[HN Gopher] We built a system like Apple's to flag CSAM and conc... ___________________________________________________________________ We built a system like Apple's to flag CSAM and concluded the tech was dangerous Author : Copernicron Score : 251 points Date : 2021-08-19 19:23 UTC (3 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com) | livinginfear wrote: | I've already written this in a previous comment, however I think | it bears repeating: I think Apple have introduced this client- | side content scanning technology under the auspices of protecting | against CSAM, while its true intention is to allow for the | Chinese government to scan citizens' phones for subversive | content. I'm convinced that Apple's upper management figure the | minimal blowback they're experiencing for this privacy invading | technology in the west is worth the expansion of their technology | into a much more totalitarian Chinese market. I think that this | development has been precipitated by a very visible decline in | America's economic, and social position as a world leader. Why | not risk this move? America's trajectory is that of almost | definite decline. | legutierr wrote: | > America's trajectory is that of almost definite decline. | | Well, sure, with that kind of attitude! | fortran77 wrote: | > Apple's motivation, like ours, was to protect children. | | Does anybody really believe Apple's motivation is to "protect | children?" | skinkestek wrote: | I personally believe Apples motive is to protect their | customers and by extension themselves. | ummonk wrote: | Copying over my comment from the last article about this: | | Nothing about those concerns seems specific to the end-to-end | encryption compatible CSAM system they or Apple built... | | Honestly if I were Apple I'd consider just scrapping the whole | thing and doing server side CSAM testing on iCloud photos without | rolling out E2E encryption for iCloud photos. It's just not worth | the PR blowback. | baxtr wrote: | I think in reality 99.9% of all people don't care at all about | Apple doing this. | bobbuf wrote: | And 99.9% of people don't care if your algorithm is O(n) or | O(n^2). | | It literally does not matter what clueless people think or | say about this subject. The informed 0.01% (that number isn't | correct but whatever) have a huge influence on things and | Apple has just as many incentives to please them as they do | for the "I bought a 2K device to jack off and watch Netflix" | crowd. | threeseed wrote: | If not higher. | | Right now every company is already scanning your photos | server side but somehow it's an issue if its client side ? | | I think once people think this through a bit more it will | blow over. | ElFitz wrote: | Having things server side is an optional feature that has | some value. | | But not being able to trust the device itself makes it | pretty much useless. | wang_li wrote: | Yes it's an issue client side. I've never uploaded a photo | to iCloud. I have no plans to do so. Getting scanned server | side is effectively opt-in. Them putting the scanning | client side has measurable, though minimal effects, even if | I continue not to use iCloud. | | Not to mention that within a decade they'll be scanning | every image that passes through people's phones. | maverwa wrote: | I'd guess you could add a few more 9s to that. Almost all | people either don't care or like this. And if you do not fear | (or do not understand) the implications and risks I see why | they like what apple does. It's one of the few topics where | all of mankind (with very little exceptions) agrees: CSAM is | bad! That's why ,,we do it for the kids" always works. | YLYvYkHeB2NRNT wrote: | Within my circle, people do not care. They will continue to | use Apple products because, "I have nothing to hide." | That's what they told me when I brought it up. | dijit wrote: | My group is a bit more nuanced: most will likely stick | with Apple since the effect is somewhat invisible to | them, but this topic brought the question up of "should I | stay on iPhone" - which is not a question you want to | come up very often if you're trying to sell these | devices. | ipaddr wrote: | Do they allow you to look through their phones if they | give that opinion? | PolCPP wrote: | Why change now when the damage is already done? People who know | how bad this can turn probably already left or are figuring out | how to leave Apple's ecosystem. | hughrr wrote: | I've already left. They doubled down on it straight away. | Then wheeled out Craig to tell us lies. They're not on my | side. I don't have to be their customer. | | The dangerous part is they have advertised this capability. | Now regimes may make that a prerequisite for allowing them to | do business. | | Cat's out of bag. Ain't going back in now. We have to | reevaluate any data that we do not control ourselves or | control access to now. | | Ironically this isn't the world I want for my kids. | TechBro8615 wrote: | Every instance of "government" in this article comes with some | qualifier, like "foreign" or "other" - watch out for those | foreign governments who might spy on their foreign citizens. | | Is the implication that this technology could only do evil in | other countries? If Apple deploys this in the US, they're saving | the children, but if they deploy it in China, they're | facilitating an oppressive autocracy? | | Is the US somehow immune from this same threat? | bsder wrote: | > Is the US somehow immune from this same threat? | | No, but it's easier to paint China as evil in the US and the US | as evil in China if you want people to get the point. | cyanydeez wrote: | yes, the US will spy on you to help big corporations make | profit. | | everyones