One Bad Apple
NCMEC has essentially shows that they have zero regard for privacy and called all privacy activists &quot;screeching voices of the minority&quot;. At the same time, they&#x27;re at the center point of a highly opaque, entrenched (often legally mandated) censorhip infrastructure that can and will get accounts shut down irrecoverably and possibly people&#x27;s homes raided, on questionable data:<p>In one of the previous discussions, I&#x27;ve seen claims about the NCMEC database containing a lot of harmless pictures misclassified as CSAM. This post confirms this again (ctrl-f &quot;macaque&quot;)<p>It also seems like the PhotoDNA hash algorithm is problematic (to the point where it may be possible to trigger false matches).<p>Now NCMEC seem to be pushing for the development of a technology that would implant an informant in every single of our devices (mandating the inclusion of this technology is the logical next step that seems inevitable if Apple launches this).<p>I&#x27;m surprised, and honestly disappointed, that the author seems to still play nice, instead of releasing the whitepaper. The NCMEC seems to have decided to position itself directly alongside other Enemies of the Internet, and while I can imagine that they&#x27;re also doing a lot of important and good work, at this point, I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;re salvageable would like to see them disbanded.<p>Really curious how this will play out. I expect attacks either sabotaging these scanning systems by flooding them with false positives, or exploiting them to get the accounts of your enemies shut down permanently by sending them a picture of a macaque.