Recall that apple devices include an ML accelerator, at some point or another, the next step down this slope will be adding this to the display pipeline.
PhotoDNA and similar are done in on-premises machines, nothing on your own private phone.
Do you know how discovery works in court? I'm guessing not.
Once a hash matches, law enforcement would need a subpoena to access the raw image. If a person were to be arrested, that evidence would be turned over to the defense.
It would be very obvious that a picture of a police officer was not child pornography.
Are you under the impression people are jailed for hash collisions? Because that's not the case at all....
I don't think the suggestion is that a hash of a police uniform will be used to convict of CP but rather the idea that a new law will be passed that - in order to protect the police from 'harassment' - will outlaw taking pictures of the police.
So in that case in discovery the picture of a police officer would be evidence that you broke that hypothetical law. The technology deployed to protect the children opens up the possibility of its deployment for other things later, based on legal requirements of course.
For example don't take pictures of copyrighted material would be something people might want to work on.
I head over to my friend Midev's house with precursor chemicals for VX. You complain that having the precursors to VX lying around is not a good idea. I point out that creating VX is purely hypothetical. Sure, if that happened, it'd be terrible. But, that's not happening.
Apple is deploying a technology with few legitimate uses that makes terrible things not only possible but easy all without the voluntary consent of the device's owner.
Yes, they are. The point is that this change make this hypothetical too close to being true so the change should be abandoned. It skews the power balance too much into the hands of a small number of unknown people so the rest are protesting.
Appealing to the slippery slope is itself a fallacy.
"While this image may be insightful for understanding the character of the fallacy, it represents a misunderstanding of the nature of the causal relations between events. Every causal claim requires a separate argument. Hence, any "slipping" to be found is only in the clumsy thinking of the arguer, who has failed to provide sufficient evidence that one causally explained event can serve as an explanation for another event or for a series of events"
You need to argue things that are actually happening. Appealing to hypotheticals, especially when technically incorrect, serves no one.
What's actually happening is that a mechanism is being introduced that makes it easy to censor anything Apple wants censored. Apple promises to only use it for child pornography.
Apple, however, is still not a sovereign state, and as such must bow to the wishes of actual sovereign states. Sovereign states have proven again and again that they will grab as much power as they can, and doing it insidiously, in the form of a private database of hashes of undesired content, is especially attractive to them.
This is not a hypothetical. For a real-world example look to England where its nation-wide internet blocking system is already used beyond its original scope. Or think of what countries like China will certainly do with such a mechanism. Scope creep, in the form of power grabs by nation states, is a realistic concern, based on vast historical experience, not a fallacy.
Apart from the concern of scope creep, there is also the concern of false positives. When deployed on such a scale, there will undoubtedly be perfectly legimate images being flagged. I'm not happy about my phone containing software that's always vigilant, ready to ruin my life over a false positive.
ok first off that slippery slope referred to here is the domino theory - which is a faulty idea of the causality of events - we can say a slippery slope regarding events is likely faulty because unless the causal chain between any two events is very tightly linked our understanding of causality is not sufficient to understand it. That is to say we have a very tight link between a domino falling, hitting another domino and toppling it, but we do not have a very tight link between a country going communist and then another one later. Hence, every causal claim requires a separate argument.
The slippery slopes being discussed here are not about events and the causes that link them, but about the applications of technology and to a certain extent about laws being used beyond their original mandate. This kind of slippery slope is a logical one.
Thus the technology being used for this mean that it can be used for other things - what kinds of things can it be used for? Are there things that people would like to make illegal or that are illegal now that this technology can be used catch people infringing on these hypothetical laws. Thus - if we allow this technology in our devices now are we opening ourselves up for other potential uses for the technology in the future that will hurt us.
If this argument seems the same to you as the domino theory and that we must take every hypothetical problem when it actually occurs I wonder how you are ever able to plan for any eventuality?
I understand your argument, that a court (in a democratic country with a rule of law) would expect that the investigators extract the original image from the accused's phone with the appropriate chain of custody of the evidence.
However, that does not mean that while this investigation is under way, the accused is now go about their business.
For CP, or other crimes of violence, that makes sense.
But if laws are passed against peaceful protest, then that means someone could be held in detention while those photos are investigated. An anonymous photo now is trackable.
Let’s conveniently ignore all the facts that speak against the planned dystopia, and focus on the positives of having all facets of your life constrained and controlled by authorities.
Add hashes of politicians. Businessmen in suits. Army uniforms.
At the end you have a weapon that can only shoot civilians.