So, Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, etc should all shut down their scanning for CSAM? Do you realize the outcry this would produce?
Google is not unique here, nor does it have unique power. This story would be just as plausible, and difficult, if the company in question were Facebook or Apple.
Once a system exists to scan for this material, it’s quite easy to argue that shutting it off would be immoral and potentially criminal. “You had the means to identify abused children and help them, but you turned it off because you couldn’t work out a reasonable policy to deal with the false positives? Try harder, people.”
> So, Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, etc should all shut down their scanning for CSAM?
What they should shut down, is their irrevocable deletion of accounts. When the false positives trigger nuclear bombs, then yes, a single false positive is too much.
As far as I know, only Google does this, so everyone else can keep scanning in this argument.
Shutting down this new type of scanning is not the same as no longer scanning for CSAM.
It's curious how the big providers have been scanning for CSAM for YEARS with nothing making the news...because hashes are much different and don't false positive like this.
The process that has led to our phones scanning everything we do and condemning us in an opaque extrajudicial process began with much smaller violations of privacy and trust — analysis of our emails, tracking our movement with cookies, and so on. When these practices were introduced, some people complained, saying they were part of a motion that could only ratchet in one direction: toward ubiquitous surveillance and corporate control over more and more of our lives.
Cut to just a few years later, and here we are: "shutting it off would be immoral and potentially criminal". We can't go back! So, that clicking sound you hear is the ratchet turning.
Google is not unique here, nor does it have unique power. This story would be just as plausible, and difficult, if the company in question were Facebook or Apple.
Once a system exists to scan for this material, it’s quite easy to argue that shutting it off would be immoral and potentially criminal. “You had the means to identify abused children and help them, but you turned it off because you couldn’t work out a reasonable policy to deal with the false positives? Try harder, people.”
(Note that I do not speak for my employer here.)
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