
US apps send thousands of private photos to Swiss police - baazaar
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/pornography-screening_whatsapp-facebook-photos/45263836
======
cantrevealname
> _The algorithm detects the content whether it’s posted online or shared via
> a messaging app like WhatsApp._

That statement contradicts Whatsapp official statement that all content is
end-to-end encrypted: “WhatsApp ... we built end-to-end encryption into our
app. When end-to-end encrypted, your messages, photos, videos, voice messages,
documents, and calls are secured from falling into the wrong hands. Only you
and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in
between, not even WhatsApp.”

In this case, I believe Whatsapp more than I believe a technically illiterate
writer on a government website that failed to understand some nuance. Maybe
some Whatsapp users forwarded questionable content they’ve received to the
authorities, then the algorithm scanned that content. That’s very different
than secret scanning happening _within_ Whatsapp.

~~~
sunstone
My guess is that even if a photo is secure within Whatsapp once that photo is
displayed on the screen of your phone then it's available to Android to scan.
Yes, that's a creepy thought and not only that but presumably such a function
would be using quite a bit of the phone's battery to be doing this
continuously.

It's not clear though why all this stuff would be going to Switzerland
particularly.

~~~
RealStickman
You wouldn't notice that feature using battery if every phone does it though.

I'd also really like to know why it goes to Switzerland. Are there also other
countries that get photos like this and prosecute based on them?

------
sharth
The article that this article links to says that the FBI has shared thousands
of photos with Swiss Police.

------
borumpilot
You might as well flag this since there is no way to access the referred to
data sources (and I am pretty sure there is quite a lot of actual information
lost in translation).

Source: I'm Swiss, read everything I could find, nothing even comes close to
"apps like Whatsapp send pictures to the Swiss police". More in the direction
of: pictures get sent by US LE to Swiss LE and the volume is growing over the
last couple of years.

------
jMyles
> In an effort to combat child pornography, providers like Facebook and Google
> automatically screen all photos for the presence of children and bare skin.

The presumption that childhood nudity needs to be screened in such a way is,
itself, cringey and creepy and perhaps not without a hint of pedophilia.

> The algorithm detects the content whether it’s posted online or shared via a
> messaging app like WhatsApp.

OK, so what is "the algorithm?" Where can it be tested and audited?

And how do authorities acquire content send in a WhatsApp message? We just
went over this yesterday, didn't we? wcathcart, any response to this?

~~~
pjkundert
Our daughter had _serious_ skin issues for years, and my wife and I shared
numerous photographs of her.

The idea of a pack of ... auditing my personal messages and photos to my wife
is abhorrent.

What we need is actual police doing actual police work, and actually judges
putting actual pedophiles away for life. Not stalking normal people.

But, I guess cowardice is alive and well - normals don’t shoot cops and judges
in the face, so they’re easy targets to satisfy the “just do something” vote.

~~~
sandworm101
And i was a competative swimmer. Nobody should fault my parents for posting
images of me in a speedo, nor should i hesitate from posting them myself.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
They're not screening for kids and bare skin specifically. It's just a first
heuristic to narrow down the pool of photos that conceivably _might_ be child
porn to something that human investigators can feasibly check.

Per the article, 90% of the kids-and-bare-skin photos received are found to be
totally innocuous once a human looks at them; no action is taken, and the
photos and associated personal info are removed from police computers.

~~~
LilBytes
Except I'm not comfortable with my families photographs being screened by a
third party that I don't know or have met, and this occurring explicitly
without my knowledge.

So to stop child pornography an all-seeing third party vets my families
photographs even when shared privately via WhatsApp or similar? That's fucked.

~~~
aaomidi
Stop using Facebook.

Like.....what do you expect?

I'm not trying to blame you here but since you're on this website I assume
you're more generally knowledgable about stuff happening. We've known about
variations of this for so long.

~~~
mosselman
There is a difference between knowing that Facebook posts are screened and
thinking that private, "end-to-end encrypted" messages are being screened (if
true).

~~~
aaomidi
They've basically provided no proof it's end to end encrypted properly.

Heck even Facebook has a private message system they claim it's e2ee.

------
gagabity
This article makes no sense.

~~~
ahakki
Here's the link to the NZZ am Sonntag article (I think) this is referring to:
[https://nzzas.nzz.ch/schweiz/kinderpornografie-das-fbi-
stoes...](https://nzzas.nzz.ch/schweiz/kinderpornografie-das-fbi-stoesst-
auf-9000-faelle-aus-der-schweiz-ld.1451009)

sadly I don't have a subscription :( but if anyone does, this might make more
sense.

------
glloydell
Does this only apply to the Swiss government, or is Facebook sharing any
pictures that hit their filters with law enforcement agencies of whatever
country you happen to be living in?

------
techer
Giving your photos to a lab to be developed sometimes resulted in police being
alerted...although this is based on my hazy memory.

------
mturilin
I wonder if Apple and Google employees review my photos stored in my cloud
accounts?

~~~
stevenicr
I had thought I'd seen some articles long ago that Microsoft was doing this
with everyone's one-drive cloud thing that is auto installed with windows
10(?) and added to windows 8 if you install office (still?) -

that Microsoft's onedrive system auto-detects pics with X% of skin showing,
and when it does, all of your nudie (and semi-nudie) pics were sent to humans
to look at automatically - and those humans could forward your pics to other
people and agencies..

So I have always assumed that google would be doing the same, as I recall some
articles about them leading the way in detecting and censoring pics, and
providing detectives with things like bed sheet matches for hotels, and
tracking phone numbers and pics of hookers that changes cities (that one was a
google employee on 6 month leave or something?)

I have not seen anything about Apple getting into these things, would be quite
interesting if they do the same - it would mean all of the fappening celeb
victims had already been peeped on before hackers release them to the public
right?

~~~
mosselman
> all of your nudie (and semi-nudie) pics were sent to humans to look at
> automatically

That is insane and, if true, reason enough to never use Microsoft software.

~~~
londons_explore
It's not all, but a sample, yes.

They typically use hashes of files and only check files which have been shared
between users though.

~~~
stevenicr
are you 100% on "only check files which have been shared between users
though." ? \- I do not recall seeing that in the info I read some time ago.

"typically use hashes of files" \- I don't think this changes anything as far
as msoft employees and others looking at pics of your kids or wife /gf / bf,
etc; if you have taken the photos or he/she did and sent them to you right?
This would only remove some of the internet shared/saved photos from the pile
right?

Privately taken pics saved on the windows computer are / would still be sent
to employed humans to look at, from what I understand.

