by notepad0x90 | 2025-11-15 18:45:58+00:00
> I understand that you seem to think that adding systems like this will placate governments around the world but that is not the case. We have already conceded far more than we ever should have to government surveillance for a false sense of security.

You have an ideological approach instead of a practical one. It isn't governments that are demanding it. I am demanding it of our government, I and the majority. I don't want freedoms paid for by such intolerable and abhorrent levels of ongoing injustice. It isn't a false sense of security, for the victims it is very real. Most criminals are not sophisticated. Crime prevention is always about making it difficult to do crime, not waving a magic wand and making crime go away. I'm not saying let's give up freedoms, but if your stance is there is no other way, then freedoms have to go away. But my stance is that the technology is there, it's just slippery slope fallacy thinking that's preventing from getting it implemented.

> What about this is privacy preserving?

Persons aren't identified before a human reviews and confirms that the material is illicit.

You have to identify yourself to the government to drive and place a license plate connected to you at all times on your car. You have to id yourself in most countries to get a mobile phone sim card, or open a bank account. Dragnet surveillance is what I agree is unacceptable except as a last resort, it isn't dragnet if algorithms flag it first, and it isn't privacy invading if false hits are never associated with individuals.

> you have already violated the person's privacy without just cause, regardless of whether the people reviewing it can identify the person or not.

There is just cause, the material was flagged as illicit. In legal terms, it is called probable cause. If a cop hears what sounds like a gunshot in your home, he doesn't need a warrant, he can break in immediately and investigate because it counts as extenuating circumstance. The algorithms flagging content are the gunshots in this case. You could be naked in your house and it will be a violation of privacy, but acceptable by law. If you said after review, they should get a warrant from a judge I'm all for it.

It is materially false, because that the scanning can be done without sending a single byte of the device. The privacy intrusion happens not at the time of scanning, but at the time of verification. To continue my example, the cop could have heard you playing with firecrackers, you didn't do anything wrong but your door is now broken and you were probably naked too, which means privacy violated. This is acceptable by society already.

The false positive rates for cops seeing/hearing things, and for eyewitness testimony is very high in case you're not aware. by comparison, apples csam scanner was very low.

> There is a reason why there is a process where law enforcement must get permission from the courts to search and/or surveil suspects

As stated above, so long as the scanning is happening strictly on-device, you're not being surveilled. When there is a hit, humans can review the probable cause, a judge can issue a warrant for your arrest or a search warrant to access your device.

Another solution might be to scan only at transmission time of the content, not capture and storage (still not good enough, but this is the sort of conversation we need, not plugging in of ears).

Let's take a step back. Another solution might be to restrict every content publishing on the internet to people positively identifying themselves.