https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/1423382200880439298/ph...
- It's run for Messages in cases where a child is potentially viewing material that's bad.
- It's run _before upload to iCloud Photos_ - where it would've already been scanned anyway, as they've done for years (and as all other major companies do).
To me this really doesn't seem that bad. Feels like a way to actually reach encrypted data all around while still meeting the expectations of lawmakers/regulators. Expansion of the tech would be something I'd be more concerned about, but considering the transparency of it I feel like there's some safety.
https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ more info here as well.
Edit: I'm talking about this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=...
1. I reserve the right to change my mind as things are revealed/developed.
In the US, maybe (not sure if this is even true in all states), but not in most other countries in the world, where a 16-year-old is not a child, nudity is not a problem, and "sex offender registries" don't exist.
The US is entitled to make its own (crazy, ridiculous, stupid) laws, but we shouldn't let them impose those on the rest of us.
Hence, strong E2E encryption designed to prevent unjust government oppression, without backdoors.
Parents should talk to their teenagers about sex regardless of if they get a notification on their phone telling them they missed the boat.
America, not Europe. Or Japan.
Some people might disagree with you.
There are people out there who are revolted by the "obviously okay" case of 2 fully-consenting teenagers sending each other nude pics, without any coercion, social pressure, etc.
Not to mention all the gray areas and "obviously not okay" combinations of ages, circumstances, number of people involved, etc.
If parents don't like this feature, they can buy a lineage OS type phone. If parents do they will buy this type of phone for their kids.
That’s terrifying.
Current society is pushing a lot of adult behavior into kids, and they don’t always understand the consequences of their actions.
Parents can’t inform their kids if they aren’t aware.
The government also wants to know about potential terrorist attacks. Why not scan all our phones for all kinds of data to protect innocent people from being killed by mass shootings?
That's nonsense. I'm saying that and I'm deeply locked in Apple's ecosystem. Which is pissing me off.
Why not inform your children of the potential consequences when giving them a phone? Why do you need Apple to notify you of inappropriate behavior before having that conversation? That's like waiting until you find a pregnancy test in the garbage before talking to your children about sex.
Furthermore, if Apple is deliberately, by design resending them to additional people beyond the addressee, as a feature it markets to the people that will be receiving them, that seems to...raise problematic issues.
> In these new processes, if an account held by a child under 13 wishes to send an image that the on-device machine learning classifier determines is a sexually explicit image, a notification will pop up, telling the under-13 child that their parent will be notified of this content. If the under-13 child still chooses to send the content, they have to accept that the “parent” will be notified, and the image will be irrevocably saved to the parental controls section of their phone for the parent to view later. For users between the ages of 13 and 17, a similar warning notification will pop up, though without the parental notification.
This specifically says that it will not notify the parents of teens, as GGP claims. So GP is right that Apple isn't doing what GGP claimed. However I still think you might be right that GP didn't read the full article and just got lucky. Lol.
If someone sends nude pics there is still no way to tell that it's a nude pic.
> Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit. The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages.
The other part is on-device scanning for nude pics a child is intending to send using machine learning and securely notifying the child, and then parents within the family account. The alert that the kids get by itself will probably be enough to stop a lot of them from sending the pic in the first place.
This sounds like a feature I'd like
I suspect a lot of how people feel about this will come down to whether they have kids or not.
That includes secrecy in private communications and OFC privacy within their own data in smartphones.
I know several parents in just my extended circle alone that would welcome the feature, so... I just don't think I agree with this statement. These parents already resort to other methods to try and monitor their kids but it's increasingly (or already) impossible to do so.
I suppose we should also take issue with Apple letting parents watch their kids location...?
Next, it also means they can do it. And if it can be done for child pornography, why not terrorism? And if it can be done for the US’ definition of terrorism, why not China's, Russia's or Saudi Arabia's? And if terrorism and child pornography, why not drugs consumption? Tax evasion? Social security fraud? Unknowingly talking with the wrong person?
Third, there apparently is transparency on it today. But who is to say it's possible expansion won't be forcibly silenced in the same way Prism's requests were?
Fourth, but that's only because I slightly am a maniac, how can anyone unilaterally decide to waste the computing power, battery life and data plan of a device I paid for without my say so? (probably one of my main gripes with ads)
All in all, it means I am incorporating into my everyday life a device that can and will actively snoop on me and potentially snitch on me. Now, while I am not worried today, it definitely paves the way for many other things. And I don't see why I should trust anyone involved to stop here or let me know when they don’t.
Let me introduce you to someone you should know better. His name is Edward Snowden. Or Louis Brandeis, who is spinning in his grave right about now.
The US Fourth Amendment exists for a damned good reason.
Right, so ask yourself, why is it on the device? Why not just scan on the server?
To me (agreeing with much of the commentary I’ve seen) the likeliest answer is that they are confining the scan to pre uploads now not for any technical reason but to make the rollout palatable to the public. Then they’re one update away from quietly changing the rules. There’s absolutely no reason to do the scan on your private device if they plan to only confine this to stuff they could scan away from your device.
Then why build this functionality at all? Why not wait until it's uploaded and check it on their servers and not run any client side code? This is how literally every other non-encrypted cloud service operates.
And isn't that a problem? Encrypted data should be secure, even if lawmakers don't want math to exist.
What transparency? Apple doesn't publish iOS source.
It sounds like it could be quite common. And it could be an absolute nightmare scenario for the kid who does not have the feature turned on.
This means that if—for instance—a minor using an iPhone without these features turned on sends a photo to another minor who does have the features enabled, they do not receive a notification that iMessage considers their image to be “explicit” or that the recipient’s parent will be notified. The recipient’s parents will be informed of the content without the sender consenting to their involvement. Additionally, once sent or received, the “sexually explicit image” cannot be deleted from the under-13 user’s device.
Everybody is a potential criminal with photos on your phone unless you prove otherwise by scanning. This is the future we are heading to. To do the scanning on device is actually the weakest point of their implementation IMHO.
Yeah, and that’s precisely what will happen. It always starts with child porn, then they move on to “extremist content”, of which the term expands to capture more things on a daily basis. Hope you didn’t save that “sad Pepe” meme on your phone.
I'd be fine with them scanning stuff I uploaded to them with their own computers because I don't have any really expectation of privacy from huge corporations.
It's like having hundreds of nukes ready for launch, as opposed to having the first launch being a year away.
If they wanted to "do it as all major companies do", then they could have done it on the server-side, and there wouldn't have been a debate about it at all, although it is still extremely questionable, as far as privacy is concerned.
