Apple wants to redefine what it means to violate your privacy. We mustn’t let it

https://ar.al/2021/08/08/apple-is-trying-to-redefine-what-it-means-to-violate-your-privacy-we-must-not-let-it/

by aral • 5 years ago

162 79 5 years ago

foxyv5• 5 years ago

The thing that scares me isn't so much the violation of privacy. It's the idea that some computer algorithm can accuse me of a crime automatically with no evidence and generate an investigation.

Judging by how police respond to these leads, you can end up in jail based on this "Evidence." While you wait for a 6 month investigation to be completed you lose your job and get an arrest record. Even if your photo is just a picture of static on a TV which produced a false positive.

It reminds me of the dog who always indicates the presence of drugs 100% of the time. Probable cause, made to order.

throw031720192• 5 years ago

There is a human review (ugh.) as well.

But still, your example is very concerning.

falcolas• 5 years ago

From Apple's announcements, there is a human comparison of the visual hashes. They don't appear to be forcing humans to view the images themselves.

foxyv5• 5 years ago

They say there is a human review, but fail to explain the parameters of the review.

How many photos is a reviewer expected to review in an hour? What are their incentives and performance metrics? Do they have a 3 party voting system to confirm? For positive human review is there additional scrutiny? Is data anonymized properly? Does law enforcement receive a copy? Is this going to be limited to child exploitation?

Without this info I just have to assume it's some guy in a box expected to review 1000 pictures an hour and gets scrutinized if he doesn't click at least 10% positive. So he's just counting 1 positive 9 negatives.

aNoob70002• 5 years ago

I want to add that they are scanning your property without your permission. The crazy part is that the government can't do this with a warrant or probable cause, but Apple decided that it can and will.

Amazing that Apple destroyed their image about "Privacy" in minutes.

Scaevolus• 5 years ago

Not that anyone reads them, but every cloud storage EULA has a clause describing how they may remove content at will, especially if it is illegal. That's their justification for why this scanning is happening on photos that are being uploaded to iCloud, and not simply all photos on every device.

https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/

Apple reserves the right at all times to determine whether Content is appropriate and in compliance with this Agreement, and may screen, move, refuse, modify and/or remove Content at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, if such Content is found to be in violation of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.

api2• 5 years ago

I really wonder about their motives for this. It really has destroyed their image to the point that I'm thinking about abandoning the platform if nothing changes.

This will not just be about CP. In many countries this will instantly be used to detect any kind of dissent. In the US it will take longer, but eventually I can imagine "misinformation" as determined by some stupid algorithm flagging you for quiet social credit style lists. What constitutes misinformation will change with the political winds.

Hey... maybe we can let people select which reality they wish to be enforced! Maybe Republicans can get flagged if they spread memes about universal health care while Democrats can be flagged for discussing LGBT rights!

The only thing I can imagine is that Apple is facing enormous pressure from behind the scenes to become part of the panopticon. Private companies can't really resist governments.

zepto14• 5 years ago

I want to add that they are scanning your property without your permission.

This is a false statement. Scanning is opt-in.

jrm46• 5 years ago

Say it louder. Recently I opposed this and was met with "I bet you don't have children."

I do, and I am black and so are they, and I'm quite familiar of the present state of facial recognition tech (and, of course, the justice system generally) when it comes to people who look like us.

This is all unacceptable, and the fact that some of it has already come to pass is no reason to not fix it.

zepto14• 5 years ago

What does any of this have to do with facial recognition tech or race?

zepto14• 5 years ago

The thing that scares me isn't so much the violation of privacy. It's the idea that some computer algorithm can accuse me of a crime automatically with no evidence and generate an investigation.

Nothing about apple’s proposal involves algorithms accusing people with a crime without evidence.

All actual alerts are done by humans checking the photos.

foxyv5• 5 years ago

Predictive policing models require a human in the loop as well. However people tend to trust these algorithms far beyond their reliability without knowing how they work. As I understand it, human reviewers for this program do not see the photo itself, but instead see the hash and make a determination from that.

A positive result may be enough to see all of your devices in evidence bags for the next 6 months and serve as probable cause for warrants. In addition, how hard is it to subpoena Apple for a report on how many times a whistleblower's device has been flagged then use it as probable cause. Or, cherry pick which reports Apple makes to target undesirables.

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

This is why algorithmic and predictive policing is so terrifying. Everyone in the justice system now has a great way to shirk liability for their actions and decisions: they can just defer to the infallible black box system that tells them who is a criminal or not. Want to side step accusations of bias or targeting? They were just going after whoever the black box said was guilty, and computers purportedly are not biased.

The corollary to this shirking of responsibility is how it lets people, and not just law enforcement, justify abuse of whoever the system says is guilty of a crime, because after all, the company that made the black box says that there is a one in a trillion chance of encountering a false positive. Judges will throw the book at defendants because, statistically, the black box system is almost never wrong, and the system says the defendants are monsters.

