I am supportive of Apple’s new child protection policies. I spent two years helping to build some of the tools used for scanning and reporting content (EDIT: not at Apple). There are a few sentiments in this thread that I'd like to address.
> Yeah, and none of these assholes (pardon the language) is willing to spend a penny to provide for millions of children suffering of poverty: free education, food, health, parental support. Nothing, zero, zilch. And these millions are suffering right now, this second, with life-long physical and psychological traumas that will perpetuate this poverty spiral forever.
Many people in child safety and I, personally, strongly support policies that enhance the lives of children, including improved education, food, access to health services, and support for parents. To your point, though, it's also true that many political leaders who vocally address the issue of child sexual abuse on the internet also happen to be opposed to the policies I would support. Like most political alliances, it is an uncomfortable one.
> Anyone questions you, just destroy their reputation by calling them a pedophile.
I see this sentiment a lot. I have worked with people across law enforcement, survivors, survivor advocates, NGOs, social workers, private companies, etc. and I don't know anyone who responds this way to people raising privacy concerns. At worst, they might, rightly or wrongly, consider you alarmist or uninformed or privileged (in that you don't have images of your abuse being actively traded on the internet). But a pedophile? I just can't imagine anyone I've worked with in this space accusing you or even thinking of you as a potential pedophile just because you're opposed to content scanning or want E2EE enabled, etc. I suppose maybe someone far, far removed from actual front line workers would say something so ridiculous.
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Separately, I want to suggest that there are paths forward here that could include risk controls to reduce the risk that this technology gets extended beyond its initial purpose. Maybe NCMEC could provide verifiable digests of the lists used on your device to verify that additional things haven't been added to it. Or there could be public, concrete, transparent criteria for how and when a lead is referred for law enforcement action. By designing this system by which the matching occurs on device against a list that can be made available to the user, Apple has made content scanning far more privacy-preserving and also created avenues by which it could be further regulated and transparent. I'm very excited about it and, honestly, I think even the staunchest privacy advocates should be cautiously optimistic because it is, in my opinion, a step in the direction of less visibility into user data.
I think that privacy advocates are arguing in good faith for protecting society from a surveillance state. I think that advocates of scanning are arguing in good faith for protecting children. I also think that both sides are using language (screeching on the NCMEC side, comparisons to hostile regimes on the other) that make it very hard to move forward. This isn't pedophile privacy advocates vs. surveillance state NCMEC. Neither of those groups even exist. It's concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people vs. concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people.
HN is the only place I feel safe enough to post these pro-privacy opinions. In many other communities, I've seen people being accused of serious crimes for daring to take issue with whatever surveillance the authorities are trying to implement. I've seen people openly speculating about the CSAM stashes of encryption users. What else could they possibly be hiding, right?
Given NCMEC's continuing attacks against consenting adult sex workers, that they never seem to regard adult sexual identities as valid under any circumstances, that they repeatedly retweet abolitionist groups for adult sexual expression, their actions during Backpage, them lying to Congress about the level of abuse that occurs and the recent statements by their staff, I find it kind of baffling that anyone would defend their leadership at this point.
NCMEC are willing to completely compromise their mission in order to chase other moral crusades that are unrelated to children, and seem to never care about the consequences of any of the things they call for.
> Many people in child safety and I, personally, strongly support policies that enhance the lives of children, including improved education, food, access to health services, and support for parents. To your point, though, it's also true that ...
You work with people who, almost always against the will of children and parents kidnap children (sorry, but search on Youtube for images of their action: kidnap is the only correct term) ... then proceed to NOT care for those children and destroy their lives. Obviously this is the only correct reasoning is that this is entirely immoral until the care system is fixed, because they are not improving the lives of children, and their complete lack of caring about this tells you what they're goals aren't.
Watch "Short Term 12" for what facilities these children are provided with. Stop pretending that helping these people acquire children (because that's exactly what you're doing) helps a single child. It doesn't. Terrible, abusive, violent, parents take better care of children than these places do. The moral reaction should be to do what most of society, thankfully, does: sabotage the efforts of social workers.
And if you're unwilling to accept this, as soon as this whole covid thing dies down a bit, find the nearest children's facility and visit. Make sure to talk to the children. You will find you're making a big mistake.
Whatever you tell yourself, please don't believe that you're helping children. You're not. You're helping to destroy their lives
> I see this sentiment a lot. I have worked with people across law enforcement, survivors, survivor advocates, NGOs, social workers, private companies, etc. and I don't know anyone who responds this way to people raising privacy concerns.
I'm adding this response to the other reply to your comment ... which makes 2 people who disagree with your assessment: you are likely to be threatened in many places. I feel like one might even say it's likely we're 2 people who have been threatened.
