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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that there is only 1 IF statement or local/remote config flag that will enable this scanning on your device even if you don't use the iCloud photo sharing feature.

It is super well documented that Apple ALWAYS follows the laws of the land, so the scenario is that a government adds some new hashes that might not be CSAM as you and I define it but might be political stuff(but the citizens can't check). Also now that the code is there Apple can't refuse to add this hashes or enable the feature forcefully when a legal warrant for that territory is presented.

some more config changes and it can start scanning for text in documents too.

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This argument falls exactly into the point I make about not understanding the implementation or the status quo.

Here's what would need to change about the system to fulfil your requirements.

1. The local government would need to pass a law allowing such a change 2. The hashes would then need to come from the government. Instead of the two intersection of two independent CSAM databases. 3. The review process would need to redesigned and deployed to provide a lower threshold and permit the reviewers to see high resolution images. Neither of these changes are trivial. 4. The reports would then need to go to the government. 5. What's stopping these same governments from requesting such things from Google and Meta - both of which have comparable systems with lower oversight?

Apple don't "ALWAYS follows the laws of the land", one can read into this with the recent "secret" agreement between Apple and China which detail the various ways that Apple hasn't complied with Chinese requests (e.g. the requests for source code.)

>1. The local government would need to pass a law allowing such a change

Sure, it is not hard, but already laws can apply, did China had to pass a law like "any company has to update their maps software to conform with our local maps?" or China just showed Timmy a graph with profits from China dropping and then Apple said "yes sir!!!" .

> 2. The hashes would then need to come from the government. Instead of the two intersection of two independent CSAM databases

Yeap, the government will demand for a local database to be used and since the crimes are local you need to send the reports o the local police and a local Apple employee will have to check, not some cheap random contractor.

Funny that you mention maps, because mapping information in China is heavily censored, and has been since 2002[0]. They even wrote their own coordinate-obfuscation algorithm so that you can't mix Chinese and western map data or GPS coordinates and get accurate positions on both sides.

Apple's response to the "what if governments force you to abandon the hidden set intersection stuff you wrote" thing is, "well we'll just say no". Which, unless Apple plans to pull out of hostile jurisdictions entirely or levy their own private military[1], holds no weight. Countries own their internal markets in the same way Apple owns the App Store market.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

[1] which should scare the shit out of you even more than the CSAM scanner

Did you miss the reality where Apple says yes to China all the times? Including maps and storing the iCloud data in China?

The CSAM scanner does not scarry me as it is today, but the fact that is a step, next year will scan more files, then Google will copy Apple (willing or not) and then most PCs will do the same thing.

Apple just normalized that is fine you have an proprietary file scanner/"antiviruys" installed on yoru device with the properties:

1 it can't be stopped or removed

2 it get's hashes from some government agencies over online updates

3 matches will be reviewed by someone that it said are trustworthy and might get sent to your local police

4 the stupid scanner has stupid excuses to exist, where would have been extremely simple to implement and non controversial to scan the fucking images after the upload and not before.

How do you know that there isn't already a secret order in place to look for a particular list of hashes? Perhaps something that has been sealed due to national security?

If it's triggered, send the details to a particular group of individuals with certain clearance to view and verify.

If they have the ability to do this, they will definitely do this!

Why would apple have released a whole white paper on the feature if the plan was… to do it in secret? Clearly they could have gone the google route, start scanning and not tell anyone about it. It’s so odd to blame them for something they haven’t done.

Of course they could decide later to implement it! Just like any company could choose to do that! It’s the whole point, your phone is closed source. But clearly apple didn’t pick that route, they announced it BEFORE shipping and asked for feedback! And you’re blaming them for that?!

>Why would apple have released a whole white paper on the feature if the plan was

Isn't obvious ? Some guy using an exploit would install a debugger on his iPhone and find this scanning process, Apple PR would be hit. But Apple could do this and gain PR by pretending is a safety feature, the guy with the debugger will see that files are scanned and hashes are sent to the server but he can't prove that the config file won't be updated in the future for everyone or some and the hashes will be pulled from a different database, the threashdold will change and the is iCloud enabled flag will be ignored.

What makes no sense and Apple failed to explain and fanboys also failled to convince me with any evidence, why the fuck not scan the images on iCloud only since we are pretending that only if iCloud is enabled the images are scanned. (there is no credible evidence that this is part of any plan to offer some kind of super encryption that Apple has no keys for)

I mean that the Gov will come along and say:

"See that hashing thing you have, this secret gov. order that you can't tell anyone about says you need to look for this list of hashes too. If you find them, you have to let these 5 people know and if you tell anyone you'll accidentally shoot yourself three times in the back of the head to commit suicide!"

> Why would apple have released a whole white paper on the feature if the plan was… to do it in secret?

Didn't that only happen after a leak?

I see that you don't live in Turkey. Or Lebanon. Or Egypt, or the United States, or Brazil, or any of tens of other nations where this exact scenario is not only plausible, but is of real concern.

Then you should already be gravely concerned because, as I've stated: Apple is last to the game here. Google and Meta each with significantly larger audiences than Apple are already doing this. Since Meta in particular is social media and the main source of casual political dis/information for the masses this would be the low hanging fruit that you're worried about.

