On 2021-08-08 1:09 p.m., badgolferman wrote:
> nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> In article <sep99c$8i3$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
>> <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion?
>>
>> they're not. only those trafficking child porn need to be worried.
>>
>> for everyone else, there is no intrusion.
>>
>> do you have another solution for finding such people?
>>
>>> Let them
>>> do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and only AFTER a
>>> court order has been issued.
>>
>> which will happen only if someone is caught uploading child porn.
>>
>>> They are placing a file on your device and
>>> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
>>
>> apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
>> companies. that's how computers work.
>>
>> computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
>> ever would be noticed.
>>
>> the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
>> intensive.
>>
>>> We
>>> are all now pronounced guilty to the point of surveillance without any
>>> cause or proof.
>>
>> nope.
>>
>
> This is hilarious! You will defend anything Apple does to the death! Is
> there anything they do which is unacceptable and worthy of your scorn?
>
> Why is this action even necessary? I am not defending child porn whatsoever
> and think people engaging in such activities should be castrated. But I
> resent the very thought that Apple has decided to scan my pictures
> whatsoever. Who made them the investigator of any crime, especially a crime
> which hasn’t even been committed?
>

Why do you care about them doing something that will have absolutely no
effect on you?

Am 08.08.21 um 21:33 schrieb Jolly Roger:
> On 2021-08-08, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>
>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd learn
>>> that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>
>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it when
>> anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>
> The math is exactly what the experts quoted above have checked.
>
> Clearly, what you really mean is:
>
> "I don't ever believe anyone who says something that doesn't agree with
> my position on the matter."

You sound like a trumpist. You negate that science in many fields are
not an absolute and exact science. And science and probabilty work with
a lot of assumptions.

The same way the experts told the public a nuclear meltdown in a power
station will happen every 10'000 to 100'000 reactor-years.

Reality is: Every 3625 reactor years.

The problem is the number of reactors and in this discussed case the
numer of iPhones.

Source: https://www.mpg.de/forschung/kernenergie-nuklearer-gau
Max Planck Institute.

--
De gustibus non est disputandum

On 08/08/2021 21.08, nospam wrote:
> In article <sep99c$8i3$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
> <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion?
>
> they're not. only those trafficking child porn need to be worried.
>
> for everyone else, there is no intrusion.
>
> do you have another solution for finding such people?
>
>> Let them
>> do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and only AFTER a
>> court order has been issued.
>
> which will happen only if someone is caught uploading child porn.
>
>> They are placing a file on your device and
>> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
>
> apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
> companies. that's how computers work.
>
> computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
> ever would be noticed.
>
> the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
> intensive.

Hum.

The time needed to upload a photo may be longer (and may incur a cost),
but it is not processor intensive at all. It is just moving bytes, the
most trivial of operations.

Computing a hash can be cpu intensive. You will negate this, as always,
and without proof, but anybody can verify how long it takes to run a
program that calculate a checksum in cpu, which is a process akin to
calculating a hash.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>On 2021-08-08 11:31 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>
>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd learn
>>> that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>
>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it when
>> anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>
>That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.

I haven't seen the math. I haven't even seen how long the hash index is.
I don't know what the hash function is and whether it is applied across
the entire file or (to improve performance) only some part of the file.
Show me the math.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
>On 2021-08-08, Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>> On 2021-08-08 11:31 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd learn
>>>> that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>>
>>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it when
>>> anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>>
>> That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>> scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.
>
>He only believes his own "math".

Of course. That is the beauty of math, you can check it, and you get
the same answer every time. You can hand it off to someone else, and
they get the same answer too.

There is some statistical error rate and it should be very easy to
derive given simple information about the hash function.

We're not talking some crazy machine learning algorithm here which
attempts to determine if a thing is pornographic given a matrix
derived from existing pornography and extrapolating. We're just
talking about an elementary hash algorithm.

Maybe it's perfectly reasonable, maybe it's not. Show me the math.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Am 08.08.21 um 22:28 schrieb Scott Dorsey:
> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>> That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>> scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.
>
> I haven't seen the math. I haven't even seen how long the hash index is.
> I don't know what the hash function is and whether it is applied across
> the entire file or (to improve performance) only some part of the file.
> Show me the math.
> --scott

Im listening too.

