default but you might be able to turn it off in the Photos option of the iCloud settings in the System Preferences.
It might not be a bad idea anyway, as macOS already has a background process called photoanalysisd that tries to categorize your photos using some content analysis. Under some circumstances, it can eat up a lot of CPU.
Yes, you’re correct. I don’t use the Cloud Drive for anything. It supposedly stops the Find My Phone feature, but ehh.
I’ve always felt that I’d rather have China spying on me than the 5 Eyes. I’m currently setting up an phone with LineageOS and I think I have it completely de-Googled but realistically if I install any major western apps I’m probably equally screwed.
Q: What do you call someone who got robbed at an Apple store?
A: A Customer.
You might want to look at Fairphone. It is a deGoogled Android phone. No log in, no email address surrender etc required. It is also upgradeable in theory with new hardware modules.
Of course, it will probably turn out the Foundation behind it is is funded by the CIA because people who reject Mother Google need watching….
Lol, when you go to their site you may not proceed past the landing screen without promising to accept all cookies. There is literally no one out there that will just let you look at their information before joining their spy ecosystem.
I block cookies and I noticed that they want you to enable cookies to see their products. Most sites I go to will place cookies on your computer even if you say no. Then why do they ask????
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Official Legal Text
They have. Not only are they able to modify these images using data that’s imperceptible to humans, but will cause deep-learning classifiers to continuously mis-classify CSA images as “safe”, but with enough information on the model, they can inject data to cause the system to classify safe images as images depicting CSA.
So you don’t even need to AirDrop images that are illegal (as Twitter user @emb3rz worries about) — just add the noise function that pushes the threshold for “kiddy porn” high enough for the classifier, and at best you’ll seriously inconvenience a potential target, at worst you’ll open them to incarceration or put them in danger.
> Not only are they able to modify these images using data that’s imperceptible to humans, but will cause deep-learning classifiers to continuously mis-classify CSA images as “safe”,
Apple must surely know this, or been told it (assuming all the technical people who aren’t complete suck-ups weren’t bound and gagged). Which would imply this entire system is being put into place for… some other purpose.
If I had to guess, I’d say that just as (IMNSHO) Facebook will be allowed to retain its monopoly as long as it censors the political enemies of Democrats, so Apple will be allowed to retain its monopoly now that its backdoored its entire system to the spooks. Sadly, that is Lina Khan’s higher purpose. To make threats credible.
It will be used to ‘remove’ obstacles to the status quo.
I knew a gay man from university who later ran afoul of the power elites in the New Orleans region. He was arrsted for having kiddie porn on his desktop computer and spent three years in prison as a result. I knew him well enough to know that kiddies were not his “preference.” This man was too smart to keep anything of a ‘questionable’ nature on a computer. I read the quite detailed newspaper stories about his trial and never once saw a reference to ‘adult’ porn of any sort.
This Apple gambit is a new version of a ‘Show Trial’ proceeding. All “evidence” will be too esoteric to be understood by the ‘average’ jury. Said jury will then rely on the say so of the prosecutors. Also, how does one establish chain of custody on the Cloud?
I thank the Gods that we never went the way of iPhones and such.
Stay safe.
I have had an iphone for 6 years, and it’s not difficult to disable the icloud feature. Yes, it’s enabled by default and so on, but you don’t need it. Very easy to backup an iphone onto a PC, and that backup is very complete.
Years ago I read about this woman that was suspect of her computer and I think that she worked for the TOR project. So she had a friend dig into it because he was great with computers and this friend said that he found three ‘classified’ documents hidden in an obscure part of the file system. Nice way to set somebody up. You would have in a future arrest agents saying that they found unauthorized documents on her computer leading to her subsequent arrest and trial. And it would be up to her to prove that she did not put the three files there.
>>>This man was too smart to keep anything of a ‘questionable’ nature on a computer. I read the quite detailed newspaper stories about his trial and never once saw a reference to ‘adult’ porn of any sort.
Ever since Jeffrey Epstein “committed suicide” under busted surveillance cameras and sleeping guards with the known ability of others, especially state security, to plant child porn and other documents, I have wonder when an actual guilt of someone convicted for having child porn (or being a child rapist) will be doubted. Or spying, or releasing classified documents, or corruption, or anything really needing a computer.
