“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep ,his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” C.S. Lewis
There are so many problems with this feature :
- it can easily be used to identify also other types of dangerous material such as warnings against government activity or posters of organized protests
- some malicious actor can send you this kind of content in order to get you in trouble
- false positives
- moral busy bodying (your employer not agreeing with you going drinking sunday night)
Honestly, it feels like we're about to enter a new age of surveillance. Client-side surveillance.
Once the technology exists it will be abused.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
Why does the state, when they treat children like this, get to proceed on "more" child protection to protect children? Are we totally mad? Any effort to protect children is always a de facto effort to deliver more children into this system, and the state system is much worse than being abused in society (never mind that someone found there's actually more abuse in foster care than with abusive parents! Therefore even if you assume social services is always right ... they never protect kids against social services itself. Therefore you can reasonably assume that a kid that is getting abused will be forced into a worse situation by state "help")?
I mean if you want to protect children, obviously the first step is to fix the child protection system that everybody knows is badly broken (you constantly hear stories about schools sabotaging research into abusive parents to protect the child against social services, covering for the child, lying about attendance or even wounds, ..., because they know social services will be much worse for the child).
There's states where the corrections department provides better care (and definitely better educational instruction) for children than social services do. And yes: that is most definitely NOT because the corrections department provides quality instruction. It's just MUCH worse with social services.
They cover themselves by showing the worst possible situations in society "demonstrating the need to intervene". And you won't hear them talk about how they treat children ... because frankly everyone knows.
Reality is that research keeps finding the same thing: a child that gets abused at home ... is being treated better (gets a better future, better schools, better treatment, yes really, more to read, ...) than children "protected" from abuse by the state:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
(and that's ignoring that reasons for placement are almost never that the child is unsafe. The number 1 reason is non-cooperation with mental health and/or social care by either one of the parents or the child themselves. There is not even an allegation that the child is unsafe and needs protection. Proof is never provided, because for child protection there is no required standard of proof in law)
And we're to believe that people who refuse to fix child services ... want extra power "to protect children"? How is this reasonable at all? They have proven they have no interest whatsoever in protecting children, as the cost cutting proves time and time again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Rotenberg_Educational_Ce...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/massachuse...
> Yeah, and none of these assholes (pardon the language) is willing to spend a penny to provide for millions of children suffering of poverty: free education, food, health, parental support. Nothing, zero, zilch. And these millions are suffering right now, this second, with life-long physical and psychological traumas that will perpetuate this poverty spiral forever.
Many people in child safety and I, personally, strongly support policies that enhance the lives of children, including improved education, food, access to health services, and support for parents. To your point, though, it's also true that many political leaders who vocally address the issue of child sexual abuse on the internet also happen to be opposed to the policies I would support. Like most political alliances, it is an uncomfortable one.
> Anyone questions you, just destroy their reputation by calling them a pedophile.
I see this sentiment a lot. I have worked with people across law enforcement, survivors, survivor advocates, NGOs, social workers, private companies, etc. and I don't know anyone who responds this way to people raising privacy concerns. At worst, they might, rightly or wrongly, consider you alarmist or uninformed or privileged (in that you don't have images of your abuse being actively traded on the internet). But a pedophile? I just can't imagine anyone I've worked with in this space accusing you or even thinking of you as a potential pedophile just because you're opposed to content scanning or want E2EE enabled, etc. I suppose maybe someone far, far removed from actual front line workers would say something so ridiculous.
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Separately, I want to suggest that there are paths forward here that could include risk controls to reduce the risk that this technology gets extended beyond its initial purpose. Maybe NCMEC could provide verifiable digests of the lists used on your device to verify that additional things haven't been added to it. Or there could be public, concrete, transparent criteria for how and when a lead is referred for law enforcement action. By designing this system by which the matching occurs on device against a list that can be made available to the user, Apple has made content scanning far more privacy-preserving and also created avenues by which it could be further regulated and transparent. I'm very excited about it and, honestly, I think even the staunchest privacy advocates should be cautiously optimistic because it is, in my opinion, a step in the direction of less visibility into user data.
I think that privacy advocates are arguing in good faith for protecting society from a surveillance state. I think that advocates of scanning are arguing in good faith for protecting children. I also think that both sides are using language (screeching on the NCMEC side, comparisons to hostile regimes on the other) that make it very hard to move forward. This isn't pedophile privacy advocates vs. surveillance state NCMEC. Neither of those groups even exist. It's concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people vs. concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people.
But time has shown that an initial good concept will transform into something worse.
We have a very recent example with Corona contact-tracing apps, that law enforcement in multiple democratic countries are now using for other purposes.
So no, we should not allow this client-side scanning to go through, it will not end well.
>>The problem here is with you or your electors not with the technology itself
No offense, but this is such a shitty answer, and it's always made by apologists for these incredibly invasive technologies. Like, please explain to me, in simple terms, how can I, an immigrant who doesn't even have the ability to vote, vote to make an American corporation do nor not do something. I'm super curious.
Actually I do. Governments abuse their powers all the time. They have done it before, are doing it right now and will continue to do it in the future. This is not fallacy, it is fact.
Here's an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
The only solution is to take their power away. No way to abuse power they don't have. We must make it technologically impossible for them to spy on us.
Your wikipedia link doesn't show anything regarding abuse of the governing body ALL of the examples are from private persons.