--
De gustibus non est disputandum

On 2021-08-08 1:28 p.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>> On 2021-08-08 11:31 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd learn
>>>> that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>>
>>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it when
>>> anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>>
>> That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>> scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.
>
> I haven't seen the math. I haven't even seen how long the hash index is.
> I don't know what the hash function is and whether it is applied across
> the entire file or (to improve performance) only some part of the file.
> Show me the math.

<https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Alternative_Security_Proof_of_Apple_PSI_System_Mihir_Bellare.pdf>

The math starts on page 5.

Have at it!

Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
> On 2021-08-08 1:09 p.m., badgolferman wrote:
>> nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>> In article <sep99c$8i3$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
>>> <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion?
>>>
>>> they're not. only those trafficking child porn need to be worried.
>>>
>>> for everyone else, there is no intrusion.
>>>
>>> do you have another solution for finding such people?
>>>
>>>> Let them
>>>> do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and only AFTER a
>>>> court order has been issued.
>>>
>>> which will happen only if someone is caught uploading child porn.
>>>
>>>> They are placing a file on your device and
>>>> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
>>>
>>> apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
>>> companies. that's how computers work.
>>>
>>> computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
>>> ever would be noticed.
>>>
>>> the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
>>> intensive.
>>>
>>>> We
>>>> are all now pronounced guilty to the point of surveillance without any
>>>> cause or proof.
>>>
>>> nope.
>>>
>>
>> This is hilarious! You will defend anything Apple does to the death! Is
>> there anything they do which is unacceptable and worthy of your scorn?
>>
>> Why is this action even necessary? I am not defending child porn whatsoever
>> and think people engaging in such activities should be castrated. But I
>> resent the very thought that Apple has decided to scan my pictures
>> whatsoever. Who made them the investigator of any crime, especially a crime
>> which hasn’t even been committed?
>>
>
> Why do you care about them doing something that will have absolutely no
> effect on you?
>

For the very same reason I don’t like people standing outside my window and
trying to look inside. In this case Apple has placed a camera inside my
house.

On 2021-08-08 1:33 p.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
>> On 2021-08-08, Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>> On 2021-08-08 11:31 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd learn
>>>>> that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>>>
>>>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it when
>>>> anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>>>
>>> That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>>> scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.
>>
>> He only believes his own "math".
>
> Of course. That is the beauty of math, you can check it, and you get
> the same answer every time. You can hand it off to someone else, and
> they get the same answer too.

Which Apple has done...

<https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Alternative_Security_Proof_of_Apple_PSI_System_Mihir_Bellare.pdf>

After performing his analysis, Bellare concludes:

'Apple has found a way to detect and report CSAM offenders while
respecting these privacy constraints. When the number of user photos
that are in the CSAM database exceeds the threshold, the system is able
to detect and report this. Yet a user photo that is not in the CSAM
database remains invisible to the system, and users do not learn the
contents of the CSAM database.'

<https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Technical_Assessment_of_CSAM_Detection_Mihir_Bellare.pdf>

>
> There is some statistical error rate and it should be very easy to
> derive given simple information about the hash function.
>
> We're not talking some crazy machine learning algorithm here which
> attempts to determine if a thing is pornographic given a matrix
> derived from existing pornography and extrapolating. We're just
> talking about an elementary hash algorithm.
>
> Maybe it's perfectly reasonable, maybe it's not. Show me the math.

Done.

On 2021-08-08, badgolferman <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is hilarious! You will defend anything Apple does to the death!
> Is there anything they do which is unacceptable and worthy of your
> scorn?

Correcting misinformation, lies, and hyperbole isn't "defending to the
death", but you know that. You're just hell-bent on ragging on Apple for
doing scanning uploaded photos for child porn when the fact is all of
the major players on the market have been doing just that (and in a less
private way) for decades longer than Apple, because: "Apple: BAD!!1!"

> Why is this action even necessary?

Because innocent children are being abused, and child porn exists.

I am not defending child porn whatsoever

What *are* you doing, then? And why weren't you as outraged when Google,
Microsoft, Facebook, WhatsApp, and others did it years ago, and with
less privacy protections in place? Your behavior is perplexing unless we
consider that you often post in these newsgroups with a definite
anti-Apple slant, and often defend known anti-Apple trolls here.: )

> and think people engaging in such activities should be castrated

If so, you should be happy that this will not only help catch criminals,
but that Apple is doing it in a way that protects the privacy of its
customers better than the competition. But already we know that's not
your slant, so it won't happen. : )

> But I resent the very thought that Apple has decided to scan my
> pictures whatsoever.