But the most Kafkaesque part is that people will never get an answer for how these systems determined they were guilty. It's a trade secret, it's part of on-going investigations, it's critical to national security, or in Apple's case, it's literally illegal to look and find out how their system came to conclusion because viewing the data itself is a crime. These systems often inscrutable ML models, as well, and we all know just how buggy and error prone computers and software can be.

0x0• 5 years ago

Will the next NSOGroup Pegasus malware feature a swatting-as-a-service plugin that makes the victim phones self-report?

squarefoot2• 5 years ago

I know about nothing on this topic, so my only comment is that every time I read something along "please think of the children!" it suddenly raises warning flags.

mypastself4• 5 years ago

There are numerous valuable child protection laws and services against which your knee-jerk would be unwarranted. It just happens to be warranted this time around.

ohdannyboy• 5 years ago

He didn't say that all measures to protect children should be rejected out of hand. He is just saying that if someones argument starts and ends with fear baiting around children then they probably have ulterior motives.

onepunchedman3• 5 years ago

It's the same excuse the EU are currently using to infringe upon its citizens' privacy and require messaging application providers to install backdoors. It's an appeal to emotion, and since we have to assume that these legislators are intelligent, it's a disgusting overreach.

xbar• 5 years ago

True. More generally, "think of the children" is representative of a class of moral imperative arguments. Such arguments are easily abused by policy makers as they are an emotional short-circuit of logical reasoning. Being skeptical of people who make such arguments is healthy.

jaywalk2• 5 years ago

That doesn't mean that "think of the children" shouldn't raise warning flags.

The fact that good child protection laws exist doesn't invalidate the fact that "child protection" is frequently and increasingly used to push through bad laws.

vxNsr• 5 years ago

If you wanna screw someone over and you know they have an iPhone with icloud backup set up, you can whatsapp them a pic that matches CP signature.

jjgreen• 5 years ago

... an innocuous hash-collision one FTW

SavageBeast2• 5 years ago

Digital Swatting

gjsman-10004• 5 years ago

You need to meet the threshold, and they must add those photos to their iCloud Photos library. Remember iCloud Backups are E2E encrypted, iCloud Photo Library is not E2E.

bogwog3• 5 years ago

This could actually have some very serious consequences. Quote from the apple announcement:

Apple then manually reviews each report to confirm there is a match, disables the user’s account, and sends a report to NCMEC.

So a match doesn't just get you reported to the authorities, it disables your account. Even if the feds do investigate you and find you innocent due to being swatted or whatever, you still need to file an appeal with Apple and hope they give you back your digital life.

This could also lead to large spam campaigns of CP being sent to random people, either to just fuck with them, or to undermine the system/overwhelm investigators with a bunch of false positives.

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

This could also lead to large spam campaigns of CP being sent to random people, either to just fuck with them, or to undermine the system/overwhelm investigators with a bunch of false positives.

If you're a nation-state that wants to sow discord and distrust in another nation's society, what better way than to frame random, respected or important people?

The attacker wouldn't need to worry about being arrested, due to being in a foreign country and most likely associated with foreign intelligence agencies. Those same agencies would have the evidence they could plant on people's devices or cloud storage, and the resources not to get caught.

They wouldn't even have to burn zero days or accounts/numbers to send messages, just look for database dumps of services that the target country uses, and then log in and upload the evidence.

It could be cheap, easy and scalable.

rvz• 5 years ago

Exactly. It is rephrasing the definition and re-defining what 'they really mean' of their intentions.

Hence, Apple Inc. has a very strange definition of what they think 'privacy' means.

Always with privacy in mind.™ /s

SavageBeast2• 5 years ago

Apple apparently has the ability to look at pix stored in iCloud. I wonder who's pix they will start looking at first?

The Fappening Part II By Apple

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_phot...

That which CAN happen WILL happen.

rasz• 5 years ago

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/apple-r...

https://metro.co.uk/2016/10/13/apple-geniuses-caught-stealin... https://www.sbs.com.au/news/apple-staff-fired-after-allegedl...

josh_today2• 5 years ago

What Apple is doing is the equivalent of the police one day deciding to search everyone’s physical home photo albums just in case there’s a picture of an illegal activity.

gjsman-10004• 5 years ago

Not really, actually.

They only do the scanning if you use iCloud Photos backup. If you use, say, local storage instead of iCloud, you don't get scanned (which would be a more apt comparison to a physical photo book). Also, they aren't scanning for new illegal activity, but images that you somehow obtained of past illegal activity that the government already knows about.

oceanghost2• 5 years ago

This to me is the most unbelievable aspect of the whole thing.

Apple is basically saying:

"So hey, if you have anything you don't want us to know about, here's how to get around our scans (wink, wink)."

