Police funding has shot up in America. It's everything else thats been cut.
>what’s the problem.
There's no problem. It's just a drawn out power grab with a weak pretext.
What else in America has been cut? I'd be interested in that very long list (since you're saying that everything else is seeing cuts; the understood meaning being that a very large number of major items are seeing their budgets slashed). The spending data I see year in year out, or across decades, is showing the opposite.
Healthcare spending has skyrocketed over the last 20-30 years, including healthcare spending by the government (eg Medicaid, Medicare). They're not slashing Medicaid or Medicare, those programs have far outrun inflation and are drowning the US budget.
Social Security hasn't been slashed. Even the leading Republicans no longer dare talk seriously about cutting Social Security (30-40 years ago they commonly did). Trump could hardly run away faster from that conversation, it's the third rail of US politics, absolutely nobody dares.
Education spending has not been slashed. US teachers are among the best paid in the world and Americans spend more per capita on education at all levels than just about any other nation (while getting mediocre results for their epic investment, as with healthcare spending).
Defense spending of course continues to rise.
The US welfare state has continued to perpetually expand. US social welfare spending is larger as a share of GDP than it is in Canada; and it's closing in on Britain (the US will catch Britain on social welfare spending as a % of GDP this decade). The US social safety net has gotten larger, not smaller, over the decades. Programs like housing first didn't even exist 30 years ago; food security programs like SNAP continue to get bigger over the decades, they're not vanishing.
US Government spending has continued to soar year by year. Typically 5-8% annual spending increases are normal (just look at the radical spending increases during the Bush and Obama years, or any of the recent budgets). Total government spending (Federal + State + Local) has continued to climb, it has not been slashed or reduced. Total US government spending is taking more out of the US economy than it ever has outside of WW2 - you have to go back to WW2 level spending to find something comparable.
Total US government spending has increased by roughly 225% over the past two decades (more than triple the rate of inflation over that time). The soaring spending shows no sign of letting up.
The major US Government agencies - such as NASA, NSA, FBI, DHS, VA, DoJ, etc - have not had their budgets slashed over the last few decades, they keep climbing year after year.
The only big one I can think of is infrastructure spending, which has not kept up with inflation because both sides have refused to raise gasoline taxes.
What kind of results do we have to show for the massive increase in government spending? Are our streets now lined with gold? Things are better than they have ever been, is that right? Is our quality of life equivalent to Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden? Because we now have their per capita government spending levels. The government systems of the US are spending the equivalent of 45% of the economy each year.
Aging populations with for profit healthcare will do that.
>US teachers are among the best paid in the world
It's still a comparatively low paying, thankless profession and consistently fails to attract talent because of low pay. Most Engineers, for example, have starting pay similar to a teacher's pay with 15 years of experience. Both jobs require the same level of training and degree (Bachelor's).
>total US government spending is taking more out of the US economy than it ever has,
Government spending is still economic activity. It doesn't 'take money out' of the economy, it contributes to it. It pays workers like any other employer that can then spend that money in the local economies. If your argument is 'government spending is bad' then that's a terrible argument.
In 2018 tech companies reported over 45 million images of CSAM, which was double the amount that was reported the year before.[0] The next year the number of reports went up to 60 million.[1] I wouldn't expect everyone to agree on the proper response to the rapid growth of child-abuse imagery online, but I don't think the problem itself should be dismissed.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-... or https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/interact...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/podcasts/the-daily/child-...
They are basically Reveune Collectors.
I would like to see all cops under federal jurisdiction. Let the FBI train them.
I know in my county of Marin we have way to many just looking for any slight moving violation.
I have felt for awhile that we also need complete bans in certain kinds of tech.
With the exception of always on cop cameras.
Without even discussing policing across racial and poverty lines, one only needs to look at police failing to catch serial killers, rapists, and even just house burglars.
The situation was much worst 10, 20, 30+ years ago. Nowadays police have some of their work done for them by technology and they are at least able to catch a few more criminals. Technology has also helped prevent false arrests in some cases. Apple's content scanning is problematic, for sure, but technology in general has been great for community safety.
Prosecutions based, essentially, on community suspicion are what lead to countless black men being wrongfully convicted of the rape of white women.
Police embracing cutting edge science like DNA sequencing is what allows unreliable antiquated evidence like (gasp) eyewitness testimony to be given it's proper weight.
Perhaps people consider DNA evidence to be "good old-fashioned policing" nowadays but it was within people's lifetimes that it was as new was quantum computing is today.
The sooner the "good old fashioned policing" meme dies the better.
I'm a detective that works exclusively on online child sexual offences.
The short answer to this is "no", although the question doesn't make much sense to me. Policing has always been near the forefront of technology.
Perhaps you could expand more on what "good old fashioned police work" means, in this context?
