Quote:Apple confirms it will begin scanning iCloud Photos for child abuse images.
This tech might help in cracking down on child pornography, but it can also be misused.



Apple is purportedly poised to announce a new tool that will help identify child abuse in photos on a user’s iPhone. The tool would supposedly use a “neural matching function” called NeuralHash to detect if images on a user’s device match known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) fingerprints. While it appears that Apple has taken user privacy into consideration, there are also concerns that the tech may open the door to unintended misuse—particularly when it comes to surveillance.

The news comes via well-known security expert Matthew Green, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. Green is a credible source who’s written extensively about Apple’s privacy methods over the years. Apple has also confirmed to TechCrunch that the tech will be rolling out later this year with iOS 15 and macOS Monterey. It’s also published technical details of how the tech works and says it was reviewed by cryptography experts.

No one wants to go to bat for child pornography, but Green points out this tech, while nobly intended, has far-reaching consequences and can potentially be misused. For instance, CSAM fingerprints are purposefully a little vague. That’s because if they were too exacting, you could just crop, resize or otherwise edit an image to evade detection. However, it also means bad actors could make harmless images “match” problematic ones. One example is political campaign posters that could be tagged by authoritarian governments to suppress activists, and so forth.

The other concern is that Apple is setting a precedent, and once that door is open, it’s that much harder to close it.
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https://gizmodo.com/apple-reportedly-working-on-problematic-ios-tool-to-sca-1847427745

Quote:Will they have non stop access to my camera?

(08-07-2021, 08:53 PM)Skullmeat Wrote: I used IOS for a few years and switched back to andriod. Looks like that was a better choice than I realized.

(08-07-2021, 08:56 PM)Party Pete Wrote:

(08-07-2021, 08:53 PM)Skullmeat Wrote: I used IOS for a few years and switched back to andriod. Looks like that was a better choice than I realized.

I have always used Apple over Android, but I will now be switching to Android as soon as possible.

Quote:"Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and other child safety organizations. Apple further transforms this database into an unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users' devices."