Author Topic: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)  (Read 13405 times)

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Offline Gregg

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #25 on: August 07, 2021, 06:39:26 pm »
It is only a short step further for these bots to start looking into financial discrepancies to report to the authorities as evidence of criminal activity.  Follow the money; I wouldn’t be surprised if governments reward large internet connected companies for this type of activity while legislating loopholes for corporate financial discrepancies. 
This “save the children” approach is merely practice for the big picture. 
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #26 on: August 07, 2021, 06:44:15 pm »
It is only a short step further for these bots to start looking into financial discrepancies to report to the authorities as evidence of criminal activity.

That's already the case in some countries. If you think what happens on your bank account(s) is private, well, you're in for some disappointment.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #27 on: August 07, 2021, 06:53:05 pm »
Yes they do that already. Try transferring large amounts of cash without attracting attention.
 

Online floobydust

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #28 on: August 07, 2021, 07:04:31 pm »
Alright we're heading towards a surveillance state.
But having a megacorp in charge of deciding what to look at, what is acceptable, who to go after etc. will never work.  Just look at Youtube and Amazon screwing over the people.
Censoring social media alone is a battleground where you can do nothing if you feel your rights were trampled. Rights that are dictated by the corporation who puts profit first in its values.
I'm turning chinese because at least Xi is busting up monopolies and keeping things away from sheer greed and profit- instead of being for the people.

The common man gets investigated for transferring large amounts of legit money, but the politicians and crooks are protected. Trump has $102M already in his war chest. Would the Apple Police do a single thing here?
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #29 on: August 07, 2021, 07:31:02 pm »
Yes they do that already. Try transferring large amounts of cash without attracting attention.

Yep. In France, there is a system called "Tracfin". Banks and financial organizations are required to report suspicious money movements and are pretty much free to use any way they see fit to do this, of course including AI. The number one criterion is the transfer of large amounts of cash, as you said, but the current definition of large for warranting a report might surprise you. And, even large transactions, not by cash, are monitored.

I'm pretty sure many countries in the world have similar systems these days.
 

Offline iMo

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #30 on: August 07, 2021, 09:54:27 pm »
I wonder when Microsoft comes with the same initiative??
 >:D
Readers discretion is advised..
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #31 on: August 07, 2021, 10:06:46 pm »
Microsoft already do it. Look up PhotoDNA.
 

Offline iMo

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #32 on: August 07, 2021, 10:22:03 pm »
Microsoft already do it. Look up PhotoDNA.
On someones local disk?? I doubt so..
Readers discretion is advised..
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #33 on: August 07, 2021, 10:50:32 pm »
Microsoft already do it. Look up PhotoDNA.
On someones local disk?? I doubt so..

No on OneDrive.
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #34 on: August 07, 2021, 11:25:49 pm »
Actually the terms state that on a number of suitable matches (poorly defined), they will manually review the images. That means they will decrypt them at that point in time and it will be an Apple staff member doing it.
Except that is not what the documentation says.

From https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf
Quote
Only when the threshold is exceeded does the cryptographic technology allow Apple to interpret the contents of the safety vouchers associated with the matching CSAM images.
The voucher contains “the relevant image information (the NeuralHash and visual derivative)”. I take the latter to mean either thumbnails or snippets from the image, if that.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #35 on: August 07, 2021, 11:37:23 pm »
Read the process at a higher level. You’ve read the technical mechanism but not the external process. There’s a lot more to it.

Also it is important that we look at the scope of all technology outside the intended usage.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #36 on: August 07, 2021, 11:43:45 pm »
Read the process at a higher level. You’ve read the technical mechanism but not the external process. There’s a lot more to it.
You don’t know what I do and don’t know. I was addressing one incorrect assertion, no more, no less.

Also it is important that we look at the scope of all technology outside the intended usage.
Expressly addressed in literally the opening sentence of my first comment.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #37 on: August 07, 2021, 11:44:46 pm »
As always, John Gruber (a noted Mac journalist) offers a nuanced, informed look at the issue. It’s a long, but insightful read:
https://daringfireball.net/2021/08/apple_child_safety_initiatives_slippery_slope
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #38 on: August 08, 2021, 01:36:59 am »

Anyone use LineageOS?

 
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #39 on: August 08, 2021, 01:49:46 am »
Anyone use LineageOS?
Have been using it since the days it was called CyanogenMod.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #40 on: August 08, 2021, 04:05:29 am »
Given a phone some years ago and was so upset with the Sony stock firmware it sat away for a about year. Every time I tried to set it up to turn off the annoying stuff I ended loosing my temper and turning it back off. Like I am somewhat stupid and confused don't know what I am doing that the developer thinks they know me better than myself and make assumptions based on gestures or anything I do thinking they are actually helping me.