Through the decades, the respect shown to eyewitness testimony has generally declined, and crimes with no eyewitness evidence are still expected to be solved.
For offences with a huge online aspect there is no prospect of "getting out there" until you work out where "there" is, because it could be anywhere in the world.
For you does the CP protection end justify any means?
Where would you personally draw the line on mass surveillance by LE for the sake of your specific LE goals?
CP aside, are there other crimes that you feel should be folded-in to a dragnet like this?
> "does the CP protection end justify any means?"
Like, is this legitimately a question you think I might answer "yes" to?
This is the equivalent of "do you support the rape of children?".
I'll gladly comment on more specific points if you are genuinely struggling to understand how Apple could honestly implement this system in good faith.
> "does the CP protection end justify any means?"
It's a style of argumentation. Not personal. When trying to find where to draw a line in the sand, one way is to draw a line that almost certainly encompasses us both. We are obliged to consider: if not this line (obviously) then what line?
My intent was to find your limit. Do you have any qualms with what you may do under the law? For you personally, how much erosion of innocents' liberties would be acceptable?
Based on your earlier comment, I was not asking Apple, I was asking a LEO who acts with some but limited justification. Legal and moral. And I would like to ask in good faith about how you see those limits.
>> This is the equivalent of "do you support the rape of children?
No need to make it black and white. Almost nobody supports this. I am sure you don't. Please assume good faith on my part too. There are always trade-offs. How far would you go?
I think it's legitimate for companies to implement automated systems, such as CSAM and spam filtering, to limit the amount of unwanted material on their networks. I don't have any problem with Apple, Google, and Microsoft, checking the hashes of files I upload (or attempt to upload, in Apple's case) to their servers against ICSE. I would have an issue if employees of those companies had unfettered, unaudited access to users files.
Outside of giving my opinion of a specific proposal I don't know what you expect me to say.
Perhaps you could describe your own "limit" to how much avoidable suffering is acceptable to you before you would support automated scanning of uploads. I don't personally believe it's possible to precisely explain an overarching "limit" in situations that balance competing moral and philosophical concerns.
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I'm being rate limited now due to downvotes, might not be able to respond further
I accept your answer, and acknowledge that different perspectives are valuable.
My own opinion is far less relevant as I probably will not be implementing or executing systems that target information from large swathes of a population for inspection by my organisation.
Nevertheless, let me give it a shot. I asked you about the social cost of false-positives. You reciprocated by asking me about false-negatives. It's tough - on both sides of the equation.
I try to apply weighting. If the dragnet would be targeted to a limited number (say 100) then it could easily be justified, since the relative horror of one over the other is surely in that ball park. Maybe even 1,000.
The problem for me is that mass surveillance such as the subject of this discussion is not numerically constrained. It's trawling the entire ocean floor for the one or two species that may be legally caught.
Before we started trying to push government-sanctioned and unwanted spyware engines on private devices, I imagine the process looked something like that. Is this incorrect?
By the time it gets to the police, there will be an identified crime.
This has been the case for many years. I don't have the numbers to hand but I believe NCMEC receives around the order of 100 million referrals a year.
EDIT: it's 20 million according to https://www.missingkids.org/ourwork/ncmecdata
https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts - around 99% are from tech company referrals, 1% from members of the public
So how can this system guarantee civil freedom? How can it be guaranteed that it won't be exploited by the small number of people in power to actually inspect it and manipulate it?
Google Drive has 1bn users. Google scans content for CSAM already. Shouldn't we be seeing these negative side effects already?
Proponents of these systems can point to thousands upon thousands of actual "wins" (such as identifying teachers, police officers, sports coaches, judges, child minders etc who are pedophiles) and detractors cannot provide actual evidence of their theoretical disadvantages.
No system is perfect, no system "guarantees civil freedom", this is not a fair test. The actual evidence suggests automated scanning for CSAM is a net win for society.
This is the concern. The system is hidden and you have no way to challenge. You are simply “trusting” that this system is working well
Who watches the watchers?
Now, currently this is only applied to iCloud photos which can already be scanned server side, making this seem like a likely step towards end to end encryption of iCloud photos but not a major change from a privacy perspective. What seems like more of a change would be if it extended to non-cloud photos or the iMessage nude detection scanner since those aren’t currently monitored, and in the latter case false positives become a major consideration if it tries to handle new content of this class as well.
This is disingenuous, since up to this point these databases weren't used in systems residing on end user devices, scanning their local files.
The disadvantages aren't merely "theoretical"; they just haven't materialized yet since the future does not yet exist. To ignore these obvious faults by hand-waving them as theoretical is to blatantly ignore valid concerns raised by thousands of informed citizens.
No system is perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't some systems that simply go too far.
