d'EU wants to scan WhatsApp messages for kiddy porn

Ubbquittious

Hot on the heels of Apple's own initiative to barge into everyone's phone for a good nosey around the desire for mass surveillance by those in charge never seems to die. Always "think of the children", "nothing to hide" and terrorism used as an excuse. Will they ever just fcuk off and leave us alone?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/war-upon-end-to-end-encryption-eu-wants-big-tech-to-scan-private-messages/

FFVII

Who is they? Like, what sleepy bollox thinks up this stuff, he's doing it to himself, his family, kids. Then the sleepy bollox dies and the powers are their for govs/corporations to use now, they've made things worse. And then it backfires every now and then and is used on the sleepy bolloxs.

And you left out sex with escorts from the OP. Used a few times their to get rid of problem sleepy bolloxs in other areas.

EmmetSpiceland

Is that some sort of “code”? I don’t follow.

I never, really, understand the pushback from this sort of thing. It sounds like a great idea. Anything to lessen the scourge of child abuse is a good thing, in my book.

Taking out the consumer is just as important as getting the providers and creators. They are all links in a dreadful chain.

I’m sure people are worried about what else they might look for, or uncover, but I really don’t have time for a defence of ‘yes I was doing something illegal but how they found out wasn’t fair’.

They should go for the platforms, as well. Get them to clean up what they’re hosting.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049173#Comment_119049173

No it's a sh1t idea. Let them find some other way to go after kiddy fiddlers in a way that doesn't affect me or my privacy. I don't want some jumped up little sh1ts called Rupert & Tarquin from GCHQ looking through my messages, they can take a run and jump !

Better to leave the EU than let those cnuts take even more freedom off us.

Purple Mountain

I know this is AH but I thought an adult would have more respect that to use flippant terms like kiddy fiddlers/kiddie porn.

Call it out like Emmett above. It's child sexual abuse.

And they're not fidders. They're abusers.

I've no problem with my privacy being infringed if it stops children being victims of these despicable crimes.

enfant terrible

Why do you call it "kiddy porn" instead of its real name child abuse videos?

YellowFeather

If you put a message somewhere digitally, it is no longer private in reality. And, the people who may look at the message - they don’t care about its content in general.

For want of a better example, look at the Depp vs Heard case. All kinds of things are coming out in court because of messages. They are not private. And if your company gets sued, and you are considered as perhaps(!) being involved in the issue, your work phone, laptop, camera, whatever equipment can be taken and analysed. If it’s a criminal case, all of your stuff can be taken, but that’s a different topic.

So forget about Rupert and Tarquin looking through your messages and having a good giggle down the pub. These guys have seen thousands of weird messages. This is about child protection from horrendous things. I think that’s more important.

Edited to add - nobody is going to read all of your messages in this context. Even if they were made available, they would be filtered for specific content.

Jequ0n

Ah sure. They’ll only be asking for child porn material to be flagged and totally ignore any other illegal content... At least they get some buy in from the white knights who endorse an idiotic idea thinking this will end any child exploitation.

Ficheall

How do they scan for things like this? Google Photos occasionally sends me memories folders - or whatever they're called - like "Rainbows", "Beaches" etc., after presumably having had some AI filter through all of my photos - I can't imagine a person has the mind-numbing task of skimming through them. (I'm somewhat dreading/looking forward to the day they send me an album of "Poops" based on photos from a couple of months when I was having bowel issues...)

Gmail also must scan your email to offer those predicted responses etc, again with an AI.

All of this scanned info must be stored somewhere, right?

And the AI to detect CP.. While it may be easy for us to recognise it, I'd imagine it's a trickier thing for an AI to be trained for?

Amenhotep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049361#Comment_119049361

How about the Gardai visiting your home and searching through all your belongings ?

If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't mind...

The whatsapp thing doesn't bother me so much, we are using it's service on the cloud, what does bug me however is windows and macOS will be scanning local drives for this stuff - again if it were online photo storage like flickr/picasso fair enough, but a line is crossed when they scan your local personal devices.

Also , what are they using to gauge what's CP material ? whats the machine learning algorithm ?