If anyone can be convicted on easily falsifiable and/or unreliable evidence, for instance those gunshot locators, field drug tests, drug detection dogs, and face recognizing software, why should I trust this technology? Even if this is done for the reason stated, with the best of intentions, which I complete doubt, can anyone doubt that this will be abused? That “evidence” ostensibly found on someones mac or iphone will not be used to destroy a person’s reputation, even if they are never convicted of a crime?
The harder the powers that be try to maintain power, the more they will have to work to keep it as the more distrust is created by the previous efforts to maintain control.
Maybe. They’ve put themselves in a shitty position, as far as I’m concerned, and are really trying hard to make sure all the hard questions are forwarded somewhere else other than them.
Taking a look at the document that they placed online, aside from the marketing buzzwords and product names, it’s basically using a bog-standard neural network to generate a rating whether this picture is objectionable or not. Apparently the target hashes are generated externally, and all Apple does is store it on a database? Which… oh, that’s nice. All you need to do is provide the hashes that plugs into Apple’s detection mechanism? Can’t imagine seeing that being abused.
The document that I’ve referenced seems to do two jobs, honestly — one, it convinces the hoi polloi that Apple Still Cares About Your Privacy™, They Don’t Look Literally Into Your Photos®, all the work goes to Trusted Child Protection Organizations™, All Questions About Model Vulnerabilities and Biases Should Be Directed To Them, Not Us®, the second… well, look at the very nice surveillance infrastructure they’ve built, that basically outsources almost all the dirty work from Apple’s spotless, clean hands. I’m sure that’d be of interest to states around the world.
This tweet nails it:
Either apple has copious amounts of child porn that they used to train their algorithm, or they’re going to just be making shit up to go through your phone
Bizarre.
The tell is that they have done this check for pictures uploaded to iCloud using their own servers for more than a decade. If the plan is to limit the iOS perception hash’s use to photos synced with iCloud, which is what they are claiming right now, then there was never a valid reason to offload the process to the iOS client since they already did it server side.
There is a distinction in Apple hardware: That which runs iOS and the other which runs under macOS. If the hardware has no keyboard, then it’s iOS. Otherwise, it runs macOS.
But sadly, what’s in iOS will infect macOS eventually. The last iteration of macOS on my laptop seems to think that I really wanted an iPhone. I will not be purchasing any more Apple products.
So I encourage everyone to to give Linux a spin. Most distributions will run off a bootable thumb drive to give you a risk free taste.
For our fearless analyst Yves, I recommend hiring a UAB grad student to procure and setup a desktop so she can practice on a new workspace. For most desktop environments that run under Linux the Windows key is somewhat simular to the Apple key.
> The last iteration of macOS on my laptop seems to think that I really wanted an iPhone. I will not be purchasing any more Apple products.
Every time an iOS engineer gets an appendage on another MacOS system, that system goes to sh*t. (I don’t know how many times I’ve clicked the date and time to adjust it, and gotten their insane notification system instead. They don’t seem to understand that MacOS is for production, and iOS is for consumption.)
On institutions (as opposed to real persons) I’m long stupid, and that goes double for Apple.
I switched from Windows to Mac in 2005 after a particularly bad support session with Microsoft. It was great until Jobs died. After that, code quality was no longer a concern.
For nearly five years, macOS has had a memory leak that causes a kernel panic if you watch HD video, let the device sleep, and then resume watching video upon wake. When the bug was first reported, Apple’s response was to ignore it. When another user posted explicit instructions for replicating the bug on that support thread, they banned him from Apple’s forums for “hacking.” On two updates in five years, they have fixed the bug. However, it comes back on the next update because apparently no one is left at Apple that understands how memory management works in C-based languages.
The last straw for me was when Apple decided to join the app banning party in January. I’ve been transitioning to Linux since then and haven’t looked back. I’ve got a laptop and a desktop done. Getting a satisfactory phone is the last part.
My phone updated overnight, or I should say the phone the company I work for provides to its employees. When my personal phone broke several months ago I decided to just use the work Apple phone since having two phone is a pain. I’ve been enjoying some it’s features and camera, but now, having read this article, I think it’s time to get a personal phone again and it won’t be an Apple product.
Good lord this is overt.
I wonder when someone with “Mad Skilz” will kick over the apple cart?
It doesn’t take a Nation State to take down the grid, there are many thousands with those skills in the USA and it only takes one…
And it’s going to take a LOT of SWAT teams, perhaps adding asset forfeiture to the Domestic Terrorism Bill
will be the easiest way to fund them?
