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Comment by knaik94 | Hacker News Reader

It's Google's servers. I imagine every content hosting company has a heuristics based approach to detecting CSAM. Google has a habit of tuning moderation algorithms for false positives rather than missed positives.

Not having a human in the loop is terrible and a problem frequently when it comes to getting support from Google companies. That's a separate issue from Google or Dropbox being able to scan unencrypted files for CSAM. Google's policy of automating as much as it can has tons of downsides. But it's understandable when you look at the scale Google functions.

It's important to separate the policy of scanning from Google's terrible appeal process and the algorithm false positives.

I would feel differently if the story was that Android scanned an outgoing SMS or a photo saved locally. I am not sure where the balance point is to identify and report CSAM while also respecting user's rights to privacy.

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> It's Google's servers. I imagine every content hosting company has a heuristics based approach to detecting CSAM.

The slippery slope claim made in the past was that they were only looking for files that match known examples of kiddie porn.

For instance, this tech from Microsoft:

>PhotoDNA creates a unique digital signature (known as a “hash”) of an image which is then compared against signatures (hashes) of other photos to find copies of the same image. When matched with a database containing hashes of previously identified illegal images, PhotoDNA is an incredible tool to help detect, disrupt and report the distribution of child exploitation material.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

Reporting parents to police because they took pictures of their child's first bath and those photos were automatically backed up to Google servers is much, much worse.

Please stop using 'child's first bath' as an indicator of overreaction by the algorithm. It is not helpful to argue something which will make you look hyperbolic or histrionic once your argument is looked into.

1. The picture(s) in question mentioned above which got an account shut down and police notified was not a 'child in a bath', it was close ups of a child's genitals

2. You are probably not a parent since a child's 'first bath' is not a thing. They are bathed as infants starting immediately. If you are referring to a child's first independent bath, then no one should be taking pictures since private bathing is not something that should be intruded upon for picture taking

All that said, I agree with you.

> 1. The picture(s) in question mentioned above which got an account shut down and police notified was not a 'child in a bath', it was close ups of a child's genitals

No, the example of Google calling the police on a parent given in the NYT article was because the parent sought medical assistance for their child during lockdown and the doctor requested pictures of the issue the child was having.

This is no more an acceptable reason for Google to report parents to the police for child abuse than taking pictures of your child's first bath, and taking pictures of your child's milestones has long been something that people have done.

>> 1. The picture(s) in question mentioned above which got an account shut down and police notified was not a 'child in a bath', it was close ups of a child's genitals

> No, the example of Google calling the police on a parent given in the NYT article was because the parent sought medical assistance for their child during lockdown and the doctor requested pictures of the issue the child was having.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Stop being defensive. It doesn't help you. I am trying to help you by telling you that you are making a shitty argument.

> I am trying to help you by telling you that you are making a shitty argument.

OK. Allow me to tell you that, in my opinion, you are the person making the shitty argument

Your argument that "no one should be taking pictures" of their child's first bath is just cringe-worthy.

Google is to blame for the situation when they call the police over a single false positive from their faulty algorithm, not parents who take pictures of their own children.

Are you even reading what I am writing? I never said that no one should take pictures of their children's first bath -- I said that there is no such thing as a child's first bath, just like there is no such thing as a child's first meal, or a child's first nap, or a child's first bowel movement. They are given baths as infants.

You are obviously either unable or unwilling to parse what I am trying to tell you, and fixated on this notion that you have to be 'right' no matter what even though I am not telling you that you are wrong!

I am at a loss as to what to reply to you with besides I urge you to read things before continuing to respond because otherwise you end up talking around people instead of with them.

Good day.

> 2. You are probably not a parent since a child's 'first bath' is not a thing. They are bathed as infants starting immediately. If you are referring to a child's first independent bath, then no one should be taking pictures since private bathing is not something that should be intruded upon for picture taking

Are you a parent? A prudish parent perhaps?

I have pictures of me as a kid in a bath (genitals obscured underwater). It's a common parental thing among parents who AREN'T DRIED UP PRUDES AND FRIGHTED OF NUDITY.

The bottom line is - another case of our ability to use our technology as we desire being interrupted and interfered with. I hate to even remotely invoke RMS, but... He wasn't wrong!

Please re-read what I wrote. Was it really unclear? I said that if a child is bathing independently that it is not appropriate to barge in and take pictures of them. They would be at least 5 or 6 years old at that point. Is that prudish? Why is everyone so emotional about this? All I said was that it was a terrible and inaccurate argument to talk about pictures of a child in a bath because that is not what flagged the algorithm and there is no such thing as a child's first bath.

Please try to parse a response before yelling at someone for something they didn't state.

How do you take a photo on android to only store it locally?

The whole photos experience on Android has been simplified to break that distinction and there is no way to even really know or realize what is happening - BY DESIGN.

The real answer here is, again, Android is not privacy first by default.

BTW parents taking medical pictures of their children != CSAM which is an acronym for "Child Sexual Abuse Material"... Taking care of your child's medical problem isn't "sexual abuse" despite the conflation of the two people are glossing over in this thread.

I installed an offline gallery and disabled Google Photos. For years and years Samsung android phones didn't have the option of cloud backups.

There's a very clear distinction between local and cloud, every single photo taken using any camera app is local only. Galleries, like Google Photos, and backup services like Dropbox have an explicit setting to enable cloud backup. Google Photo backup is very distinctly different from Google Drive and phone backups in general.

I use FolderSync to sync it with a self hosted NextCloud instance. If I am travelling, I prefer using Syncthing, a wifi file server running off the phone, or a physical wire to transfer photos. I know exactly what pictures are sent where and backed up with what method. I am not sure why you believe Android treats photo and file management like a black box, I don't believe Apple does either. Apple iOS devices are much more difficult to manually backup as they only allow background photo sync to iCloud, if the screen is turned off syncing to a third party will most likely fail. But there is a straightforward toggle to disable Photos backup to iCloud.

Android file management is superior to any other mobile OS. Android is file privacy first by design, as long as you are comfortable managing backup and syncing with self-hosted and self-managed solutions. I have gone the additional step of rooting my phone as well to get around any Android limitations on what folders certain apps have access to.

No one is arguing against the last point you made. No one was conflating the two.

> There's a very clear distinction between local and cloud, every single photo taken using any camera app is local only.

>Android is file privacy first by design

Yet we have the NYTimes article stating that the only ways Google could have access to the photos they tried to have a parent arrested for would be to scan content on the device, scan automatic backups, or spy on the text messages sent from the device.

The examples in the story were parents sharing images directly with their doctor, not the with the general public.

I wonder how algorithms like Stable Diffusion will impact CSAM detection policies.

If a child isn't exploited to make it, it's not technically CSAM.

But you could maybe argue that if the ML model is based on CSAM then it's a product of it and would need to be banned.

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