Apple Introducing New Child Safety Features, Including Scanning Users' Photo Libraries for Known Sexual Abuse Material

[zubikov]

Apple has crossed the line. I understand that on the surface their intentions are good. But in practice this just screams invasion of privacy. Just one false positive can ruin a person's life.

I have a couple of pictures of my son playing with duckies in the bathtub as a one year old, there's probably some nudity in 2-3 pics, if we were to adhere to strict definitions. How can I be assured that I won't be flagged or put on some creep watchlist? This is completely out of line.

 

[eatrains]

Nice intention. But I'm pretty sure the law of unintended consequences is about to rear its ugly head.

Such as?

 

[09872738]

How so? They are hashing the photo and looking at the hash, not at the photo.

Irrelevant. If they tinker with my data they violate my privacy.

 

[Ursadorable]

It's NOT just hashes.. if that was the case, you could change any one pixel and the hash would be completely different.

Wait until China demands pictures of Pooh to be flagged as well.

 

[zakarhino]

How is apple violating your privacy? Did you read how the feature works?

It scans every photo on my device (with a proprietary technology that we are not given any meaningful information about) against a completely unknown-to-me database of images (that may or may not include images outside of the abuse images database at any point in time via a push update), regardless of whether or not those images are on Apples servers.

That’s a violation of my privacy.

 

[philpalmiero]

How can you detach iCloud from your phone and use another cloud service? Also, how can you install Little Snitch on an iPhone to block outbound traffic to apple.com?

 

[nitramluap]

The US could start by prosecuting known public figures guilty of it! It’s amazing how much rich white blokes can get away with. If they don’t get punished publicly, people think it’s all fair game.

“I do want that we take the appropriate means against child abuse?”

 

[WestonHarvey1]

The only people who should be opposed to these specific features are people who are committing crimes, and people who don’t care about the safety of their children.

I described a concern I had with it. I am not committing crimes and I care about the safety of children.

 

[bwillwall]

I will be boycotting Apple for lying to me about my device's security and their commitment to privacy. I have nothing to hide but I shouldn't have to think about whether or not I could accidentally trigger a filter with innocent pictures and get my data sent to the government. **** off with that, Apple. Bye.

 

[Exponent]

If you possess child porn, you are guilty. It’s not that complicated.

It’s something a parent would say, not something a cop would say.

It's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or not...
...but even fighting something as wretched as child porn crimes must be done (in the US at least) under the auspices of the US Constitution's 4th Amendment "Unreasonable Search and Seizure" provisions.

 

[JosephAW]

What they are really looking for are politically dissenting memes.

That’s next.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

How can you detach iCloud from your phone and use another cloud service? Also, how can you install Little Snitch on an iPhone to block outbound traffic to apple.com?

The check is done on-device. Read the article.

 

[eatrains]

Apple has crossed the line. I understand that on the surface their intentions are good. But in practice this just screams invasion of privacy. Just one false positive can ruin a person's life.

I have a couple of pictures of my son playing with duckies in the bathtub as a one year old, there's probably some nudity in 2-3 pics, if we were to adhere to strict definitions. How can I be assured that I won't be flagged or put on some creep watchlist? This is completely out of line.

How would your pictures have gotten into NCMEC's database? I'm assuming you don't post them on illicit sharing sites.

 

[philpalmiero]

The US could start by prosecuting known public figures guilty of it! It’s amazing how much rich white blokes can get away with. If they don’t get punished publicly, people think it’s all fair game.

It is not just rich white blokes, but rich blokes and rich women who get away with crimes. The OJ Simpson trial has proven it is about the dollar.

 

[JosephAW]

Poor MR moderators, they must be going crazy now and ready to shut down the forum.

edit: watching the spy page. Lol.

MacRumors Spy: Realtime Activity

forums.macrumors.com

 

[dukebound85]

How would your pictures have gotten into NCMEC's database? I'm assuming you don't post them on illicit sharing sites.

you have no control of where photos goes if you ever send them anywhere....