I removed it and tried this LineageOS which does have a few annoyances but seems to be a lot better than the other.

The Sony stock firmware had some version of Microsoft Swiftkey. I discovered it was different when I was trying to turn off the usual spelling, predictive and suggestions but there were no settings to disable these things on the Swiftkey keyboard settings. I know how to spell and what to type so all it was doing was taking room over the keyboard and distracting me with suggestions that kept on changing on every key press. I read somewhere in the Swiftley settings that it collects the words I type and sends it to Microsoft for analysis... I was furious "That's taking the p*ss".  Maybe I was doing it properly but I couldn't get the original Android keyboard on there to set as the default where I know I could switch those features off.
Thread about it here:
https://community.sony.com.mk/t5/x-series/remove-swiftkey/td-p/3498298/page/3

There was a lot other stuff too like excessive overlay dimming worse than what it is now, some annoying home screen thing with an animation in the background that kept on appearing out of nowhere or by some input gesture with suggestions and hints constantly interrupting what I was trying to do that I coudn't hide or disable and I found it like harassment. I think I did eventually find it in the apps bit but the disable was faded out and stop didn't seem to do anything. I am not sure if it is a stock or Sony thing or not but I could not find no settings for it.

I had no some trouble with a bootloader tool to install the image but found that clearing the partitions solved that.

I am also pleased I can set the DPI in developer settings to get more estate and pinch and zoom. I use Firefox 68 for the addons and took a bit of time to turn off silly things in the about:config that work against me like auto zoom on every page load, input selection, autofocus, inflexible touch input seems inconsistent on scrolling like it is second guessing how I want it to scroll sometimes locking to horizontal and I don't always know the proper names of many of these settings to search for. it works with some extensions I need like Stickyducky and Adblock that I can add a network list too. One thing I am still looking for is to always set desktop site.

It seems pretty functional for the small things I use it for.

The only thing touching things on the edges seem difficult but I think it is because it is curved.

I wouldn't use my phone for anything serious maybe I might use them for dedicated tasks but not for personal stuff or use it to sign in on websites.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2021, 04:44:12 am by MrMobodies »
 
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Online floobydust

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #41 on: August 08, 2021, 07:46:05 am »
My old phone with CyanogenMod would mysteriously turn on WiFi, WiFi hotspot and Bluetooth- despite me turning that all off.
It creeped me out, did it once or twice a year whenever I left town. Not sure if "something" was polling surrounding ID's or it was a sweep by a certain surveillance state that made the phone. There is no privacy, only its illusion  :-X
 

Online magic

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #42 on: August 08, 2021, 09:47:39 am »
Apple fanboy here. I have a MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. I also use iCloud and iCloud email.

As of yesterday I have a Ubuntu desktop machine and all my data has been migrated. All iCloud storage and email has been disabled and forwarded. All my devices will be disposed of over the next few weeks.
You are not a true zealot if you quit so easily ;D

This is too far and since this they have been pushing internal memos doubling down on this being a good idea and stating that people are misunderstanding it. They are not. I live in the UK which is a large surveillance state. This can and will be leveraged. Apples ecosystem was previously “the least bad” for privacy but now they choose to build in feature which make it by far the worst while pushing arrogant misinformation about the potential uses under secondary mandates. As someone said on HN: don’t shit in my hand and call it chocolate.
You are right about the clear path for escalation, but they are technically right too and it's a classic PR trick. People never understand shit and I'm sure there is a ton of nonsense conspiracy theories in circulation out there, so their best bet to detract from legitimate criticism is to concentrate on debunking the bullshit.
Everybody is doing it that way and it works |O

I suspect that some men in black suits and/or high level politicians were involved, given Apple's former public stance on user privacy. Today it's pedophiles, tomorrow it's terrorists, 10 years down the line and it's 24/7 video streaming to help catch pickpocketers in public transport.

As for the means of pressure, well, remember that the US is a country where you can be liable for hot coffee being hot. And the same one which somehow managed to bust The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Julian Assange even in foreign jurisdictions. I'm sure that aiding in trafficking of child pornography can be problematic too. What if Apple was found not to do enough to stop it by refusing to implement common sense, noninvasive, privacy-preserving countermeasures?

At any rate, knowing typical Apple customers, I doubt that the feature was demanded by them.