Where are all these sample images stored ? you don't think some employees with less morals will be copying some of this data ?

I have photos of my kids swimming on a beach, their bare sandy bums exposed - is that CP ? who decides ?

It's no surprise that the people for this are also the little authoritarians looking for "hate speech" legislation ...

dangerous dangerous people.

HerrKapitan

It's just a front for scanning your phone and eroding EVERYBODY rights, innocent or guilty They've picked an excuse that shocks everyone so that they would go along with it.

Why not scan for terrorism or drug trafficking before now?

seamus

@Ubbquittious wrote:

Let them find some other way to go after kiddy fiddlers in a way that doesn't affect me or my privacy. 

You realise why this is a paradox, right? It's like saying, "Revenue should find out some other way to catch tax evaders without me having to tell them how much I earned last year".

Absolute personal privacy is incompatible with maintaining a society. There is always a balance that has to be struck between the two. Libertarian unicorns of being able to do whatever you want with zero state interference fall at the first hurdle when you realise that includes protecting peadophiles, human traffickers and other vile scum.

In this case though, I'm not sure how much value there is in it. If you scan stuff on legit apps, you push abusers into the dark web. Which is where most of them will be anyway. There's the argument that "it shouldn't be facilitated on mainstream apps", which is valid. But social norms will for the most part keep it out anyway. Nobody will tolerate receiving abuse images over normal channels, and I'm guessing paedophiles don't have big open groups with 150 members called, "Subscribe here for sexy children".

I have no problem with cloud service providers being obligated to scan for dodgy material when it has been uploaded to their service. It's important though to include protections to limit the scope of what they may search for. Child porn, violence is one thing. No bother there with Google Photos picking them up. And creating an obligation in law for anyone who provides cloud services to police what's put on their servers.

But how about seditious material? Idle debate about a coup? How do we stop future lawmakers from expanding these powers to find and arrest political dissidents?

This EU initiative will likely die as the technical impossibility / pointlessness of scanning encrypted content is driven home. But it's still a discussion that needs having.

growleaves

'Absolute personal privacy is incompatible with maintaining a society. There is always a balance that has to be struck between the two'

Well the balance being struck is that anyone who cares about their privacy ought not to use electronic communications for anything of importance. Because sending an email, a 'private' message etc. is like sending a postcard.

Its nothing new anyway. The Garda Detective Unit can accesss your phone and go through it. There was a piece about it on Journal.ie years along with allegations that some Gardai were abusing this power.

Guarantee you many boardsies are being checked out from time to time by garda surveillance units for having 'politically extreme' opinions, and not just 'rabid right-wing' boardsies but anyone who sticks their oar in on any sensitive topic. They know your name and have probably gone through your phone once or twice at least.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049412#Comment_119049412

If you send someone a message and it's properly end-to-end encrypted only the recipient can betray you. I won't forget about Rupert and Tarquin because they are only human and if they see something funny they will giggle. Right now they have to take actual equipment off you and they can only see what you haven't already deleted. What they are proposing is that they can look through everything from the comfort of their office chair at a central location.

CGI_Livia_Soprano

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050321#Comment_119050321

You think Rupert and Tarquin will "giggle" at pictures of "kiddy porn?"

growleaves

'So forget about Rupert and Tarquin looking through your messages and having a good giggle down the pub. These guys have seen thousands of weird messages.'

Who are Rupert and Tarquin?

Guards have already been accused of abusing surveillance powers.

Say your girlfriend sends you pictures of herself topless. Does it matter if a guard has a **** over the photos?

You're not addressing privacy concerns at all. You're just saying that privacy doesn't matter and to get over it.

Suppose they need to see inside your bedroom at all times to ensure that criminals don't get away with crimes. Is that okay? Do you have something hide? Maybe you're the criminal etc., etc.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049522#Comment_119049522

Indeed, what is the difference between images of child exploitation and an image of your child playing in the bath?

In Ireland you can be convicted of possessing images of child exploitation even if you receive them in an unsolicited manner and subsequently delete them.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050549#Comment_119050549

From a scanning point of view, there's very little difference. Any scanning software typically looks for an abundance of skin tones and such, though this software is getting better all the time and using machine learning to better identify not only people in images, but their rough ages and what they're actually doing.

