German parliament wants Tim Cook to reconsider CSAM plans

mehrdada 2021-08-18 00:24:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Apple's CSAM scanning system continues to draw criticism over its existence, largely at a misinterpretation as to what the system does and is capable of doing [emphasis mine].

Is that sloppy journalism blindly parroting Apple PR or an Apple shill?

gentleman11 2021-08-18 00:42:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

An article by an apple hype website is somewhat dismissive of everyone’s apple concerns. You don’t exactly hire people for that job who aren’t big fans. It would be nice to find another source with the actual text of the letter but I wasn’t able to find one

raxxorrax 2021-08-18 08:22:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

We sadly have tons of such articles, but I would forgive "appleinsider.com" here. You can deduce what to expect.

That said, there are election in a few weeks... I think they are mostly lying and there are ambitions from all parties to increase control of online content caused by intangible fears. Parts of EU policy also is in direct contrast to this.

tibbydudeza 2021-08-17 23:27:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

East Germans has first hand experience of mass surveillance by the state secret police (Stasi).

"Over 80% of respondents oppose its application to end-to-end encrypted communications."

Barrin92 2021-08-18 01:57:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

you don't even need to go to the Stasi. In West Germany there also always was a recognition of the right to private communication which is why the so called Briefgeheimnis ('secrecy of letters'[1]) was enshrined in the basic law. Privacy of correspondence is very, very hard to circumvent for historical reasons but also because it just seems essential to me in a free society to not treat everyone as a potential criminal who is subject to mass surveillance.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

brokenmachine 2021-08-18 06:25:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Do government people use iphones? What do they use?

I'm curious how they ensure their own security and how Apple's plans affect that.

SevenSigs 2021-08-18 09:58:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

They have "custom" devices.

brokenmachine 2021-08-18 23:07:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

But from which manufacturers?

TechBro8615 2021-08-18 13:04:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Put it this way – when newspapers wanted to know if Biden had spoken to world leaders about the Taliban, they asked the NSA.

I think it’s safe to assume at this point that many politicians in the US are compromised by domestic intelligence agencies.

2021-08-17 22:55:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

2021-08-18 00:41:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

drivingmenuts 2021-08-18 03:13:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Now that Apple has proven they can do it, how long before it’s required by law, regardless of their wishes, and how long before Apple is forced to implement it for other types of images that governments may find objectionable or interesting?

pacifika 2021-08-19 10:06:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The government can read all the iCloud backups, what would that gain them? Vote for a better government

hypothesis 2021-08-18 05:02:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In other threads, someone was asking about same type of images but stored as a pdf or as an archive, as those are not part of iCloud Photo category. It would be strange not to extend this search even further, including iMessage and what have you.

2021-08-17 22:48:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

IAmEveryone 2021-08-17 23:07:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s the German parliament, not government (although I guess there are definitions that include all three branches, the latter seems to be used synonymously with ‘administration’ here).

The committee chair in question is from the liberal (as in libertarian, for Americans) party, which isn’t part of the governing coalition.

That being said, the criticism isn’t necessarily outside the mainstream, and both his Free Democrats and, even more so, the Green Party that would likely agree could well be part of the next government six weeks from now.

7373737373 2021-08-17 23:13:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The governing coalition parties (CDU, SPD) members of the European parliament recently voted for similar measures to allow providers to conduct mass surveillance on their users:

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/

> But this is not the end of the story: For autumn 2021, European Commission announced that it will propose a follow-up legislation that will make the use of chatcontrol mandatory for all e-mail and messenger providers. This legislation might then also affect securely end-to-end encrypted communications.

aksss 2021-08-17 23:09:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

When the country that put up with the Gestapo and the Stasi is telling you you've gone too far, I would heed the advice.

dang 2021-08-17 23:41:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. We're trying for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

romwell 2021-08-18 00:06:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think this is flamebait/unsubstantive.

A decent part of German population has first-hand experience with living in an overt mass surveillance state that people in the US do not have.

As such, we can expect Germans to be more aware of surveillance issues, simply because many have seen where that road leads (while we in the US have not).

The parent message is akin to saying that one should take advice on workplace safety from a person injured at work seriously due to them having first-hand experience of the consequence.

SomeHacker44 2021-08-18 01:32:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I realize that dang's role is literally THE moderator of HN (for which I am greatful) but I agree with my siblings: this is actually topical and on point. I lived through the fall of the Berlin wall, from afar, and my ancestors were persecuted and killed in WW2, and I lived in fear of my own heritage. So I think this is a reasonable comment.

tptacek 2021-08-18 02:32:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Attempting a summary from years of following the moderator comments: it's not just the substance, but how the substance is conveyed. You can write a comment making the connection between the German experience and what's going on now --- a sibling comment sort of did --- but you have to do it carefully. Otherwise, you're pattern-matched in with the other sorts of one-line comments that invoke the Stasi, and the important thing moderation is trying to do is to modulate the impact comments have on the conversation, so that pattern-matching matters.

salawat 2021-08-18 01:26:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This is one of those rare moments where this is actually a completely legitimate and helpful thing to point out; if this poster hadn't posted it, I would have.

