New Group Attacking iPhone Encryption Backed By US Political Dark-Money Network (theintercept.com) 52
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from The Intercept: The Heat Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, was formed earlier this year to campaign against some of the strong privacy protections Apple provides customers. The group says these protections help enable child exploitation, objecting to the fact that pedophiles can encrypt their personal data just like everyone else. When Apple launched its new iPhone this September, the Heat Initiative seized on the occasion, taking out a full-page New York Times ad, using digital billboard trucks, and even hiring a plane to fly over Apple headquarters with a banner message. The message on the banner appeared simple: 'Dear Apple, Detect Child Sexual Abuse in iCloud' -- Apple's cloud storage system, which today employs a range of powerful encryption technologies aimed at preventing hackers, spies, and Tim Cook from knowing anything about your private files.
Something the Heat Initiative has not placed on giant airborne banners is who's behind it: a controversial billionaire philanthropy network whose influence and tactics have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the right-wing Koch network. Though it does not publicize this fact, the Heat Initiative is a project of the Hopewell Fund, an organization that helps privately and often secretly direct the largesse -- and political will -- of billionaires. Hopewell is part of a giant, tightly connected web of largely anonymous, Democratic Party-aligned dark-money groups, in an ironic turn, campaigning to undermine the privacy of ordinary people.
For an organization demanding that Apple scour the private information of its customers, the Heat Initiative discloses extremely little about itself. According to a report in the New York Times, the Heat Initiative is armed with $2 million from donors including the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, an organization founded by British billionaire hedge fund manager and Google activist investor Chris Cohn, and the Oak Foundation, also founded by a British billionaire. The Oak Foundation previously provided $250,000 to a group attempting to weaken end-to-end encryption protections in EU legislation, according to a 2020 annual report. The Heat Initiative is helmed by Sarah Gardner, who joined from Thorn, an anti-child trafficking organization founded by actor Ashton Kutcher. [...] Critics say these technologies aren't just uncovering trafficked children, but ensnaring adults engaging in consensual sex work. "My goal is for child sexual abuse images to not be freely shared on the internet, and I'm here to advocate for the children who cannot make the case for themselves," Gardner said, declining to name the Heat Initiative's funders. "I think data privacy is vital. I think there's a conflation between user privacy and known illegal content."
Something the Heat Initiative has not placed on giant airborne banners is who's behind it: a controversial billionaire philanthropy network whose influence and tactics have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the right-wing Koch network. Though it does not publicize this fact, the Heat Initiative is a project of the Hopewell Fund, an organization that helps privately and often secretly direct the largesse -- and political will -- of billionaires. Hopewell is part of a giant, tightly connected web of largely anonymous, Democratic Party-aligned dark-money groups, in an ironic turn, campaigning to undermine the privacy of ordinary people.
For an organization demanding that Apple scour the private information of its customers, the Heat Initiative discloses extremely little about itself. According to a report in the New York Times, the Heat Initiative is armed with $2 million from donors including the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, an organization founded by British billionaire hedge fund manager and Google activist investor Chris Cohn, and the Oak Foundation, also founded by a British billionaire. The Oak Foundation previously provided $250,000 to a group attempting to weaken end-to-end encryption protections in EU legislation, according to a 2020 annual report. The Heat Initiative is helmed by Sarah Gardner, who joined from Thorn, an anti-child trafficking organization founded by actor Ashton Kutcher. [...] Critics say these technologies aren't just uncovering trafficked children, but ensnaring adults engaging in consensual sex work. "My goal is for child sexual abuse images to not be freely shared on the internet, and I'm here to advocate for the children who cannot make the case for themselves," Gardner said, declining to name the Heat Initiative's funders. "I think data privacy is vital. I think there's a conflation between user privacy and known illegal content."
We have the right to communicate (Score:5, Insightful)
This comes up again and again. You cannot allow the state to pre-empt communication between citizens.
Re:We have the right to communicate (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why they are asking themselves, i.e. a a private foundation, for Apple to remove every iPhone users's privacy, instead of trying to get governments to fail to do it again.