What would be the point of implementing a system and then telling people how to avoid it? I think at some point in the near future they will flip a switch and start scanning private photos.

josh_today2• 5 years ago

I see your distinction and it makes sense- don’t want to be subject to Apple’s CSAM checks, don’t upload to iCloud.

I’d say we can do better. We need better tools for individualized data ownership and interoperability.

system16• 5 years ago

I can't understand how anyone - even Apple's usual cheerleaders like Gruber - can justify defending this with a straight face. It's scanning your content on your device, without your consent. Full stop.

Apple's FAQ to try and quell some of the backlash for this just makes it sound even worse in my opinion with gems like this:

_Could governments force Apple to add non-CSAM images to the hash list?_

_Apple will refuse any such demands._

Bullshit. If China "requests" this with threat of banning them from selling the iPhone in China? They'll just say "Apple must operate under the laws of the countries it operates in" and its hands are tied. Which is most likely how this whole thing started.

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...

Maybe there will be more of an uproar when this inevitably comes to macOS.

gjsman-10004• 5 years ago

It is with your consent. If you don't use iCloud Photos, your files don't get scanned.

bogwog3• 5 years ago

Oh right, so if I stop using the thing I paid for, I can avoid giving my consent. I could also just not buy an iPhone for the same effect. (at least until Google gets around to copying Apple)

weikju• 5 years ago

Maybe there will be more of an uproar when this inevitably comes to macOS.

It's coming to the next macOS release this fall.

valparaiso• 5 years ago

As a back-end engineer I can't understand this outrage.

Apple's approach is less intrusive than Google and Microsoft since they don't touch your photos in iCloud except when you passed threshold and Apple workers will have technical ability to decrypt your detected (not regular) photos and manually compare with images from the database. Also iPhone doesn't trigger photo scanning if you don't upload them to iCloud.

From technical and privacy standpoint they have the best approach and it seems people are mad don't even understanding what Apple is doing.

Android users never cared but when news come to Apple everyone is losing their shit. I can't believe people are that weird.

jaywalk2• 5 years ago

A lot of people seem to be forgetting/not know about the other aspect of what Apple will be doing, which is scanning iMessage pics sent or received by minors for nudity. If it's detected, their parents will be notified and have the ability to view the pic in question.

tzs• 5 years ago

If it's detected, their parents will be notified and have the ability to view the pic in question.

There are some other steps in there. If such a photo is detected the minor is notified that it may be intended to harm them and the subject of the photo may not have consented to sharing it. They are asked if they are sure they want to view the photo.

If they say they are sure and they are between 13 and 17 they are shown a blurred version of the photo. Their parents are not notified.

If they say they are sure and they are under 13 they are told it is their choice but their parents want to make sure they are OK and will be notified so they can check.

If they then elect to view the photo they are shown a blurred version of the photo and their parents are notified.

This is all off by default. Parents have to expressly opt in to it when they set up a child's device with Family Sharing.

mortenjorck• 5 years ago

I've been persuaded on this over the past few days.

Initially, I saw the controversy as overblown: It's the exact same content scan that already occurs when uploading images to iCloud; it will still only occur when uploading, and the only change is where it takes place.

I now see that as a reductionist take. Where it takes place does matter. The lines between client and server have been slowly blurred over the past decade to the point where a move like this may seem trivial to many, but ultimately, it is not. It becomes a foothold for so much more, and despite Apple's detailed assurances of all the friction they've installed onto this particular slippery slope, to step onto it at all is a step too far.

bogwog3• 5 years ago

Serious question: why did Apple bother making that announcement at all? I can't imagine they're naive enough to think it would be good press for them?

They could have done this quietly without telling anyone, maybe with a vaguely-worded update to the terms of service for the next mandatory iOS update that nobody reads anyways.

Zealotux• 5 years ago

Hiding such a massive thing in a quiet update would have generated a much larger shitstorm, I don't know if the internal memo I've read is legit but by the look of it: Apple made its calculations and decided it was more interesting to release it this way.

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

Serious question: why did Apple bother making that announcement at all? I can't imagine they're naive enough to think it would be good press for them?

Because they are proud of it.

I think for some people, this was a feel good project. I know I'd feel better about working for a company that profits from forced labor[1] and lobbies to water down legislation against forced labor[2] if I was working to help children there.

Also, who wouldn't want to stop CSAM distribution? They probably thought dissent would be shamed and outnumbered.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-suppliers-...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

ksec• 5 years ago

I will not write another line of code for their platforms ever again.

Surprised that this is still a thing. Apple has made it very clear in their App Store case, they do not need developers and Apps on their platform. And Apple operating their App Store has been a benefits, or more like a gift to developers for access to their users.

Apple wants to redefine what it means to violate your privacy. We mustn’t let it

Related Stories