This is the AA guy with the 30 year chip telling you to hand over the keys.

You listen, and reevaluate if you're smart.

dang 2021-08-18 02:55:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sorry, but to my eye at least, it's the most cliché association possible, therefore predictable, and therefore not interesting in HN's since of the word.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Maybe there's a comment to be made that would show us something about this particular German proposal that's unusually related to this extremely-well-known history in some unexpected way. That could be interesting. But failing that, there have been thousands of stories you could make the same "connection" about, and nothing so generic can be either particularly interesting or particularly accurate.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

(And that's not even mentioning the veering into classic flamebait territory.)

salawat 2021-08-18 05:27:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Are you unaware of both the Stasi, and the fact that within the last 100 years, Germany experienced the rise of not one, but two extremely hostile and repressive government's hell bent on either exterminating every last undesirable, or rooting out any possible resistance/capitalist spy? Do you have no imagination to fill in the blanks of how much worse something like that could be with the assistance of pervasive client side surveillance capability should that ever recur? Have you forgotten that in addition to many other noteworthy controbutions, IBM also was more than happy to help organize and facilitate the systematic destruction of human life through facilitated bureaucracy? These are not even hypotheticals. These are history. Germany stands as one of the only Western civilizations to have recently experienced inflicting and receiving both of those circumstances. With the poignant reminder to all of us that the plight of those in Afghanistan are in the midst of learning, every damn one of us should be giving a cold hard look at the ugly applications of what we do and asking if we are not possibly creating something that we know will be abused. Companies follow the money. Politics change, capabilities, however, do not. Once the system is there, it will be used, and no company, a construct tolerated and given positive manifestation by State fiat will not stand long before that same authority when push really comes to shove consider the longest established U.S. company is a blip in the pages of history.

>And that's not even mentioning the veering into classic flamebait territory.)

We're not context blind rules engines. There is good signal here if you are willing to listen to it. Yes. It's hard. Usually, you hear this, and it all goes the same place, but we've (in the royal sense) lost something important in the last couple years; the ability to back away from something and to just let it sink in without taking a stake in whose saying it or where it fits in the Internet zeitgeist.

I know your mod senses are tingling, and I understand totally why. I didn't post it at first, because I figured you'd shortly follow up with this exact post. However... Well, I felt and thought it too.

Keep an eye on it by all means, and if it devolves into bedlam do as you must, as you always do. I just see signal in the poster's sentiment, as genuinely terrifying as that prospect is.

dang 2021-08-18 06:45:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Of course I'm aware of that; the point is that reflexively bringing it up because the word "German" appeared in a title related to privacy themes is an obvious cliché and therefore an unsubstantive comment.

whoaisme 2021-08-18 01:29:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's irritating to see this trite message whenever anyone says anything slightly controversial. No one elected you head censor.

dang 2021-08-18 02:56:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Unfortunately the system doesn't right itself - it needs moderation to bump it out of its failure modes.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Unluckily for the lot of you, that happens to be my job. In case it helps at all, these nagging comments are even more tedious to write than they are to read.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

whoaisme 2021-08-18 07:48:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Dan G would make the perfect Nazi. Makes excuses for censorship, defends censorship by claiming it is his job, acts like something he goes out of his way to do is something he finds necessary but distasteful. Disgusting.

lom 2021-08-17 23:34:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As much as I oppose this, calling this the “biggest breach of the dam for the confidentiality of communication that we have seen since the invention of the Internet” is a joke. I can see how apple ‘thinks’ everyone is misunderstanding it. Other service providers have implemented these measures (apples is the least invasive) already a long time ago, and nobody seems to care with them.

nostromo 2021-08-17 23:56:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Apple is installing spyware on devices you own and sending your data to law enforcement. This is a major breach.

perryizgr8 2021-08-18 10:40:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Apple is installing spyware on devices you own

I don't get it. Have they hacked your phone? In that case isn't that illegal?

The real answer is that it was never "your" phone. It was Apple's. They are installing spyware on their own phones. There is no "breach".

The solution is simple, buy a phone that you really own. Don't rent one from Apple.

kevinpet 2021-08-17 23:36:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Other service providers. Meaning when the data goes through their hands. This is different.

XorNot 2021-08-17 23:46:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There's an awful lot of Apple fans out there over this in the "bargaining" phase of grief with posts like this.

If someone pitched you a Linux kernel which did this it would forks and outrage.

xfitm3 2021-08-17 23:48:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Citation for pervasive content scanning?

davikrr 2021-08-17 23:50:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

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) [...] 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." [1]

I'm (almost) certain any Google service will tag CSAM for reports and will also hash content it deems illegal for the NCMEC too [2], so I wouldn't be surprised if Google Photos already did something like this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA

[2] https://transparencyreport.google.com/child-sexual-abuse-mat...

kevin_thibedeau 2021-08-17 23:52:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

On their property. Nobody is doing it on someone else's property.

Khaine 2021-08-18 00:09:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My phone is not a service provider.

slownews45 2021-08-17 23:36:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Even funnier coming from places like the EU, which allow govt access to all sorts of communications.