Only photos that are transferred to Apple's servers are scanned - just
like every other player on the market has been doing for ages. You
should have equal resentment towards them, if you are actually upset
about what you say you are upset about. But we know that's not really
what you're upset about. : )

> Who made them the investigator of any crime, especially a crime which
> hasn’t even been committed?

Do you ask that same thing of any other company that has been doing this
same thing, only without the additional privacy protections Apple has
put in place to ensure only photos that match are examined by a human
being, and only after an account exceeds a threshold of multiple
matches? If not, why? Rhetorical question - we already know the answer.
: )

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2021-08-08, badgolferman <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>> On 2021-08-08 1:09 p.m., badgolferman wrote:
>>>
>>> Why is this action even necessary? I am not defending child porn
>>> whatsoever and think people engaging in such activities should be
>>> castrated. But I resent the very thought that Apple has decided to
>>> scan my pictures whatsoever. Who made them the investigator of any
>>> crime, especially a crime which hasn’t even been committed?
>>
>> Why do you care about them doing something that will have absolutely
>> no effect on you?
>
> For the very same reason I don’t like people standing outside my
> window and trying to look inside. In this case Apple has placed a
> camera inside my house.

Nope. What Apple is placing inside of your house is a database of hashes
of known child sexual abuse images that your Apple devices will use to
ensure you aren't transferring known child porn to their servers, and it
will be done in a way that prevents any human being from seeing your
photos unless they match known child porn -and- your account exceeds a
threshold of multiple matching images being uploaded to Apple servers.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2021-08-08, sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/2021 11:54 AM, badgolferman wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion? Let
>> them do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and
>> only AFTER a court order has been issued. They are placing a file on
>> your device and using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform
>> a scanning task. We are all now pronounced guilty to the point of
>> surveillance without any cause or proof.
>
> One claim I've seen is that if you don't use iCloud then the photos on
> your device won't be scanned. So there is an opt-out by avoiding the
> use of iCloud (or by not upgrading to iOS 15 and/or not buying a new
> device with iOS 15 or greater).
>
> What is odd is that if it's that case that only iCloud users are
> subject to this "feature" why can the scanning not be done solely on
> the server side (where it is already being done by not only Apple but
> by other cloud service providers).

If you bothered to learn about the technology before blabbing your
mouth, you would know they do it this way because examining them after
they are uploaded to the server would mean Apple is able to see all of
the uploaded photos, which would be a violation of innocent people's
privacy. Instead, *only* photos whose hash matches those of known child
porn images are flagged, and they are flagged by generating an
*encrypted* safety voucher, which contains metadata and a visual
derivative of the original photo and cannot be accessed by anyone until
*after* an account exceeds a threshold of multiple matching photos. Only
*after* that happens can Apple employees access the voucher data
including a visual derivative (not the actual photo in question) to
verify whether the photo is actually child sexual abuse or is just an
innocent photo. Only *verified* child abuse images are forwarded to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

In contrast, Apple's competitors do not go through these lengths to
preserve their customers' privacy. Instead, they just examine *all* of
the photos their customers upload, after they are uploaded - and they
look at the actual original photos rather than visual derivatives of
them.

> Perhaps the issue is that it would consume too many resources on the
> server

No, the issue is that of maintaining privacy.

> This whole thing was poorly thought out.

No, but your position definitely is.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2021-08-08, Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Am 08.08.21 um 21:33 schrieb Jolly Roger:
>> On 2021-08-08, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd
>>>> learn that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>>
>>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it
>>> when anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>>
>> The math is exactly what the experts quoted above have checked.
>>
>> Clearly, what you really mean is:
>>
>> "I don't ever believe anyone who says something that doesn't agree
>> with my position on the matter."
>
> You sound like a trumpist.

Projection. I have actually read the details and the white papers
published by scientific experts in the field that describe how this
stuff works. I doubt you or any of the "Outrage CLub" here have
bothered, or are even capable of understanding them.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2021-08-08, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>On 2021-08-08 11:31 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you'd read up on the system Apple is planning to use, you'd
>>>> learn that false positives really aren't a problem...
>>>
>>> How many times have you heard that before? Don't ever believe it
>>> when anyone says that. Wait for the math, and check it.
>>
>> That was the point of the adding the comments from the computer
>> scientists and cryptographic experts: they DID the math.
>
> I haven't seen the math. I haven't even seen how long the hash index
> is. I don't know what the hash function is and whether it is applied
> across the entire file or (to improve performance) only some part of
> the file. Show me the math.