I would like to add that either as a child or an adult, child protection authorities, the people you help, will threaten you, and I've never known a single exception if they think (correctly or otherwise) that you're hiding something from them. That's if you're at their mercy (which is why every child in child services makes sure to commit some despicable/violent/minor criminal act or two every month and keep it secret: if you don't have something to confess that won't get you sent to a "secure facility" you will be horribly punished at some unexpected random time. That's how these people work. And over time you may learn that, for a kid in the system, a whole host of places are traps. Like the hospital, child services itself, police, homeless shelters or school. As in every person in one of those places will be shown your "history" as soon as you mention your name and if they report you ... very bad things will happen. Some children explicitly make bad things happen (e.g. commit violent theft), because they'll get sent to "juvie" and finally the stress of suddenly getting punished out of nowhere disappears. Also some believe you get better schooling in juvie. So you hide, even if you're hurt or sick. This is why some of those kids respond angrily or even violently if someone suggests they should see a doctor for whatever reason. Sometimes literally to make sure the option of suicide remains open (which is difficult in "secure" care). And why does this happen? NOT to protect children: to protect themselves and "their reputation", and their peace of mind against these children).
This, of course, you will never hear your new friends mention needs fixing. They are in fact fighting with this side of the system over money, so that EVEN LESS money goes to the kids the system takes care of. That, too, you will never hear from them. They are doing the opposite of what someone who means well with disadvantaged children will do.
I have zero doubts they will use your work, not to convict offenders, because that's hard, years of very difficult work, but to bring more kids into a system that destroys children's lives, and MORE so than the worst of parents do. Because throwing children into this system (and destroying their lives) is very easy. I'm sure occasionally they will convict an offender (which, incidentally, doesn't help the kids) or get a good outcome for a child. It happens. If is absolutely not common.
And not to worry they will put great emphasis on this statement: "I've never seen anyone in the system who didn't mean well". Most are idiots, by the way, if you keep digging at their motivations, they will reveal themselves very clearly quite quickly.
These "people in child safety" DO NOT mean well with children. They merely hate a portion of society (which includes those victimized children) and want to see them punished HARD. If you are a moral person, volunteer at a nearby children's shelter and show understanding when the inevitable happens and you get taken advantage of (do not worry, you will learn). DO NOT HELP THESE PEOPLE GET MORE CHILDREN.
> Yeah, and none of these assholes (pardon the language) is willing to spend a penny to provide for millions of children suffering of poverty: free education, food, health, parental support. Nothing, zero, zilch. And these millions are suffering right now, this second, with life-long physical and psychological traumas that will perpetuate this poverty spiral forever.
Many people in child safety and I, personally, strongly support policies that enhance the lives of children, including improved education, food, access to health services, and support for parents. To your point, though, it's also true that many political leaders who vocally address the issue of child sexual abuse on the internet also happen to be opposed to the policies I would support. Like most political alliances, it is an uncomfortable one.
> Anyone questions you, just destroy their reputation by calling them a pedophile.
I see this sentiment a lot. I have worked with people across law enforcement, survivors, survivor advocates, NGOs, social workers, private companies, etc. and I don't know anyone who responds this way to people raising privacy concerns. At worst, they might, rightly or wrongly, consider you alarmist or uninformed or privileged (in that you don't have images of your abuse being actively traded on the internet). But a pedophile? I just can't imagine anyone I've worked with in this space accusing you or even thinking of you as a potential pedophile just because you're opposed to content scanning or want E2EE enabled, etc. I suppose maybe someone far, far removed from actual front line workers would say something so ridiculous.
---
Separately, I want to suggest that there are paths forward here that could include risk controls to reduce the risk that this technology gets extended beyond its initial purpose. Maybe NCMEC could provide verifiable digests of the lists used on your device to verify that additional things haven't been added to it. Or there could be public, concrete, transparent criteria for how and when a lead is referred for law enforcement action. By designing this system by which the matching occurs on device against a list that can be made available to the user, Apple has made content scanning far more privacy-preserving and also created avenues by which it could be further regulated and transparent. I'm very excited about it and, honestly, I think even the staunchest privacy advocates should be cautiously optimistic because it is, in my opinion, a step in the direction of less visibility into user data.
I think that privacy advocates are arguing in good faith for protecting society from a surveillance state. I think that advocates of scanning are arguing in good faith for protecting children. I also think that both sides are using language (screeching on the NCMEC side, comparisons to hostile regimes on the other) that make it very hard to move forward. This isn't pedophile privacy advocates vs. surveillance state NCMEC. Neither of those groups even exist. It's concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people vs. concerned citizens wanting freedom for all people.