<story><title>Apple&apos;s bright idea for CSAM scanning could start persecution on a global basis</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/apple_csam_condemned/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmitryminkovsky</author><text>Thank you for this perspective. I&amp;#x27;ve never worked at an organization of this magnitude, so I am definitely lacking some perspective.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s also clear Apple put a lot of thought into addressing the privacy concerns for this. Technologically, it&amp;#x27;s sophisticated, impressive.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure about this. How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc?</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re underestimating the degree to which companies have their own internal logic that has nothing to do with the external reality. That tendency increases the larger a company grows. If you&amp;#x27;re in a one-room house, you can always see outside. If you&amp;#x27;re inside a giant office building, mostly you see the building.&lt;p&gt;Did somebody raise the concern of push-back? I&amp;#x27;m sure. But the moral questions around CSAM are something that was settled long ago internally. When I was at Twitter fighting abuse, the CSAM stuff was a separate group. My boss called them The Department of Mysteries because we almost never saw them or spoke to them. It was led by a serious person, an ex-FBI agent or something like that. They did what they did and we were all ok with it and grateful for it, because that shit is horrific and we didn&amp;#x27;t want it on our platform and we didn&amp;#x27;t want to have to deal with it ourselves.&lt;p&gt;My cousin was a PO for sex offenders, and one of our regular discussion topics at family reunions was how sex offenders were way more technologically savvy than a state parole department. How they really needed more help in making sure offenders weren&amp;#x27;t reoffending while on parole, while also not forcing them to just not use computers and phones altogether. If even I&amp;#x27;ve heard this, I&amp;#x27;m sure that Apple execs have heard it from law enforcement a zillion times.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also clear Apple put a lot of thought into addressing the privacy concerns for this. Technologically, it&amp;#x27;s sophisticated, impressive.&lt;p&gt;So I can easily believe the people at Apple said, &amp;quot;Sure, there are reasonable concerns, but we think we have addressed them.&amp;quot; And that they&amp;#x27;re surprised by the level of sustained pushback.</text></item><item><author>dmitryminkovsky</author><text>Since this news broke a few weeks ago, I&amp;#x27;ve seen many people suggesting that Apple miscalculated and might be surprised by the push-back they&amp;#x27;re receiving; that some misunderstanding may have occurred.&lt;p&gt;I find exceedingly difficult to imagine that one of the most sophisticated companies in the world, with some of brightest minds out there, did not consider and calculate this precisely; that there is any way any of this has come as a surprise to Apple. Extending Apple the benefit of doubt does not seem possible in this case.&lt;p&gt;Yesterday we saw OnlyFans exit the adult industry. Two weeks ago we saw Apple exit the privacy industry.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;Some are questioning whether Apple was ever in the privacy industry. That&amp;#x27;s a good question. Even though their devices were certainly not secure and could be compromised, I think they were certainly in the privacy industry in the sense that they marketed an intention to make their devices as private and secure as possible[0]. Which is basically all a consumer can ask from a computer company.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;9to5mac.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;DwGoq2uV4AA_Aov.jpg-large.jpeg?quality=82&amp;amp;strip=all&amp;amp;w=1600&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;9to5mac.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;DwGoq...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shadowfiend</author><text>A perceptual hash by itself is neither sophisticated nor impressive. Apple could have just applied a client-side perceptual hash and auto-reported you and disabled your device. That is not what they have done, and pretending the solution&amp;#x27;s sophistication is limited to the sophistication of a percetual hash seems either incurious or disingenuous—I&amp;#x27;m assuming the former. Either way, it makes it difficult to engage with your argument.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple&apos;s bright idea for CSAM scanning could start persecution on a global basis</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/apple_csam_condemned/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmitryminkovsky</author><text>Thank you for this perspective. I&amp;#x27;ve never worked at an organization of this magnitude, so I am definitely lacking some perspective.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s also clear Apple put a lot of thought into addressing the privacy concerns for this. Technologically, it&amp;#x27;s sophisticated, impressive.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure about this. How is a perceptual hash sophisticated and impressive given that it can be abused by governments demanding Apple scan for political content, etc?</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re underestimating the degree to which companies have their own internal logic that has nothing to do with the external reality. That tendency increases the larger a company grows. If you&amp;#x27;re in a one-room house, you can always see outside. If you&amp;#x27;re inside a giant office building, mostly you see the building.&lt;p&gt;Did somebody raise the concern of push-back? I&amp;#x27;m sure. But the moral questions around CSAM are something that was settled long ago internally. When I was at Twitter fighting abuse, the CSAM stuff was a separate group. My boss called them The Department of Mysteries because we almost never saw them or spoke to them. It was led by a serious person, an ex-FBI agent or something like that. They did what they did and we were all ok with it and grateful for it, because that shit is horrific and we didn&amp;#x27;t want it on our platform and we didn&amp;#x27;t want to have to deal with it ourselves.&lt;p&gt;My cousin was a PO for sex offenders, and one of our regular discussion topics at family reunions was how sex offenders were way more technologically savvy than a state parole department. How they really needed more help in making sure offenders weren&amp;#x27;t reoffending while on parole, while also not forcing them to just not use computers and phones altogether. If even I&amp;#x27;ve heard this, I&amp;#x27;m sure that Apple execs have heard it from law enforcement a zillion times.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also clear Apple put a lot of thought into addressing the privacy concerns for this. Technologically, it&amp;#x27;s sophisticated, impressive.&lt;p&gt;So I can easily believe the people at Apple said, &amp;quot;Sure, there are reasonable concerns, but we think we have addressed them.&amp;quot; And that they&amp;#x27;re surprised by the level of sustained pushback.</text></item><item><author>dmitryminkovsky</author><text>Since this news broke a few weeks ago, I&amp;#x27;ve seen many people suggesting that Apple miscalculated and might be surprised by the push-back they&amp;#x27;re receiving; that some misunderstanding may have occurred.&lt;p&gt;I find exceedingly difficult to imagine that one of the most sophisticated companies in the world, with some of brightest minds out there, did not consider and calculate this precisely; that there is any way any of this has come as a surprise to Apple. Extending Apple the benefit of doubt does not seem possible in this case.&lt;p&gt;Yesterday we saw OnlyFans exit the adult industry. Two weeks ago we saw Apple exit the privacy industry.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;Some are questioning whether Apple was ever in the privacy industry. That&amp;#x27;s a good question. Even though their devices were certainly not secure and could be compromised, I think they were certainly in the privacy industry in the sense that they marketed an intention to make their devices as private and secure as possible[0]. Which is basically all a consumer can ask from a computer company.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;9to5mac.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;DwGoq2uV4AA_Aov.jpg-large.jpeg?quality=82&amp;amp;strip=all&amp;amp;w=1600&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;9to5mac.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;DwGoq...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gjsman-1000</author><text>Apple says their protection against authoritarian governments is that an image must appear in two or more government CSAM databases to be scanned. So if a corrupt politician adds something to the database, it won&amp;#x27;t be scanned unless a different government adds the same image.&lt;p&gt;Now, will China follow this? Probably not. But Apple&amp;#x27;s defense there is that China could have directly ordered them to build this scanning tool at anytime in the last decade anyway. It&amp;#x27;s not like China has a magical new tool for invading privacy when they could have (and actually have) just ordered tools to be built as desired.</text></comment>