At least you can admit that. Others here, not so much.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

In article <sepbco$hh7$1@dont-email.me>, lew
<citrustwosac@google.mailer.company.invalid> wrote:

>
> According to a blurb on MacRumors, the suspected photos are flagged
> prior to sending to the icloud; to be flagged as porn, the photos must
> be scanned so it means that the iphone/ipad scanning on the devices.

they're hashed on the device only if they're uploaded to icloud, and if
the hash matches, it's flagged. it needs to reach a certain threshold
to be flagged for a further manual review. apple cannot see the
contents of the photos, nor can anyone else, by design.

> My question is whether the device owner is notified of the photos
> that are flagged as child porn whether they are sent to the icloud or
> not. And will the flagged be part of an 'automatic' backup' to the cloud?

if there are a sufficient number of matched photos, a manual review
will occur to verify it, and if that determines the photos really are
child porn, it will then be referred to law enforcement, who will then
notify the owner.

In article <sepf33$d4m$1@panix2.panix.com>, Scott Dorsey
<kludge@panix.com> wrote:

> We're not talking some crazy machine learning algorithm here which
> attempts to determine if a thing is pornographic given a matrix
> derived from existing pornography and extrapolating. We're just
> talking about an elementary hash algorithm.

it's a bit more complicated than that, but basically yes.

> Maybe it's perfectly reasonable, maybe it's not. Show me the math.

<https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Apple_PSI_System_Security_Protoc
ol_and_Analysis.pdf>

have at it.

In article <esq5uhxvke.ln2@minas-tirith.valinor>, Carlos E. R.
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> >> They are placing a file on your device and
> >> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
> >
> > apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
> > companies. that's how computers work.
> >
> > computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
> > ever would be noticed.
> >
> > the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
> > intensive.
>
> Hum.
>
> The time needed to upload a photo may be longer (and may incur a cost),
> but it is not processor intensive at all. It is just moving bytes, the
> most trivial of operations.

uploading is a lot more processor intensive than you think.

it must read bytes from storage (which can be a lot of bytes with large
high resolution images), encrypting it prior to upload, packetizing it
for the network plus the overhead of the network stack along with
powering up the radios (cellular or wifi) to actually send it.

that's a *lot* more resource intensive than a mathematical hash
function, even a complex one.

the main resource draw is powering up the radios.

> Computing a hash can be cpu intensive. You will negate this, as always,
> and without proof, but anybody can verify how long it takes to run a
> program that calculate a checksum in cpu, which is a process akin to
> calculating a hash.

computing a hash on today's processors is negligible compared to
powering up the radios, plus there is hardware support in apple's
processors for the hashing functions.

In article <sepdm1$m85$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
<REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:

> >>
> >> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion?
> >
> > they're not. only those trafficking child porn need to be worried.
> >
> > for everyone else, there is no intrusion.
> >
> > do you have another solution for finding such people?
> >
> >> Let them
> >> do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and only AFTER a
> >> court order has been issued.
> >
> > which will happen only if someone is caught uploading child porn.
> >
> >> They are placing a file on your device and
> >> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
> >
> > apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
> > companies. that's how computers work.
> >
> > computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
> > ever would be noticed.
> >
> > the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
> > intensive.
> >
> >> We
> >> are all now pronounced guilty to the point of surveillance without any
> >> cause or proof.
> >
> > nope.
> >
>
> This is hilarious! You will defend anything Apple does to the death! Is
> there anything they do which is unacceptable and worthy of your scorn?

what you said is incorrect.

incorrect statements get refuted.

it's perfectly fine to be critical of the *actual* issues involved, but
nothing you said falls into that category.

what is your solution to the problem?

> Why is this action even necessary?

because there are people in this world who create and distribute child
porn.

in the days of film photography, photo labs would report anything
questionable, including photos of parent's own kids in the bathtub.

digital photography eliminates the photo labs, which has made it
incredibly easy to create and distribute anything, both good and bad.

it's also not new and not just apple.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA>
PhotoDNA is an image-identification technology used for detecting
child pornography and other illegal content which is reported to the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) as required
by law. It was developed by Microsoft Research and Hany Farid,
professor at Dartmouth College, beginning in 2009.
....
It is used on Microsoft's own services including Bing and
OneDrive, as well as by Google's Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Adobe
Systems, Reddit, Discord and the NCMEC, to whom Microsoft donated
the technology.