What could go wrong?
This is part of a pattern of nullifying Constitutional protections by using nongovernmental entities as proxies. Because the Government is prohibited from warrantless search and seizure, it outsources spying at scales previously unimaginable, to large computing, networking, and social media giants. The premise being that the Government can argue that it is spying less than it ever has, and is merely acting on “tips” from their proxies. To keep the tech giants in line, the Government holds antitrust show hearings to let their CEOs know that they can be broken up at any time if they don’t play ball. Those that do play are rewarded – handsomely.
This becomes a powerful one-two punch with these strong armed proxies violating every Constitutional protection to identify, cordon off, and weaken any perceived opposition so that Government can then deliver the knockout blow with its overwhelming authority and police power to the “bad actors” put in the crosshairs by their proxies.
This is the definition of “inverted totalitarianism”.. Wolin was a prophet.
Come on over to Linux! I made the move a few years ago and have not regretted it at all. My favorite distro at the moment is an Ubuntu derivative called “Pop!_OS”. Aside from the name being terrible, it’s really great. Very easy to use, but still allows you all the manual control that you want from Linux.
Yes, System 76 laptops run that, trouble-free.
Proud owner of a System76 laptop. Thing’s built like a tank and just flat-out works.
If you have the $$$ then the Lemur is a fantastic lappy!
Unfortunately, the System 76 laptops seem to be mostly vaporware: https://system76.com/laptops
I know, Covid supply chain issues, but other makes can at least ship product.
You don’t really need to install them on System76 hardware — I’ve got a cheap desktop that runs it, and as far as I’m concerned, it works just as well as if we had stuck to stock Windows 10.
I’m running mine on a fairly new Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1, no issues with running it on this machine either (for anyone who already has a CX1 and wants out of Windows).
I run Linux Mint on my Thinkpad for over a year now and am so happy to be out of the Windows universe.
I have an iPhone 5s and I have always kept all the cloud apps turned off, and other than checking the weather, traffic and occasionally maps, I never surf the net on my phone. After seeing this news I have turned off the automatic OS updates & won’t be updating it again, ever. If it comes to the point where I have to update it, I’ll move to something else like the Fairphone or a flip phone.
Traffic GPS locates you, which IMHO is the biggest reason NOT to have a smartphone.
Triangulation via cell towers is too approximate to be used in court plus operates only when the phone is in use (texting, calling) unless the officialdom has a warrant and is stealth pinging your phone. Even then any location approximation not usable as evidence.
One of the reasons why I actually switched from being a longtime Android user to the iPhone was the fact that with iOS upgrades and security updates go on for at least 5 years, whereas unless you get a stock Andoird phone, the best you can hope for is 3 years worth of updates.
Given the fact that the carriers are/have shut down their legacy 2G networks, many older dumbphones won’t work anymore – and of the current dumbphones, many of them already have surveillance software that can be used to attack them – that has always been the case.
Lastly, for those considering making the switch to Linux, be advised that it won’t be an easy transition, especially when it comes to peripherals and software.
The only software that I have found lacking with Linux is audio recording, but I have a separate Windows computer set up for that, one that stays offline most of the time. For typical office software, databases, photo editing etc I haven’t had many problems or complaints. Most document and spreadsheet applications etc can be loaded into Linux apps without any hassle.
But for people who are less computer-literate, Linux might be a problem, and they might need someone knowledgeable to set it up for them. However once it is properly set up I think Linux would work fine for just about anyone.
Ever since Steve Jobs passed, Tim Cook has been leading Apple’s downward spiral. Getting rid of Intel chips, choosing to solder all components to the motherboard etc. How dare the customer might want to upgrade their own hardware. Or better yet, the SSD (which will eventually wear out) can’t be replaced – so in five years or so, the laptop is just another hunk of e-waste.
It used to be that you purchased Apple, you paid a premium but you got hardware that lasted 10 years and software that each new OS ran faster than the previous one. No more.
I would love to hear Woz’s thoughts on this new debacle.
For anybody interested, Ars Technica came out with an article with a bit more technical detail with links to a technical summary as well as Apple’s ‘longer and more detailed explanation of the “private set intersection” cryptographic technology that determines whether a photo matches the CSAM database without revealing the result.’