missing the dmca2.0 trojan horse in apples actions. | whymauri wrote: | Good ol' Manufacturing Consent. | Clubber wrote: | >they're facilitating an oppressive autocracy | | >Is the US somehow immune from this same threat? | | No, if you investigate how many police in the US act now with | qualified immunity and get away with it scott free, you would | be horrified. I would guess people like Chauvin is one of | thousands. | | Here's just a taste. | | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/29/us-police-br... | knaik94 wrote: | I think the understanding is that US so far hasn't pushed into | law any policy instructing companies like Apple to publicly | censor people. Secret surveillance and privacy has been | debated, but not freedom of speech. The US has not used the | kind of public censorship used by other countries to facilitate | an oppressive autocracy. | | The US government tends to use one of the four horsemen, CSAM, | drugs, terrorism, or organized crime as motivation to deploy | censorship and undermine privacy but freedom of speech is | generally protected. | | Foreign governments censor things like undesirable political | opposition, LGBTQ+ activism, women's rights activism, and | historical events like the massacre of protestors. | | I think the implication is that the technology is likely to do | a lot more harm in other countries compared to the harm done in | the US, so "it's okay" if it's only deployed in the US in the | name of saving children. A lot of people from the US are | strongly against the Apple policy regardless. | drivingmenuts wrote: | We've been through all "for the children" brouhaha before: | War on Rock Mudic Lyrics, War on Drugs, etc. It happens ny | time a parent with influence decides that what's best for | their children is good for all children. | | It doesn't take a village - it just takes a mom with a loud | voice. | noasaservice wrote: | When the very mainstream news media is under the same | financial umbrella of all the defense contractors, is it no | surprise we see the "undesirable political opposition, LGBTQ+ | activism, women's rights activism, and historical events like | the massacre of protestors" covered up or not even reported | on to begin with? | herbstein wrote: | Herman & Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" proposes the | method through which the media influence isn't by way of | "old men in a dark, smoky backroom" as the claim conjures | images of. Rather, it's a series of filters that funnel | like-minded people into the decision-making roles of the | companies. If we simplify it a lot, it's the claim that a | CEO is very likely to hire a senior editor that shares his | views on the world, that editor in turn hires writers with | a similar outlook on the world, etc. etc. Likewise, | promotions within these companies is predicated on this | same mechanism. | | To the question "Do you think all journalists are self- | censoring? Do you think _I 'm_ self-censoring?", posed by | the BBC's Andrew Marr, Chomsky answered "I think you | believe everything you're saying because if you didn't you | wouldn't be sitting here". Both quotes paraphrased but | meaning-preserving. [0] | | This is 1 of 5 filters laid out in "Manufacturing Consent". | It's, in my eyes, a very compelling analytical framework. | | [0]: https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU?t=176 - Video title is | terribly divisive but the quote is at the timestamp. The | whole 3 minute video just gives a bit of context to why the | question is asked. It also cuts off as Andrew Marr is about | to say something, making the video's title bunk. Viewer | beware. | gfrff wrote: | I don't think any of those are offensive to defense | contractors, etc. Polarizing the public on these issues is | exactly the way to haves the public turn a blind eye took | graft. | howaboutnope wrote: | > deploy censorship [..] but freedom of speech is generally | protected | | Can you elaborate a little? I understand and agree with your | overarching point but this bit threw me. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | "But Apple has a record of obstructing security research." | | Any examples besides Corellium. | IncRnd wrote: | One of the words that you quoted from the article was linked | directly to an example. | dang wrote: | I've re-upped this thread in lieu of | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264032, which references | this article but is baitier and led to more of a garden-variety | thread. | | The current submission got a surprising amount of upvotes for a | post that remained underwater (below the front page): | http://hnrankings.info/28238163/. It's on my list to detect | threads like that and rescue them. This case will be a hell of an | example for testing. | jsnell wrote: | Though it's also a dupe of the thread from 2 days ago (310 | votes, 77 comments): | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28246054 | dang wrote: | Ah good point. Thanks! | MR4D wrote: | It doesn't matter. The horse has left the barn already. | | Now that every country knows that Apple _can_ do this, they have | a pretext for forcing them to do it in the manner of said | country's choosing. | | That to me is the real loss here. | kgeist wrote: | Many of my oppressive country's laws are introduced under pretext | "save the children". For example, public discourse of | homosexuality is essentially banned, because otherwise | underdeveloped minors might get involuntarily exposed to it (and | supposedly get psychologically traumatized). Then another law | allows banning websites that talk about drugs, LGBT, opposition | protests etc. without court order, to save children from being | involved