From a legal point of view, there's a big difference though. Merely in possession of pictures of a naked child is not illegal, it would need to be proven in court that the purpose for which someone is in possession of these images is illegal.

It also has to be remembered that it's not and will never be a case that some computer flashes an alert with your name on it and suddenly officers are kicking in your doors and confiscating your equipment. Any images flagged by software are reviewed by a human to sift between irrelevant images and potentially iffy images.

Any "potentially iffy" images are then further reviewed to assess whether this clearly requires further follow-up, or if it's just some sketchy image that has been incidentally retrieved or cached.

Can you give a source on this claim that you can be convicted of possession of something you don't possess? As far as I know, if you receive illegal material unsolicited and then destroy it immediately, you cannot be charged with possession, though you my be liable for prosecution under child protection laws and destruction of evidence.

Allinall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050321#Comment_119050321

And yet you put up ridiculous posts here for everyone to giggle at?

"They" can already see everything you're seeing through your own eyes due to the Covid microchips we're all now implanted with.

timmyntc

These kinds of powers are just the start, once they get a foot in the door they will then use the existing legislation to justify further breaches of your privacy.

shur dont we already scan for CSAM material, scanning your messages for "extremist content" is just an extension of that.

They will keep pushing and pushing for more and more surveillance on everything you do, say and have until you have no privacy left. Privacy is an outdated concept anyways, if you have something you dont want in public then its obviously immoral and wrong

eggy81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119051867#Comment_119051867

The Ct forum is over there 👉

Royale with Cheese

Some people actually think this is a good idea? We have end to end encryption currently and people are happy to give that up because something something paedos? That episode of Brass Eye springs to mind. This isn't about child porn, it's about using potentially anything in the end to end encrypted messages you currently send to incriminate you. Facebook will have free reign over your WhatsApp conversations on top.

ceadaoin.

It's not "porn". It's abuse. Images of child abuse. "Kiddy porn"? What a disgusting, minimizing and downright offensive term.

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050549#Comment_119050549

You cannot be found guilty if you receive unsolicited illegal material. Otherwise that be a great way to take out potential enemies. Needs to be proven you deliberately set out to recieve and view such obhorent material.

TheValeyard

Worrying the thinking some here are happy to surrender freedoms to stop the online boogeyman. Interpol have various means and clever ways to catch these predators. Giving governments the right to scan your messages is a dangerous slippery slope. We are not China.

[Deleted User]

Scan away. If you are using any sort of electronic communication to do illegal stuff you are an idiot and deserve to be caught.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119052266#Comment_119052266

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049378#Comment_119049378

It is a well established term, everyone knows what it means. Putting a different name on it won't make it any better

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049522#Comment_119049522

Apple's technology, which wasn't actually rolled out in the end, didn't scan the actual photos as such, and AI didn't have to be trained for it.

Each photo uploaded to their iCloud system was to be "hashed" - a unique string of letters and numbers representing the image, using a specific algorithm. There's already a database of hashed child abuse images provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and other child protection organisations. Apple would compare the hash of the uploaded photo to the database to see if there was a match. It would therefore only detect existing and confirmed child abuse images - it wouldn't do anyting in relation to pics of your kids in the bath or even brand new child abuse images. What was novel about it was that usually an edited photo (even just resized) would have a different hash to the original, but Apple found a way to recognise the hash of an edited photo as relating to the hash of the original. The advantage of using hashes is that no-one has to look at the actual photos of abuse, and the technology doesn’t have to be “fed” actual child abuse images to teach, as AI would need.

People got their knickers in a twist that Apple were snooping on photos, when all they were doing was comparing a string of meaningless characters. But that’s the way the world works - you don’t have to actually understand something to object to it.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119052677#Comment_119052677

It wasn't just stuff you uploaded to iCloud though. There was a local element to it as well that would go through the files stored on the iDevice itself and hash those and if you had some offending images planted on your phone and just stored locally you could potentially still get a visit from the bhoys in blue

AttractiveAndSingle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049173#Comment_119049173

Why do we need privacy at all in your opinion?