Re: (Score:3)
It's like traveling. You may have the right to travel, but if you want to get on a plane you're required to show ID so you can be tracked. That's true for a lot of travel options, and other things, and hardly anyone protests that anymore.
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I think it doesn't go far enough. The best way to protect the kids is cameras in every room in America. Do you know how many homes are just hiding child exploitation? Walls make it far too easy to take kids and exploit them and invite people over to watch. Until home makers put public cameras in every room no child is safe.
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This group is not trying to stop you from communicating, they just want to listen in. It's like traveling. You may have the right to travel, but if you want to get on a plane you're required to show ID so you can be tracked. That's true for a lot of travel options, and other things, and hardly anyone protests that anymore.
There's a big difference between showing your ID to get through a gate, and having someone listen to every word you utter while on the other side of that gate and go over it with a fine-tooth comb looking for the moment you slip up and say $the_wrong_thing. Please note: $the_wrong_thing will be defined as child exploitation today. It will absolutely be defined as something entirely different once the mechanism is in place. Out of convenience to the scanners, or desire to control. It *will* happen.
I can't be
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You may have the right to travel, but if you want to get on a plane you're required to show ID so you can be tracked.
You may have the right to an opinion, but if you want to avoid being jailed for wrongthink, you're required to publicly post all of your communications to the permanent record so you can be judged.
Only an Authoritarian who thinks they will never be on the side of the oppressed would support such nonsense.
Such BS (Score:5, Insightful)
"My goal is for child sexual abuse images to not be freely shared on the internet, and I'm here to advocate for the children who cannot make the case for themselves," Gardner said
They already aren't! The internet is being scanned *constantly* for CSAM, and having any up on the clearnet means the police will be at your door in no time. Even pedophiles using Tor etc have been unmasked countless times. Enforcement is currently working, and working well... there is not an epidemic of easily available CSAM images on the internet.
But to solve a problem that doesn't really exist we need to give up our freedom to communicate privately and allow eavesdropping on our conversations, search histories, private notes...basically everything included in the 4th amendment...in order to arrest an incremental amount more pedophiles than are already being arrested!?! Makes no sense.
Re:Such BS (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of the Qanon brainwashing is done through an emotional backdoor of countless "Think of the children" scenarios. They throw logic out the window and believe they are righteous in their actions, which makes them dangerous.
Re: Such BS (Score:1)
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Re:Such BS (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of the Qanon brainwashing
But this is a left wing [wikipedia.org] initiative.
Re:Such BS (Score:4, Insightful)
So what? Neither the left nor the right have a monopoly on authoritarian scum. The fact that both sides use a sleazy and contemptible tactic does not make it any less sleazy and contemptible.
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My goal is for child sexual abuse images to not be freely shared on the internet, ...
He's probably just irked that he can't figure out how legally to monetize CP ...
Re:Such BS (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
>They already aren't
No no no, this is a very big and scary bogeyman, there is an ongoing warzone of CSAM flying around everywhere and you must think of the children, you must grant unlimited visibility into every last corner of communication, because anything less makes it theoretically possible to have secure information.
Putting the /sarcasm aside I want to emphasize that last half: There is no "we only want the necessary amount of access", there is no middle compromise, there is no "only the minimum, t
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As disgusting as people who sexually abuse children are, it's not worth everyone giving up their privacy in order to t
Re: Such BS (Score:2)
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Most of the people getting caught or arrested by authorities are soliciting sex with a child from someone who's actually an FBI agent.
Citation needed, because an awful lot of priests [imgur.com] are getting [iredellfreenews.com] caught [imgur.com] grooming [imgur.com] and raping [imgur.com] without anyone [imgur.com] in the FBI being [themessenger.com] involved [imgur.com].
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The ironic thing is that CSAM/PhotoDNA detection is -everywhere-. You will read tons of accounts of some political figure being busted for child porn because they stored it on some cloud storage provider.
