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Comment by jmoak3 | Hacker News Reader

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jmoak3

It's hard to know for sure if this is real, but I wouldn't be surprised.

If this is happening, I hope Apple says no to the CCP when they inevitably ask Apple to do the same.

Could Apple use that new CSAM-hash-comparison feature to accomplish something similar?

EDIT:

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

Nevermind - it looks to me like this mechanism is just for letting Apple know if they should pop open an encrypted image stored on their Cloud.

In the case of China, they should already be able to do that with impunity since they control the regional iCloud and keys

EDIT 2:

I'd also not be surprised if this was false however - I don't own a Huawei phone and I'm not located in China, so I can't verify this at all.

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The same Apple that censors the Taiwan flag emoji[1]?

Apple will do whatever the CCP tells them to do because they are not willing to lose a market of a billion+ potential customers.

Companies have no problem being complicit in enabling authoritarianism as long as it's profitable.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...

Not just losing the market but losing access to their network of fabricators and suppliers that make the iphone possible at Apple's healthy (to say the least) margins

To be fair, not even the US govt recognizes the Taiwan flag. One could say that Apple it's following US guidance on this.

> the White House deleted a social media post on COVID-19 vaccine donations that included Taiwan's flag. A spokesman for the White House National Security Council called the use of the flag "an honest mistake" by the team handling graphics and social media that should not be viewed as a shift in U.S. policy towards Taipei

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-asks-us-no...

This is an really wide stretch considering that I can type the Taiwan flag emoji in the US and any country that isn't China or claimed by China.

> One could say that Apple it's following US guidance on this.

Emoji are governed by the Unicode Consortium, not the US government. In this case, the Taiwan flag is character number 1848, codes: U+1F1F9 U+1F1FC

Unicode doesn't have the flag of Taiwan, it has a way of encoding "tw" in the context of an ISO county code.

I pulled the above from the Unicode Consoritum's specs.

Which parts? Maybe they do mention it along with other flags in examples, as far as I know any actual official specifications are intentionally coy on the matter.

I.e. the Unicode consortium explicitly didn't want to get into the mess of deciding whether Palestine, Taiwan etc. are "real countries", or need to release updates if one country annexed another etc.

So the official standards for the regional indicator symbols[2] just provide a way to encode two-letter ISO country codes, leaving it the implementation's and ISO's problem to map that to political entities.

1. https://unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Flags

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_indicator_symbol

You are describing how flag emoji work.

No company operating in China uses the Taiwanese flag in its products.

My point exactly. Expecting Apple to operate differently is wishful thinking, at best, or outright naivety.

Which is why even morally reprehensible companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook balked at this censorship and ceased business relations with China. Apple is the last man standing, ironically preaching their independence and dedication to the end-user.

They didnt cease business voluntarily, they were kicked out or banned.

Because they wouldn't comply with CCCP requirements. They chose being kicked out rather than compliance.

Apple already applied a change in how AirDrop works in China[0]. It's fair enough to assume that they won't say "no" to the CCP.

[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-restricted-airdrop-cap...

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/10/airdrop-10-minute-limit...

“Could Apple use that new CSAM-hash-comparison feature to accomplish something similar?”

Yes, that was why there was an uproar. If any hash is deemed bad, that could be of anything.

Let’s take a few steps back…

What’s even easier than that?

- Was this video taken within a geofenced area between these times?

    - does audio contain any filtered words?

Why would Apple say no? They just proved they'll likely say yes by removing airdrop in China, at request of the CCP government, because protesters were using it to pass along info bypassing the internet so it couldn't be censored.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/apple-limited-a-crucial-aird...

That article doesn’t say they removed it.

> Could Apple use that new CSAM-hash-comparison feature to accomplish something similar?

Only if the video is previously known, as far as I'm aware.

I would not be surprised if this turned out to be yet another of those unverifiable China stories that pop up all the time, but later turn out to be wrong.

> If this is happening, I hope Apple says no to the CCP when they inevitably ask Apple to do the same

Apple gladly does whatever the CCP asks of them

Apple doesn't own or operate iCloud in China. They have no say in the matter.

Maybe I'm confused but the new CSAM-hash-comparison thing runs on-device, right? Or no

EDIT:

Yeah looks to be on-device (page 4): https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

That is irrelevant when it comes to iCloud China. iCloud in China is owned and operated by the government of Guizhou. They own the building, the servers, and the private keys.

I'm aware of iCloud in China.

If a user chooses not to use cloud, could this mechanism still allow protestors sharing videos to be identified?

EDIT: Or is this mechanism only for giving Apple the green light to pop open images already stored on the cloud (in which case you're right, the whole conversation is irrelevant)

EDIT2:

looks like this is just for giving apple the green light to open up uploaded images - which is irrelevant in China because they can already do that

I would presume on-device software updates come from the same mechanism.

The CSAM hash utility was to pop open images in an encrypted iCloud, or witch china (nor the US) have today.

There’s no reason that the tech couldn’t be used on non-iCloud images in china. But by that logic, they could just force-ably upload images in china and forget the whole hashing nonsense.

Does anyone know how it works between Chinese and US Apple IDs? For example if I FaceTime someone in China or use iMessage with them, is that protected from the Chinese government? Is there any info on this?

AAPL will do what it's told by the government so the shareholders keep their money.

Apple often says no to the US Government, something Huawei cannot do by law.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/apple-refuses-barr-request-t...

And the US government can say "no" right back to Apple since iPhone-unlocking tools are/have been readily available and purchased in droves by American law-enforcement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayshift

Big difference.

What does that have to do with my statement ?

It illustrates that your consent is worthless where protecting personal privacy is concerned.

What does my consent have to do with anything? The difference between commanding private industry to do something and hacking them yourself is the difference between free and unfree societies. Why you are trying to blur the line I don't know.

Apple can try to say no because the US government asks them to do illegal things that violate the US constitution. That's not the case in China.

So yours is a pure defense of Huawei, because they country the operate in has no civil liberty protections, they aren't at fault for helping authoritarians build a surveillance state and spy on others?

I mean, I guess so. That doesn't mean Huawei isn't harming the safety and security of millions while Apple is just your standard monopolist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/huawei-surve...

Can't be that often considering Apple says yes to the government tens of thousands a time a year[1].

That includes dragnet surveillance from the federal government, where "0 to 499" FISA data requests yielded data from over 32,000 different accounts over just a 6 month long period.

[1] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

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