in those traumatizing things of course (now it's used to | ban opposition sites). And it's hard to argue against it, because | you are pushed back, "what, you hate kids? you don't want them to | be safe?" It's a clever ugly trick, because most adults are | parents, their parental instincts kick in, hearing about all that | abuse, and they will support any cause that'll make their kids | safer | | I'm not saying Apple is definitively involved in some shady | stuff, but from my perspective, it does look like NSA forced them | to do some sort of file scanning backdoor and they came up with | this "it's about saving the children" explanation, already | successfully in use in oppressive countries. | read_if_gay_ wrote: | Child abuse, terrorism, money laundering and tax evasion. | | These are any government's four horsemen of the apocalypse. | According to them, they are roughly the same degree of evil and | all deserve the strictest prosecution. | | But only two aren't bogeymen. | jancsika wrote: | > But only two aren't bogeymen. | | Regardless of intent, that's an effective troll. | | You could ask 10 people which are the bogeymen and you'll | probably get all 6 different combinations! | jdavis703 wrote: | If this is true, why is it so hard for the US to increase | enforcement funding for the IRS while purported anti-sex | abuse laws like SESTA/FOSTA are passed with broad bipartisan | support? | MR4D wrote: | Because voting against said laws cause politicians to lose | elections. | | Voting for IRS funding only gets you half the voters. | shadilay wrote: | IRS enforcement is targeted against people with the | resources to stop it. | kiba wrote: | That would presume a consistent and systematic belief | systems. | slg wrote: | On the flip side, "think of the children" does not necessarily | mean the argument is without merit. There are countless debates | in which it is a valid point. For example, climate change is a | big "think of the children" issue because the impact will be | felt greater by children than by the people who are currently | in power. I think some people have become too cynical and see a | "think of the children" argument and reflexively take the | opposite stance in order to be contrarian. It is basically the | fallacy fallacy[1] that you see all over the place, especially | in debates on the internet. | | [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy | croes wrote: | That are different kind of children. In case of climate | change it means the next generation of adults. In terms of | cyber security it means actual children and is simply used to | trigger protective instincts and make counter arguments seems | cruel and suspicious. Especially because child porn isn't not | the initial but followup crime. The initial one is the actual | abuse which isn't prevented. | haspoken wrote: | https://archive.is/y58Py | rfd4sgmk8u wrote: | I feel somewhat optimistic of the future when many groups saw | through this push for on-device scanning for what it was. Damn | straight the tech is dangerous. | knaik94 wrote: | One additional issue that I haven't really seen discussed is how | to handle a situation when a false accusation is made. | | If a person knows the right people who work at these companies, | things get sorted out, but I imagine sometimes a person is forced | to just handle the consequences. | | Stepping away from CSAM and going back to something like | developer account and apps getting banned on platforms for | violating vague "guidelines". It's someone's livelihood that's | sometimes destroyed. Demonetization, apps getting banned, payment | processors freezing accounts are mostly black box events and most | situations aren't even related to crimes dealing with CSAM. | | If it was something the government made a mistake with, there's | legal ways to fight for your rights. There's generally a level of | transparency that is afforded to you. | | It is concerning that people flagged for handling CSAM will not | know if they have been manually reviewed. The need to keep the | forwarding to authorities a secret is understandable, but a human | review before forwarding is only necessary if you expect false | positives to begin with. Keeping that flag secret seems like | another black box you can't fight as a user. | | I don't deny the value of catching these criminals, but it throws | the idea of due process out the window when the only assurance so | far has been "trust us to do the right thing". | | It's also weird how Apple has chosen to intentionally insert | itself into the investigation pipeline rather than just let NCMEC | handle it like all other cloud providers. | | I am glad this hasn't flown under the radar just because it is | Apple who is making these promises. I have heard non-tech people | talk about this but there's a lot of misunderstanding. | skinkestek wrote: | > It's also weird how Apple has chosen to intentionally insert | itself into the investigation pipeline rather than just let | NCMEC handle it like all other cloud providers. | | Not so weird actually in my opinion: | | Apple wants to make sure their customers doesn't get into | trouble for no good reason, that would be bad for business. | | Personally for me, a European living in Norway I do have great | respect for the local police (mostly). Great people, mostly | going out of their way to serve the public (again, mostly). | | Norwegian child protection however is someone I'd rather stay | clear of. They are well known to simultaneously ignore kids who | need help and also harass innocent parents. | | Again, not all of them are like this, many of them try to do | good, but they seem to a large extent to be working outside of | control of the courts so