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> I still don’t understand the reaction. People get tied up in a knot over this but it is an effective deterrent to child pornography full stop. Even if it rubs you the wrong way to have software fingerprinting your files, I really don’t care if it means placing a deterrent in place against child trafficking.

Most reductions of privacy toward the police would act as an effective deterrent to that crime and other crimes.

Deterring crime is not enough to justify a reduction in privacy.

Hypotheticals: What if your platform is causing a growth in the crime rate? What if your platform is enabling new forms of crime and potentially on an unprecedented scale? Is it justified then?

For the first one it depends on how much growth and in what crimes specifically.

For the second one, maybe, but I seriously doubt icloud encryption is going to do that.

Either way, just talking about baselines and percents is a good improvement over just "this would decrease crime". Add in the downsides too and you have yourself a good platform for discussion!

How about a counterexample? I am a consenting adult in my thirties. I create a photo or video and send it to my partner. The algorithm flags it as CSAM when it only shows a fat bald guy. Before I know it I'm under investigation and my life is ruined because the algorithm got it wrong. Even being accused of this sort of thing is enough to destroy someone and drive them to suicide.

The "algorithm" isn't some sort of neural network trying to intelligently identify things that "look like" CP. It's a perceptual hash matching against a database of known CP. It has to find multiple matches before it flags the account for review to reduce false positives. Only after review confirming a match to known exploitative images is the info referred to NCMEC for action.

Full whitepaper: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

Who validates said database of "known CP"? How do we know the pictures are actually not "find dissident"? Who watches the watchers?

This entire endeavor hands the keys to an unaccountable police state.

"It is an effective deterrent" to using this one specific platform to distribute CSAM. The problem with this solution is the exact same problem with the tired old "solution" to E2E encryption that gets trotted out every couple of months. If you add monitoring to the tool that criminals are using -- especially, especially if the company loudly and publicly announces that they are adding monitoring! -- you will, at best, catch a few of the very dumbest possible criminals, while the rest move on to one of countless available non-monitored tools.

> anybody who stores this content in iCloud can be identified Any reason to believe anybody does this before the child reaches the retirement age?

You are describing the reverse cause of targeted search for the individual in which each step has probability that is much less than 100%. The technology discussed is a broad sweep: everything, everywhere, every time.

Oh, well, no need to worry so much, Apple has just added data collection ability which others had in one way or another.

As someone said:

if you really want to put a dent in abuse, mandate cameras in every home because that is where most abuse happenes. Anybody who opposes that clearly has something to hide...

Police can always pinky promise to never use it for anything except catching the baddies.

Yes. For anyone who wonders. This is sarcasm.