 

[MozMan68]

That's so wrong! Hey Apple... Focus on fixing this stuff before going after the consumer's. This is creepy and wrong in so many levels.

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Isn’t this violating of a Privacy? I have a lot of nudes of myself on my phone should I start deleting them or what?

Well over 34,000 photos. You got to be kidding me

I’m scared 😱 Should I be worried?

I'd like to test this feature...please send photos...

 

[Populus]

I had been informed this morning of this, and it is sad to see that it is happening. We are closer to that distopian future we’ve seen on the books. Today is CSAM, and I’m OK with pursuing this (who doesn’t) but this is only the beginning. They can use this tools to tag us politically, ant that’s very dangerous.

Like others said, too far, Apple, too far.

 

[confirmed]

So you prefer that Apple allow its iCloud network and infrastructure to be used to commit crimes?

There’s the “you’d have to be a monster to argue against it“ I mentioned.

The issue is that this method of enforcement infringes on personal privacy. If I’m renting an apartment, should I allow the building management to come into my home and search my personal property to make sure that their building isn’t being used to store unlawful materials?

When considering whether these actions are appropriate, I would ask everyone to consider the technology and the use case separately. I’m for enforcement of crime, especially in regard to child abuse. I’m against technology that ignores or removes my right to privacy. If you say you’re ok with using technology in a way that erodes privacy for this use case, where is the line? And who decides what other use cases this technology should be applied to?

 

[zakarhino]

What they are really looking for are politically dissenting memes.

You joke but memes are the language of the youth, the group that will define the next generation of social and political policy. There are already countries that ban memes because they don’t like the political connotation behind them.

 

[xxray]

Looks like I made the right decision in deactivating my iCloud subscription after Apple wouldn’t enable end-to-end encryption. I don’t like this slippery slope, and I don’t like that they’re using the classic children-related issue/issue that makes you look bad if you disagree with it to enable this. Of course, we need to stop child abusers, but this isn’t the way to go.

If they can start doing this for these images, they can start doing it for any other images to get whatever other data from you.

 

[usagora]

Apple has crossed the line. I understand that on the surface their intentions are good. But in practice this just screams invasion of privacy. Just one false positive can ruin a person's life.

Huh? A false positive would immediately be recognized and dismissed once it is reviewed by an actual person. It would never even be sent to law enforcement. In fact, you probably won't ever even know about it.

What's happening with a lot you people posting is that you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. You're VERY upset that Apple is scanning images on your phone (and I can understand being upset about that, btw), but instead of acknowledging facts such as the less than 1-in-1 trillion error rate, you're letting your emotions get the better of you and denying things without a rational, objective basis on which to deny them. No matter what, you just insist that everything about this topic must be sinister and suspect. You need some balance. You sound like a bunch of conspiracy theorists, tbh.

 

[Populus]

I am against child abuse and child porn. However, I don't agree with what Apple is going to be doing with user phones.

Maybe, if a vast majority of users, like us, express our rejection, maybe we can do something? Or the only way out of this is going linux and open source everywhere?

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

So, it was all BS, all of it.

I don't even have 200 photos in iCloud, less than nothing to worry about, but I'm out if they do this. Don't know where I'll go because the major alternatives will probably start doing it too. Maybe it's time to go gangsta with a flip phone.

It won't stop here either, if they have your data and information, it will get used, always, which Apple just proved.

And FFS, if there was ever a company with the resources to do the right thing it's Apple, but once again, Cooke is selling out to save pennies of Apple's billions hiding in some offshore tax-haven

 

[Populus]

Huh? A false positive would immediately be recognized and dismissed once it is reviewed by an actual person. It would never even be sent to law enforcement. In fact, you probably won't ever even know about it.

Let me just ask: How are they going to personally review a picture they don’t have access to? I’m just asking because I don’t know how this can be done.