if they mess up you have to go to a EU | court to fix it. (Two or three cases just last 18 months from a | small country like Norway.) | | So something similar might also be at play, but I don't know | what reputation NCMEC has, only that it is well known that a | number of people have gotten serious trouble because of | overeager employees at photo labs reporting innocent images. | ec109685 wrote: | There's a human review at other cloud providers too. | hirvi74 wrote: | > It's also weird how Apple has chosen to intentionally insert | itself into the investigation pipeline rather than just let | NCMEC handle it like all other cloud providers. | | So, I am not much of conspiracy theorist, but I do like to | sometimes fantasize about alternative realities in which they | were true. | | I am not saying the US government had any involvement in | Apple's decision, but what if they did? I do agree with your | point about how this topic more or less came out of Left-field. | It's clear that Apple did not just recently acquire the | technological ability to produce this feature in 2021. This | feature could have been implemented years ago (like many other | companies with a consumer-available cloud storage model already | did to some degree). I am just curious if Apple did not really | have a "choice" in this matter. Perhaps my monkey brain just | want this to be the case. | knaik94 wrote: | I don't know for sure if the US government has publicly | endorsed creating a backdoor after the San Bernardino | shooting incident. That was 2015/2016. The Apple vs Epic case | made an interesting email public about Apple's head of fraud | acknowledging the problem of CSAM on their platform in Feb | 2020 [1] but I agree with you that this kind of feature has | to have been in development since before then because it's | clearly been red teamed. The feature wasn't released until | they knew they would have a response to all of the technical | questions concerning the actual implementation. | | The UK policy, from 2017, around age verification [2] before | giving access to pornographic material has definitely also | played a part. Even youtube recently has made a strong | verification effort going as far as asking for a credit card | or photo ID as a response to COPPA [3] and EU policy. But | Apple hasn't framed the porn blurring for minors feature as a | response to that policy, which is surprising. And none of | those government policies explain the need to do on device | scanning of CSAM instead of in the cloud like everyone else. | | I personally believe Apple felt a requirement from a business | perspective more than to avoid government regulation. It | doesn't seem to be a secret warrant type situation, because | publicly disclosure wouldn't really make sense. If catching | criminals consuming/sharing CSAM is the motive, warning those | criminals that this change is happening before implementation | seems counter-productive. | | They even went as far as going after leakers a couple of | months ago [4]. | | > The letter purportedly cautioned leakers that they must not | disclose information about unreleased Apple projects because | it may give Apple's competitors valuable information and | "mislead customers, because what is disclosed may not be | accurate." | | It's clear in hindsight that these "features" leaking early | is what Apple was afraid of as it's been confirmed that the | CSAM scanning algorithm was found, inactive, in iOS 14.3. The | current stance is that Apple will have an additional check | but if the presence of the scanning algorithm was leaked | then, they wouldn't have been able to do the same PR spinning | that they're doing now. | | I agree with you that it really doesn't fit Apple's narrative | of privacy first. They are the same company that developed | the security enclave to make a more secure product starting | with the iphone 5s in 2013. | | I hope we do get some clarity on the motivation because it's | clear that no one buys the "we did it for better privacy" | narrative they are currently pushing. Their hand being forced | doesn't seem out of the question to me either, but their own | public response seems to make it doubtful to me. | | I think it speaks volumes that the first item that shows up | on google when you search the term "icloud scanning apple" is | a lifehacker article titled "How to Stop Apple From Scanning | Your iPhone Photos Before iOS 15 Arrives". | | 1. https://www.theverge.com/22611236/epic-v-apple-emails- | projec... | | 2. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/05/uk- | governmen... | | 3. https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/06/24/why-youtube- | wants-s... | | 4. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/24/reliable-leaker-kang- | hi... | Geee wrote: | Just think what kind of power this would give USA when they | invade countries like Afganistan. They could easily cancel all | people who don't like their presence, and be able to shape the | narrative with their propaganda. I'm thinking that maybe this is | the actual reason they want tools like this. Afganistan failed | because of freedom of speech -> need more tools to limit freedom | of speech. | warkdarrior wrote: | If only US could have effectively cancelled the Taliban using | fake CSAM on their phones... | nomoreplease wrote: | I believe Jonathan Mayer (one of the authors) is a user/commenter | here on HackerNews | ufmace wrote: | I haven't seen this asked on any of the threads about this yet, | but what happens if we identify a few of the pics in their | database of Evil Pictures, and send them (presumably from a non- | Apple device) to the iPhone of anybody we don't like. | | Presumably the actual data on the device