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Comment by whoknowswhat11 | Hacker News Reader

Then apple will lose market share and correct their ways.

Conversely, what I've seen does put this top of list as a parent. Will notify me if my child is sending nudes. Will notify me if someone is sending porn to my child. Will notify police if known child porn is on the device.

When folks talk about competition - part of this MUST include the USERS preferences (not as currently done the focus of what I see as largely predatory billers and businesses who I don't care about as a user).

I don't want child porn on my systems. Be very happy if apple helps keep it off them.

Are these hash databases available more broadly for scanning (ie, could I scan all work machines / storage using a tool of some sort)?

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I don't think they will ever be able to walk this back. The governments that twisted Apple's arm to get this look-see into everyone's devices will roast them in the court of public opinion (or threaten to, which will be enough). IMO, this will just open up more and more - it will never go back to being what iDevice owners have now.

> The governments that twisted Apple's arm to get this look-see into everyone's devices will roast them in the court of public opinion

Nothing about this technology gives governments a ‘look see’ into everyone’s devices.

The government controls the hash list.

No. A registered charity called The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children controls the hash list.

Yes, they are partly government funded, but I highly doubt they'd let their mission be compromised by allowing the government to inject non-CP hashes. Doing so would compromise all the work they've performed over the last four decades.

These people are (rightfully) very passionate about their work and can't be easily paid off.

There are many, many valid concerns about this Apple initiative. But, "The government" injecting non CP images into the CP databases is not one of them.

> by allowing the government to inject non-CP hashes

I don't think "allowing" is the concern here, because I highly doubt they get to generate the hashes themselves.

I think you misunderstand the Center’s role in this. They review and categorize the images. They maintain the database and provide access to different organizations for the purpose of catching CP. Why wouldn’t they also generate the hashes?

Since they are the only ones legally allowed to possess the images, one can surmise that they must be the ones to create the hashes.

Why not? How can we know this isn’t the case? What technical or practical prevention would there be?

The hash data is secret because if widely known then offenders would know which images were known to law enforcement, and therefore transform or delete only those.

Would this service notify parents if such a thing happened ? I haven’t see it in their official announcement.

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