XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone
On 08/08/2021 19:04, Alan Baker 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...
<https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Technology_Summary.pdf>
...and that's the opinion of people far more knowledgeable than you or I
on the subject:
False positives will be a big problem for those that fall foul of them.
Suppose, hypothetically, that the photos in the Julia Somerville case
had been taken on an iPhone with this new scanning system in place.
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Somerville>
From the diagram on page 5 of the technology summary PDF linked above,
her photos would be hashed and matched against the CSAM hashes. The hash mechanism is described as recognising scenes but makes no mention of recognising faces. So the pictures of her child in the bath could
potentially match CSAM pictures of different children in baths.
This would flag up and an Apple reviewer would look at the photos. Now,
please note carefully: the Apple reviewer **cannot see the original CSAM image** that the photo matched. Therefore the Apple reviewer cannot
*compare* the photos. All the Apple reviewer can do is *evaluate* each
flagged photo against written guidelines, based on their training. And
since it's a picture of a child in a bath they can pretty much do only
one thing, which is to agree and report it as a child abuse picture.
At which point the phone's owner has their iCloud account suspended and
is launched into an expensive and time consuming legal process to prove
their innocence.
In one of the other posts someone said: Well, what's your solution?
Well, I'd like to hear NCMEC's view on the system; understand from them
how many referrals per year they expect to receive; what resources they
are committing to reviewing cases; what the process for reviewing cases
is and have them give a median timeline for resolving a case one way or another.
A compromise might be that iCloud accounts aren't suspended until NCMEC
staff have visually compared the flagged photos with the original CSAM
image to confirm the match, and a criminal prosecution has been started.
Suspending the iCloud account and thereby tipping-off genuine
paedophiles, giving them time to destroy evidence, is probably not what law-enforcement would want anyway.
--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey, England
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