is still encrypted and | can't be accessed remotely, which means we need to trigger a law | enforcement investigation which involves seizing the device and | compelling the owner to unlock it in order to determine if they | actually are a kiddie diddler or something went wrong. Gee, can't | see how that could possibly go wrong. /s | | Meanwhile, the actual kiddie diddlers out there have probably | read the 10 million articles published about this by now and know | not to use iMessage to trade their pictures, so probably not many | of them would actually be caught this way. | 1MachineElf wrote: | This method of targeting people you don't like was used heavily | against political groups on Facebook during the 2016 US | election. | shadilay wrote: | What is the CSAM version of SWATting going to be called? | hipsterhelpdesk wrote: | Easy win. Not needed. There's enough hate for tech already. Apple | scrapped it. I wish they would move on. | ipv6ipv4 wrote: | Do you know something that Apple hasn't publicly announced yet? | | It hasn't been scrapped. | KitDuncan wrote: | They didn't scrap it though? | IncRnd wrote: | No. Apple didn't scrap this. | 1cvmask wrote: | In a previous comment on this very same subject on Apple's | attempt to flag CSAM I wrote: This invasive capability on the | device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy and | there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once | implemented. The scope will always broaden. | | Well in the article they correctly point out how the scope of | scanning is already broad by governments around the world and a | violation of privacy by content matching political speech and | other forms of censorship and government tracking. | | We already have that now on the big tech platforms like Twitter | that censor or shadow ban contetnt that they as the arbiters | (egged on by the politicians and big corporate media) of truth | (or truthiness as Colbert used to say in the old show The Colbert | Report) label as misinformation or disinformation. | | Do we now need to be prevented from communicating our thoughts | and punished for spreading the truth or non-truths, especially | given the false positives, and malware injections and remote | device takeovers and hijackings by the Orwellian Big Tech | oligopolies. | | Power corrupts absolutely and this is too much power in the hands | of Big Corporations and Governments. | | From the article in case you need the lowdown: | | Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and | censorship. The design wasn't restricted to a specific category | of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching | database, and the person using that service would be none the | wiser. | | A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out | people sharing disfavored political speech. That's no | hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already | uses content matching to identify dissident material. India | enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content | critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, | Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest | materials. | | We spotted other shortcomings. The content-matching process could | have false positives, and malicious users could game the system | to subject innocent users to scrutiny. | | We were so disturbed that we took a step we hadn't seen before in | computer science literature: We warned against our own system | design, urging further research on how to mitigate the serious | downsides. We'd planned to discuss paths forward at an academic | conference this month. | | That dialogue never happened. The week before our presentation, | Apple announced it would deploy its nearly identical system on | iCloud Photos, which exists on more than 1.5 billion devices. | Apple's motivation, like ours, was to protect children. And its | system was technically more efficient and capable than ours. But | we were baffled to see that Apple had few answers for the hard | questions we'd surfaced. | | China is Apple's second-largest market, with probably hundreds of | millions of devices. What stops the Chinese government from | demanding Apple scan those devices for pro-democracy materials? | Absolutely nothing, except Apple's solemn promise. This is the | same Apple that blocked Chinese citizens from apps that allow | access to censored material, that acceded to China's demand to | store user data in state-owned data centers and whose chief | executive infamously declared, "We follow the law wherever we do | business." | | Apple's muted response about possible misuse is especially | puzzling because it's a high-profile flip-flop. After the 2015 | terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., the Justice | Department tried to compel Apple to facilitate access to a | perpetrator's encrypted iPhone. Apple refused, swearing in court | filings that if it were to build such a capability once, all bets | were off about how that capability might be used in future. | rfd4sgmk8u wrote: | Maybe it is 4d chess. I am very pleased by the pushback on | this, in fact given the tech community outcry, this will not | happen for another 5 years. Apple bought themselves some time | before the beast forced a move. (regardless, i have already | made steps to move away from the apple ecosystem. take that | tim, see what happens!!!!!) | zamalek wrote: | The problem is that Apple have let the genie out of the bottle. | With all the, very public, blowback and drama they have created, | otherwise ignorant politicians are now aware of what is possible | and could start demanding it. | | Great job, Apple. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-22 23:00 UTC)