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-explains-how-iphones-will-scan-photos-for-child-sexual-abuse-images/
But can you imagine the abuses that might result because of this as the idea is expanded forward? So you have a 13 year-old kid sending an image to another student with this message-
‘Hi Jill. Had an idea for our art project. You know how ancient Greek & Roman statues were painted to look lifelike? What if we did the same but with images of more recent statues. I did a first attempt with an image of Michelangelo’s “The David’ as a example. See you a school tomorrow.
Tom
Sent from my iPhone’
And then this happened-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQR7t712Mhg (3 secs)
Each is handcuffed & led away with the media watching and they find themselves charged with sending full frontal images over the internet which Apple identified them doing. The schools first suspend them and then expel them ‘out of an abundance of caution.’ Lawyers get involved followed by investigations and lawsuits. The charges are – eventually – dismissed but both kids now have suspicious activities associated with them for the rest of their lives. And all because an Apple algorithm is judging what you have on one of their devices. Not your device. One of their devices. Big difference. it could so easily happen.
Forget porn. They’ll mainly be using it to see who has been vaxxed.
The country is going nuts.
That is pretty mild.
If they can scan your photos they can upload compromised photos to the phone of any public figure they want to destroy as well.
This is the ultimate tool designed for Beria and Stalin types.
Why people keep paying for a spying device in their pockets?
I worked for Apple around the time Jobs died. At that time, there was one thing that would get you fired on the spot and that was going through a customer’s files/data. I know there’s the assumption that when you drop off your computer or phone for repair, the techs are going through all your stuff but that was absolutely not happening at that time. Customer privacy was highly regarded when I worked there. It’s been interesting watching from a distance the changes in the company since then. I’m not a member of the Cult of Jobs, but this is super disappointing and I don’t think would have happened at the time I was working there.
Apple expects me to believe they care about child pron when they do not care about child labor?
Guess I now need to figure out a way to pay off my iPhone to sell and switch back to LineoageOS….
Umm.. I’m totally ignorant on how AI is “trained” to do its thing, but doesn’t it require some some human input? If so, who went through thousands of kiddie porn images to determine the parameters that define what the AI program should look for? Does Apple keep huge files of kiddie porn? Do they have kiddie porn “experts” on staff?
This is sooo creepy…
It’s not an AI. Apple is using a database of perception hashes of images kept by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. These hashes are just the number generated once the algorithm processes the image. If the number matches one in the database, the phone alerts Apple and law enforcement.
There are several problems with this approach. First, Apple says it needs to do this to protect its interests in iCloud related to shared photos. This is true. However, Apple and all the other major tech companies have been doing this for years by analyzing the images server-side when they are uploaded. There is no reason for this technology to be on the phone/tablet/desktop if Apple is strictly interested in protecting itself.
Second, the technology cannot detect newly created images. It only catches the nonprofit/government provided ones listed in the database; hence, the societal benefit is not as great as Apple is claiming in its marketing.
Third, perception hashes are easily abused by malicious actors, as some whitepapers have shown in the last few years. By altering certain pixels, you can trigger a match or avoid a match without altering the content of the picture that much. If someone wants to send images that will trigger the alert, they can do so without their target knowing. Likewise, if someone doesn’t want to trigger the hash alert, they can manipulate the image to avoid a match.
Fourth, this technology will be abused. What Apple is doing is putting a hash checker on every device they make that checks files against a list of prohibited hashes provided by a government or nonprofit. If there is a match, it phones home to alert the authorities. Apple claims that this is just limited to photos being uploaded to iCloud and only in the US, but a file is a file and a hash is a hash. The technology is not limited to photos. It can be used to identify messages, books, videos, music, contacts, etc. There is no way that China and other governments will let the opportunity pass. Apple does not even know what those governments will be looking for since it does not know what file generated a particular hash number; it will only know that some file on the device is on a government-provided blacklist.
Um… the technical paper literally says that suspect images are first passed into a convolutional neural network — one that literally converts images, trained using a model, to a single, floating point number, which they then pass around and transform using a supposedly secure scheme that they insist preserves user privacy.
While “artificial intelligence” has become become so debased these days that it literally has lost its meaning… CNNs are part and parcel of deep learning (they’re famous for it, since it’s the one method that catapulted deep learning into the limelight), which is a subset of machine learning, which is a subset of artificial intelligence research.
I actually agree with literally everything else you’ve said… but is the avoidance of describing their method of artificial intelligence… is this an Apple thing?