All arguments relating to anything other than this are arguing against something that doesn't exist.
I don't dispute that fictional proposals in the imaginations of HNers might pose a grave (fictional) threat to civil freedoms.
Given that it is just an implementation detail, I guess they can simply change it and then the rest of us will be at peace?
I think it would do you well to see this quote:
> ”Any proposal must be viewed as follows. Do not pay overly much attention to the benefits that might be delivered were the law in question to be properly enforced, rather one needs to consider the harm done by the improper enforcement of this particular piece of legislation, whatever it might be.”
> -Lyndon B. Johnson
Where would these reports come from though? Without these dragnet methods, it would seem like a very simple matter to get away with owning this kind of material.
There is no point in trying to eradicate all such material and bring the number to absolute zero. It's impossible. The only way to semi-ensure this would be absolute slavery of the citizenry, which I hope is a non-goal.
It's a fact that NCMEC referrals have identified teachers who were secretly pedophiles, who were subsequently banned from teaching. Most people see this as a good thing. If you want to do away with this, you have to bring a compelling argument.
I support everybody's right to argue for the type of society they want to see, but there's an arrogance/conspiratorial flavor to a lot of the comments here that suggest they don't really understand what they are up against. There are actual benefits.
I'm a law-and-order guy myself, have applied for (technical) position in police and would even accept a paycut for it.
But it is with this like with other security related things, many people only considers two of the three cornerstones:
- confidentiality
- integrity
- availability
Same here:
Justice is not only about punishing every very bad guy.
It is also very much about not dragging innocent people through the worst accusations an innocent person can be dragged through.
Keeping people safe is not only about rescuing people from hostage situations - it is also about not ramming in the door at someone relaxing on their couch because some random guy or gal called over ip phone.
Too many people already go through huge problems because of false accusations. You say you work in the field so I guess you must have heard about cases were perfectly innocent people commit suicide because their lives got ruined because of what later turned out to be baseless accusations.
Justice is also about not creating a system that creates even more of this suffering, right?
(BTW: I really enjoyed the an0m trick and a few others. I root for you guys, but lets keep it real and not set up the worst footgun for the future since the well meant Jew lists in Europe early last century.)
I don't agree with the characterization that this system will cause baseless accusations.
These systems have been in place for many years and have proven themselves useful and reliable.
Apple have tried to implement it in a way that allows them to turn on E2EE on iCloud, and HN has turned that into a conspiracy theory.
I don't want to do away with anything; I just want "you" out of my devices, where "you" don't belong anyway and where you haven't been up to this point. (Well, you still aren't there because I don't use an iPhone, but hopefully the point is clear.)
Also note that I'm not against the use of such technology in certain situations, such as in unencrypted cloud storage. Though concerns with lack of oversight exist there as well! But installing this on end user devices goes a (huge) step too far.
Your only concern then, is with a future authoritarian policy of your own imagination?
Of all your (mis)leading questions, this one sticks out the most as being of particularly bad faith.
Commenters here are making claims about false positives, arrests of innocents, lived ruined etc. These effects are identical whether uploads are scanned before or after transmission.
What are the different effects of society from scanning the upload before transmission?
> A situation that has the exact same effects on society...?
This is patently false.
You do come off as arguing in bad faith, resorting to debasing any concerns of policy misuse as simply a product of the imagination of the person raising the concern. As if authoritarian policies and erosion of freedom/privacy are something completely baseless, impossible and unheard of, instead of happening all the time.
What is the most obviously different effect on society? I don't know how anyone would even know what CPU calculated their file hash.
Today, the U.S. collectively spends $100 billion a year on policing and a further $80 billion on incarceration.
Just the spending on policing is larger than what other countries spend on military. Actually, the only country that spends more on military is China [1], after taking in incarceration costs, it is 2.5 times the military expenditure of India.
[1] https://www.sipri.org/publications/2021/sipri-fact-sheets/tr...
"the only country that spends more on military is China"
1 1 United States 778 4.4 -10 3.7 4.8 39
2 2 China [252] 1.9 76 [1.7] [1.7] [13]
3 3 India 72.9 2.1 34 2.9 2.7 3.7
:facepalm:
I assume you missed that. The comparison is not between militaries, but US' police vs the military.
:facepalm:
"National defense spending was 1.267992 trillion yuan, 100% of the budgeted figure. Public security expenses totaled 183.59 billion yuan, 100.2% of the budgeted figure. "
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/20210313budget.pdf
There is no "old fashioned" work. The police is a relatively new concept. And these issues (Child Porn) are really 21 century issues.
> Why does EVERYONE need to be surveilled for the 0.01% (or less?) who don’t behave properly.
Because you think they are surveilling people to catch the bad people. You have too much faith in the system.