As soon as the pictures hit the cloud, they get scanned. Even on endpoints, all it takes is an antivirus program finding a "sus" photo, uploading it, and boom, another CP investigation.
What these orgs want isn't protection for the kiddos, they want backdoors on people's devices with the key in unknown han
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Re: Such BS (Score:2)
Bad closing statement. People focus so much on the evidence of crimes, they forget the crime behind, the abuse. *My goal is to not have bank robbery footage freely shared on the Internet, the banks cannot speak for themselves* if they could they would you to stop the robberies themselves.
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There is no sacrifice too great when it comes to our children, unless it is things they don't really need like food, medicine, school, or a stable climate. You need to flush that 4th Amendment down the toilet or you're a pedophile.
Partisan shit storm (Score:2, Insightful)
Since this is bound to become a partisan shit storm, I would offer that there is an infinitely great chance of finding CP on Apple iCloud than in the non-existent basement of a some DC pizza shop [wikipedia.org]
Beyond that, the monied classes should probably spend more money re-uniting runaways and foster children with their families, to cut down on the long range source of trafficked sex workers than encouraging defeating commonly available encryption schemes
Known and private are antonyms (Score:3)
"I think data privacy is vital. I think there's a conflation between user privacy and known illegal content."
I think Sarah Gardner is profoundly dumb.
"Think of the Children" and "Think of the Planet" (Score:1)
"Think of the Children!" and "Think of the Planet!" will be the undoing of civilization as we currently know it.
Re:"Think of the Children" and "Think of the Plane (Score:4, Funny)
Think of the aliens.
Re: "The Children" is always the excuse (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which files? And, while I understand that it's very American to say, "Fuck the presumption of innocence - the mob rules!", I would like to know what you would expect to find. The guy was extremely well-connected, and to a great many people who were neither involved in, nor aware of, his particular evil.
Need public funding of election (Score:2)
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I agree with you 100%. It cannot be said too often, or too loudly. We desperately need to get money out of politics. It's pure, unadulterated poison.
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I always find it interesting that CONgress, i.e. both major parties, goes to great lengths to avoid taking care of this and other issues.
Thankfully (or hopefully) we can stop their buying direct stock into companies that they are know about.
What really needs to happen is to see FEC, along with SEC, crack down on CONgress members/families that have the appearance of cheating.
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I'm Canadian, and as far as the official rules of the game are concerned, ours are better. Ultimately, though, we're probably worse than you guys. Voters who aren't paying attention believe the problem is being addressed. It isn't. The big money up here has had to be a bit more creative about getting bribes (sorry, I meant "campaign contributions") into the hands of the politicians they own. They've become very good at it. We just had a case in Ontario where rich developers were already lined up with
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No, it won't. The pols will take the federal money and accept all the other money they can. There is no bar low enough that a pol won't limbo under it for re-election and the promised land of "retiring" to a lobbying group with a nice fat salary.
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The pols will take the federal money and accept all the other money they can
And right there is why we need an amendment to solve the issue. Need to say that NO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED EXTRA. Just public funding by registered voters for that individual.
Both sides can play (Score:2)
"Think of the children" the fascist cry for power (Score:1, Interesting)
One safe bet (Score:3)
You know, absolutely without any doubt at all, you KNOW, one or more people in that organization is a hard-core pedo. It simply never fails. The rest of them are plain old fascists and religious fundamentalist nutbars. The scary thing is that these cretins have so much money behind them they stand an excellent chance of winning, and that's bad news for those of us who love privacy and who believe law abiding citizens in any democratic country deserve to be left the f*ck alone.
I "think of the children" a lot. (Score:3)
And I think they're over-valued. :)
All joking aside, the argument here seems to be that implementing this will somehow reduce the distribution of child porn.But that claim is very suspect. I think you'll just drive it elsewhere. So you're left with two scenarios. Child porn by itself, or child porn plus violated personal privacy of the innocent.
To me stacking wrongs using dubious justifications seems worse, not better.
who are the exploiters? (Score:2)