That was sloppy writing on my part. You are technically correct, of course. I meant that it is not able to take a training set of images and use it to identify entirely novel material. It is limited in the sense that It only attempts to recognize materials that are slightly altered versions of what is already in the NCMEC database. The level of difficulty between the two tasks is not comparable.
Well, it’s time to leave… Do any of you have suggestions about which platform of Linux/Unix is easiest for the transition? I’ve heard that elementaryOS seems most MacOs-like, but the talk of Pop!-OS may allow choice.
Linux Mint is easy to install, with a more traditional interface.
I haven’t tried anything other than Linux Mint but I’m pretty happy with it. There is a slight learning curve when coming from a different OS but it’s not bad if you are a somewhat computer-friendly.
If Linux Mint is easy to install I would hate to see the versions considered difficult to install.
Countering “child porn” and or “terrorism” is always the Trojan Horse for things that no one would stand for otherwise. (“Narcotraffiking” seems to have fallen out of favor lately.) No one can possibly come out in favor of child porn or terrorism!
We need to get more sophisticated about the familiar playbook.
One obvious use for this infrastructure, once deployed, is to scan for copyrighted material and IP infringements.
Of course, there is no end of other applications!
Apple is already running facial recognition software on photos. Unlike Facebook it hasn’t tried to match it to a particular identity.
The usage of a the hash, as opposed to training an AI, is definitely less creepy and disturbing. However, with enough files, you’ll have hash collisions. Also, any change in the file would alter the hash – depending on what you’re hashing on, it may only take a minor change in the meta information to do that.
I think the significant thing is not what Apple does or is planning to do (which is not all that new), but that they are being completely overt about it.
Apple must be very confident that most iOS users will accept their invasion of privacy without jumping ship…and they are probably right.
The “think about the children” and “omg extremists!” lines are pretty successful at quashing pushback to intrusive surveillance measures.
Unless there is a sea change in social and political priorities coming, which seems highly unlikely, surveillance of the kind Apple is proposing will soon be de rigueur on every commonly used consumer tech platform. And the public will keep using this stuff just like it blissfully uses Facebook and Twitter no matter how underhanded and creepy these companies’ practices become.
Welcome to dystopia. This is only the beginning.
I recently purchased one of the new MacBook Pros with the M1 chip, I noticed that there appears to be no way to disconnect Siri from the internet, would deleting the app be the only way of doing this ?
Thanks
All Mac users should have Little Snitch. You’d be amazed at how many programs and web pages do crap behind your back. Probably Apple blocks it on the newer Macs though.
Apple describes the push back against their announcement as “the screeching voices of the minority.”
https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/1423738825369604106
I don’t know if this off topic. Yves, you decide. Perhaps my cynical paranoia is showing. This has appeared right on time as Pornhub is under the gun for child porn, revenge porn, etc. There’s a ton of money in that business and there are several organizations and plaintiffs pursuing a takedown of them. It’s just intuition, and perhaps not rational, but I find the timing disturbing. Is this in any way in Pornhub’s favor? Hmm. I think Apple will find it’s not a minority of users who object to this odious surveillance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/18/pornhub-lawsuit-rape-child-porn-sex-trafficking/
I’m dumping Apple too over this. It’s too similar to the surveillance I experienced in the PRC.
sounds like an effective way to source data for facial recognition. It could potentially be a deep reservoir of information on things like gait and voice; longitudinally even.
I’ll bet the marketerophiles have more interest in all those pics and what everyone is doing with their phone more so than pedophiles.
The inferior majority will keep using Apple regardless. The superior minority will find something else, if they can. If they can’t, they might even try grinding their lifestyles around to need less of what only Apple can provide, or ideally to need zero of what only Apple can provide.
I think a small but growing minority of superior people will begin adopting the Amish attitude of late-adoption or zero-adoption of ethically and/or behaviorally corrupted or polluting technology. They will find eachother and try growing a better parallel world for themselves to live in, while the inferior majority happily wallow in Zuckerberg’s Junkyard Metaverse of Crap, swimming in the Big Digital sewage lagoons and happily bobbing for Appleturd Iphones.
Aside from the bad actions which this Apple spy-plan is designed to make possible, I wonder if this is also a mass psychology test to see how much the Apple customer base will put up with.
Most of the Apple customer base will reveal themselves to be deeply inferior people, the kind of humanoid flatworms who are perfectly happy to let Big Brother Apple all the way into their lives as long as they can keep enjoying their ” how do you keep an idiot busy? see other side of card” Iphones and Ipads and other Istuff.