> I am not defending child porn whatsoever
> and think people engaging in such activities should be castrated.

how do you propose finding such people?

how is your solution better than what apple, google, facebook, twitter,
etc. are doing?

you do have a better solution, don't you?

note that those companies are not all doing it in the same ways, so be
sure to highlight the good and bad parts of each system.

to get you started, here's a very bad way:
several years ago, facebook addressed revenge porn by asking people to
send in their own nude photos which might be used against them by
others. that was a very stupid and horribly tone-deaf idea.

> But I
> resent the very thought that Apple has decided to scan my pictures
> whatsoever. Who made them the investigator of any crime, especially a crime
> which hasn¹t even been committed?

they're not scanning your photos.

what they're doing is generating a cryptographic hash for photos
uploaded to icloud and checking to see if that hash (not the photo) is
in a database of known child porn.

it's not possible for apple or anyone else to see the contents of the
photos.

photos of your own kids in the bathtub will not be in such a database
and not flagged for anything.

if a sufficient number of images match (more than just one, but the
number is undisclosed), then a manual review process occurs to see if
it really is child porn and if it is, it's referred to law enforcement.

do you have a better solution? if so, let's hear it.

apple, google, etc., would also be interested.

keep in mind that some stores use facial recognition to flag known
shoplifters and other criminals they don't want on their property.
stores also track how many times you buy and return stuff and if you
abuse that, you're blocked from future transactions, possibly being
banned from the properties. cops use license plate recognition to find
stolen cars and other types of crimes. each time you use a credit card,
the transaction and what you bought is tracked by the bank and
advertisers they partner with.

next time you park in a shopping center to buy shoes, you've been
checked against various databases, even though you are not guilty of
any crimes.

In article <sepfiu$eig$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
<REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Why do you care about them doing something that will have absolutely no
> > effect on you?
> >
>
> For the very same reason I don¹t like people standing outside my window and
> trying to look inside. In this case Apple has placed a camera inside my
> house.

no they haven't.

what they've done is the equivalent of sniffing for drugs in packages
you send or receive via ordinary mail.

also keep in mind that every letter and package you send via us mail is
photographed, which is then stored in a database so that if a bomb or
something illegal is sent, it can easily be tracked back to its origin.

here's just one of many examples:
<https://www.times-gazette.com/news/20180314/man-arrested-trying-to-pick-
up-drugs-at-post-office>
John Duzan, 50, of Ashland, was arrested after he showed up to
the Ashland Post Office on Tuesday to pick up a package that
contained Cathinone, more frequently known as the Schedule I drug
bath salts, according to a news release from the Ashland Police
Division.

According to the news release, the package was flagged by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection as an item designated for Duzan in
Ashland that was initially sent from China on Feb. 26, 2018. The
Department of Homeland Security tested the contents of the package
and found it to be consistent with the drug Cathinone and contacted
the Ashland Police Division about the findings.

In article <sepdob$n7a$1@dont-email.me>, sms
<scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

> One claim I've seen is that if you don't use iCloud then the photos on
> your device won't be scanned.

that's not a claim, but a fundamental part of the design, which you
have ignored and now you're trying to backpedal by saying it's a claim
you just now discovered.

> So there is an opt-out by avoiding the use
> of iCloud (or by not upgrading to iOS 15 and/or not buying a new device
> with iOS 15 or greater).

the opt-out is don't upload any child porn you might have on your phone
to anywhere, including to google, facebook, twitter and others.

> What is odd is that if it's that case that only iCloud users are subject
> to this "feature" why can the scanning not be done solely on the server
> side (where it is already being done by not only Apple but by other
> cloud service providers).

because the images are encrypted locally, making it impossible for
apple to see the contents of the photos.

> Perhaps the issue is that it would consume too
> many resources on the server so it's better to distribute the task onto
> hundreds of millions of user devices.

no, that's definitely not why.

> This whole thing was poorly thought out.

do you have a better solution? what is it?

> In the U.S., this technology
> could violate HIPAA if a medical professional used their iPhone for
> clinical photography without the use of a secure photo app that encrypts
> the photos. There are HIPAA compliant commercial apps like RxPhoto which
> do this, but they are very expensive and only large health care systems
> are likely to subscribe.

it is impossible for it to violate hipaa. full stop.

Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>Nope. What Apple is placing inside of your house is a database of hashes
>of known child sexual abuse images that your Apple devices will use to
>ensure you aren't transferring known child porn to their servers, and it
>will be done in a way that prevents any human being from seeing your
>photos unless they match known child porn -and- your account exceeds a
>threshold of multiple matching images being uploaded to Apple servers.