The vague "this is a serious concern because my government is shit" requires a person to ignore a lot in favour of a little.

Sorry, my meta hardware is scanning client-side for CSAM? And you claim it's the same for google; can you tell me which Pixel is scanning client-side?

Which apple device is now scanning client side for CSAM?

>Which apple device is now scanning client side for CSAM?

I think you missed OP point, the grandparent found a bad excuse for Apple, that Google and Facebook do the same so nothing is wrong, but the OP responded correctly that this is false, those companies don't install file scanners on your device so the excuse is bullshit.

> those companies don't install file scanners on your device so the excuse is bullshit.

They don’t install file scanners on iOS because they cannot. They are happy with scanning my contacts and doing who knows what with my photos if I let them, though.

>They don’t install file scanners on iOS because they cannot. They are happy with scanning my contacts and doing who knows what with my photos if I let them, though.

Nobody says that Google or Facebook are good/saints, but there is a difference, my phone did not had Facebook or WhatApp installed, so journalists or activists can just don't install this crap.

  > Then you should already be gravely concerned

I am concerned. I explicitly wrote "...not only plausible, but is of real concern."

What is the alternative? Companies deciding that the law does not apply, just because?

Reverse this for a moment: would it be acceptable that a Chinese tech behemoth decides US law does not apply to their American operation, because they are convinced that western democratic values are dangerous?

This is also a real concern. If you think that rule of law is a good thing, then companies must comply with local laws. The alternative is not a humanist utopia; it is the rule of unaccountable corporations.

>If you think that rule of law is a good thing, then companies must comply with local laws. The alternative is not a humanist utopia; it is the rule of unaccountable corporations.

In this case there is no law to force Apple to scan on device, they can scan iCloud only if the law forces them to do that, or scan only iCloud images that are public or shared if the law forces to do only that.

Before 1989 listen to a specific radio station was illegal , but the good part was that the radio device could not snitch on you , if someone would have invented snitching radio then I am 100% only those radio devices would be legal to be sold in my country at that time. So if you create a snitching device then you invite the bad governments to add the laws after to profit from that and make their lives easier.

> two intersection of two independent CSAM databases.

I don't think that offers meaningful protection. A malicious government could acquire or produce real CSAM, or at least a convincing fake of it, then modify that image subtly to match the hash of the political content they were targeting (I believe such engineered collisions have already been demonstrated.) They would then be able to get that manipulated CSAM into as many independent CSAM databases as they wanted, simply by uploading it to the web then reporting it to all those independent databases.

This isn't feasible for a variety of reasons:

1. Forced hash collisions are fragile in comparison to the genuine material. CSAM hashing is devised in a way to allow change in the image without significant variation to the hash. Forced collisions however don't possess that property as their true hash is different.

2. It's trivial to detect images with false hashes, and different hashing methods will not produce collisions.

3. The task you're proposing, in itself is not pragmatic nor effective: dissenting political materials are easily created fresh (i.e. no colliding hash) and exists in many forms that go well beyond an image.

4. Human reviewers again would see the pattern and adapt the system accordingly

5. CSAM database holders aren't idiots. They understand the significance of their hash libraries and work against manipulation from CSAM peddlers.

Points 1 and 3 assume any government wouldn't choose to target people who had a specific document, I think this is a poor assumption. Hash fragility doesn't seem relevant if both the hashing algorithms and the target content are known to the government

Point 2 and 5 I don't understand, could you expand on it? If the government produced manipulated CSAM that didn't exist in any other pre-manipulation form, how would the manipulation be detected? And supposing it were detected, would CSAM database holders choose not to add that image to their databases just because it was manipulated? If that were the case, it would give pedophiles a way to exempt their images from the database too.

Point 4 is neutralized by the government demanding local human reviewers for phones located in their country. China already does this with iCloud, they could demand the same for the CSAM reviewers, then coerce those reviewers or simply select them for party loyalty in the first place.

Oh you mean apple didn't bend over for China when it involved not giving up their source code but when it didn't involve them losing their IP they did it easily? Great job Apple, stand up move that I can trust.

There's plenty of other examples - but people hunting strawmen are somehow blind.

Given that Apple wrote OSX, this scenario has been possible for over 20 years.

And it hasn't eventuated. But yet now it is something to panic over ?

Until recently you had a lot of freedom on your OSX device, you could install and uninstall whatever you wanted , you could have a firewall that blocked applications. On iOS and slowly on OSX this freedoms are lost, already when you open your computer, open an application Apple is notified (for your safety), only a few more steps are needed until you will get laptops with iOS like lockdowns and maybe a PRO expensive version for the ones that want the key for the gates.

You can blame them when that happens but it’s odd to blame OS X for being locked when clearly OS X is not… locked.

>You can blame them when that happens but it’s odd to blame OS X for being locked when clearly OS X is not… locked.

OSX is getting more and more locked, iOS is locked so why shouldn't people complain when things get worse.

I was just explaining that the excuse "OSX is 20 years old and it was not locked yet so it will never be locked q.e.d " , this is wrong, you can see clearly how things get more locked in steps and you don't have to wait untill last step to complain.

Keep in mind that you have better keyboards on Apple laptops today because people complained, the CSAM shit was delayed because people complained, the Apple tax was lowered in some cases because developers and Epic complained, so complaining sometimes works.

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