As for the sexting filter for kids, it’s kinda strange to me, insofar as I don’t really believe in empowering helicopter parents.
Thank you, Apple fanboy, for never failing to deliver :-+
 
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Offline TimFox

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #43 on: August 08, 2021, 01:46:01 pm »
People love to raise the McDonald's coffee case as an example of supposedly excessive litigation.
For a reasonable description, check Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants
McDonald's had already settled similar suits for scalding injuries, but did not change their practice.
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #44 on: August 08, 2021, 01:47:18 pm »
New attack vector on this already. The CSAM hash sources are from NCMEC “and other child protection sources” which is a loose collection of individual organisations and lobby groups with no scrutiny and oversight. So some asshat maliciously uploads other content, your kid downloads it off Google into iCloud photos and your door gets kicked down in the middle of the night. Or a third party injects CSAM hashes into a system via external attack because the source of truth somewhere is probably a CSV on a cranky old unlicensed windows desktop at a non-profit (this is reality if you look at data protection prosecutions over the years).

Tooki: privacy can only be reasoned about as a worst case outcome from any technical decision. This is actually really my day job; protecting people’s financial data. Regardless of the facts or technical merit of the solution the point is that only the whole concept can be qualified, not just the technical aspects. That’s probably where we got our wires crossed so apologies if you felt I was standing on your toes there. As for recovering the data, Apple already can decrypt your iCloud photos contents; check the terms and conditions. They will do that under existing rules not from technical outcomes from this. Their process would be to use this as a basis to decrypt the rest.

Incidentally I have now isolated and removed all my devices other than my iPhone from my iCloud account. I will retain the iPhone with no iCloud involvement where possible for the near future as I have some stuff which is required for work still on it. And quite frankly I need to recoup some investment before I spend on something else.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2021, 01:49:43 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #45 on: August 08, 2021, 02:05:00 pm »
[...]  I need to recoup some investment before I spend on something else [non-Apple, presumably].

Where do we go, though?   The computing world started out as the Wild West, it seems it is ending up in 1984 or Brave New World...
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #46 on: August 08, 2021, 02:21:18 pm »
[...]  I need to recoup some investment before I spend on something else [non-Apple, presumably].

Where do we go, though?   The computing world started out as the Wild West, it seems it is ending up in 1984 or Brave New World...

I already had a fairly extensive exit plan ready to roll. It's important if you tie yourself with convenience handcuffs.

Firstly the whole concept of tablet and smart watch are disposed of. Those were conveniences and luxuries which are just discarded. The remaining requirements are distributed across general computing and smartphone utility which can be managed fairly easily with Ubuntu 21.04 on the desktop in my case. I spent perhaps 3 hours moving photos and document data over. Some cloud services have been replaced with other cloud services where privacy is not guaranteed anyway. In the case of email, which is the big one I just rolled out a Fastmail account with my domain and changed all the forwarders around and job done.

The smartphone is far harder to get rid of and that will take a few weeks of careful unpicking. I've had my eye on a Nikon DSLR for a few weeks now so that bit is already solved. The biggest loss for me would be Apple Music as that's actually fairly good. Everything else is replaceable or I can live without. I need to migrate my 2FA stuff over to YubiKeys. I've got a cheap Garmin eTrex 10 and paper maps for outdoors nav, Casio F91W to tell the time. Quite frankly I probably don't need the Internet or phone comms most of the time and spend a lot of my dead time spamming on here when I should be reading a book or something :-DD. I may just switch to a dumb phone for the sake of on call requirements.

Welcome to the glory of 2005, the peak of technology.

Phone wise this is looking good: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096QXC42Q/ (4g, £35!)
« Last Edit: August 08, 2021, 02:26:10 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline PKTKS

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #47 on: August 08, 2021, 03:25:03 pm »

I wonder...


Just HOW MUCH these cranks are charging for providing their privacy collected information about hot targets... how much they will charge for these kinda of hot back doors..

Alas what kind of people will pay these crippled over priced and invasive devices..

Still buying that shit of privacy?

Paul
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #48 on: August 08, 2021, 04:26:32 pm »
[...]  The biggest loss for me would be Apple Music as that's actually fairly good. [...]

I use SoundCloud, it is extremely good & works in a browser without installing anything.



[...] Welcome to the glory of 2005, the peak of technology. [...]

Sad, really, but I'm beginning to think you may be right...

Technology has 'technically' progressed since then, but the technology is no longer owned by the user, and the technology is increasingly just being used mostly as a way to milk us.  Any benefits to us users is just a side effect of the real purpose...    Enough of that, please.

I never thought it would come to this.  Feel like I just swallowed the red pill! 



 

Offline bd139

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Re: Apple privacy letter (Law enforcement through your phone)
« Reply #49 on: August 08, 2021, 04:49:15 pm »
Yeah I'm mostly concerned about mobile music if I'm honest. There are a few discrete mp3 players which may do the job.

Totally agree with your second point. I'm slap bang in the middle of the tech sector and people are blind to their own futures there as well  :palm:
 


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