Which is of course of no use at detecting brand new child pornography,
only old child pornography, sort of like antivirus software.

How good it is at detecting old child pornography and how frequently it
will be falsed by cat pictures that happen to have the same hash value
as some pornographic image remains to be determined.

This sort of thing is really not very effective at actually stopping
child pornography; if anything I would expect it to encourage the creation
of newer images that don't match the database. But to be honest it is
the possibility of false positives that is so alarming, since there is
already a considerable history of people being accused unjustly of
possessing child porn.

But again, I'm waiting to see actual details on the hash.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 2021-08-08 4:05 p.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Nope. What Apple is placing inside of your house is a database of hashes
>> of known child sexual abuse images that your Apple devices will use to
>> ensure you aren't transferring known child porn to their servers, and it
>> will be done in a way that prevents any human being from seeing your
>> photos unless they match known child porn -and- your account exceeds a
>> threshold of multiple matching images being uploaded to Apple servers.
>
> Which is of course of no use at detecting brand new child pornography,
> only old child pornography, sort of like antivirus software.

How does that make it a bad thing?

>
> How good it is at detecting old child pornography and how frequently it
> will be falsed by cat pictures that happen to have the same hash value
> as some pornographic image remains to be determined.

And yet experts have evaluated Apple's system and found it solid.

>
> This sort of thing is really not very effective at actually stopping
> child pornography; if anything I would expect it to encourage the creation
> of newer images that don't match the database. But to be honest it is
> the possibility of false positives that is so alarming, since there is
> already a considerable history of people being accused unjustly of
> possessing child porn.

1. There have to be a threshold number of false positives.

2. Should that threshold be met, then and only then, humans will see
only the images that triggered the threshold for review.

So cat pictures aren't going to get anyone in trouble.

>
> But again, I'm waiting to see actual details on the hash.

No... ...you're not.

On 2021-08-08 1:42 p.m., badgolferman wrote:
> Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:
>> On 2021-08-08 1:09 p.m., badgolferman wrote:
>>> nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>>> In article <sep99c$8i3$1@dont-email.me>, badgolferman
>>>> <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Why must every single iPhone user be subjected to this intrusion?
>>>>
>>>> they're not. only those trafficking child porn need to be worried.
>>>>
>>>> for everyone else, there is no intrusion.
>>>>
>>>> do you have another solution for finding such people?
>>>>
>>>>> Let them
>>>>> do that to those who have been suspected of such things, and only AFTER a
>>>>> court order has been issued.
>>>>
>>>> which will happen only if someone is caught uploading child porn.
>>>>
>>>>> They are placing a file on your device and
>>>>> using precious resources (RAM, CPU, data) to perform a scanning task.
>>>>
>>>> apple places a lot of files on your device, as do many, many other
>>>> companies. that's how computers work.
>>>>
>>>> computing a hash uses a negligible amount of resources, nothing that
>>>> ever would be noticed.
>>>>
>>>> the time to upload the photo is both longer and more processor
>>>> intensive.
>>>>
>>>>> We
>>>>> are all now pronounced guilty to the point of surveillance without any
>>>>> cause or proof.
>>>>
>>>> nope.
>>>>
>>>
>>> This is hilarious! You will defend anything Apple does to the death! Is
>>> there anything they do which is unacceptable and worthy of your scorn?
>>>
>>> Why is this action even necessary? I am not defending child porn whatsoever
>>> and think people engaging in such activities should be castrated. But I
>>> resent the very thought that Apple has decided to scan my pictures
>>> whatsoever. Who made them the investigator of any crime, especially a crime
>>> which hasn’t even been committed?
>>>
>>
>> Why do you care about them doing something that will have absolutely no
>> effect on you?
>>
>
> For the very same reason I don’t like people standing outside my window and
> trying to look inside. In this case Apple has placed a camera inside my
> house.
>

Nope.

You analogy is completely flawed.

On 8/8/2021 4:05 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

<snip>

> But again, I'm waiting to see actual details on the hash.

You can be certain that you will not see those actual details.

On 2021-08-08 4:47 p.m., sms wrote:
> On 8/8/2021 4:05 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> But again, I'm waiting to see actual details on the hash.
>
> You can be certain that you will not see those actual details.

LOL!

Apple has literally allowed outside computer science and cryptography
experts to evaluate their plans.