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   Mark T. Tomczak (mark@mastodon.fixermark.com)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:26:02 JST Mark T. Tomczak

   The UK is trying to ban nudes (store, transmit, display) on smartphones owned or operated by kids under 18.

   Is young people seeing nudes bad? Separate problem, and could be its own thread, but for the sake of argument let's say "yes."

   Is the problem tractable? I think the answer is actually "probably" for a partial solution. It'll be expensive (Apple and Google's money and everybody's electricity and, of course, privacy), but I'm playing Evil Oracle in my head and I'm not seeing a defeat strategy for "cliient-side hash check routed to server for detailed confirmation and revocation of account on offense."

   ... But blocking seeing them at all? Intractably expensive in energy and time for anything approaching a 100% case when bright and motivated young people are in the loop.

   • Embed this notice
     Sean (seanm@infosec.exchange)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:25:58 JST Sean

     in reply to

     • Lauren Weinstein

     @lauren @mark

     I think it's also reasonable to assume that once they get this "detect nudity" technology forced upon devices they will then demand detections get reported to authorities. Teens will then be charged with CSAM distribution.

     Let's also not forget how this technology has already led to parents getting charged with CSAM for having photos of their own kids (for medical purposes). Forget storing your baby albums digitally. That baby photo of you in the bath? CSAM.

     https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-photos-led-false-accusations-child-abuse

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:25:58 JST Lauren Weinstein

     in reply to

     • Sean

     @seanm @mark It won't stop at CSAM, or nudity. The long range plan is to have a massive list of anything the current administration (whomever that is at any given time) wants to track people for being interested in. Photos, Search Queries, eventually email. Google and the other Big Tech firms will bend over for Trump and any future administrations. Their bottom line is all they care about, and all the altruistic verbiage nothing but propaganda for the "rubes" -- that is, us.

   • Embed this notice
     Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:25:59 JST Lauren Weinstein

     in reply to

     @mark You said "porn". We're not talking about porn. We're talking about perceived nudity of any kind. There's a difference, right?

   • Embed this notice
     Mark T. Tomczak (mark@mastodon.fixermark.com)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:26:00 JST Mark T. Tomczak

     in reply to

     • Lauren Weinstein

     @lauren I believe a bloom filter (or trained recognizer) on the video layer will generally be hard to subvert; Lord knows they'll try. That gives a rough cut of "probably porn," and the whine screen can then be passed to an online detector for verification and then follow up (notify parents, ban account, whatever). It's impractical to use that to prevent the image from being seen though, unless we want the kid phone experience to be total ass.

     It would also be very expensive battery wide, depending on how frequently it's scanning the whole screen. And "your phone can screenshot what you are up to at any time and send it to the government" feels like it should be pretty viscerally horrifying, even to Brits.

     (I don't think this is a good problem to try to solve; my noodling is on whether it's actually unsolvable and under what constraints it becomes so).

   • Embed this notice
     Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 04:26:02 JST Lauren Weinstein

     in reply to

     @mark What will they hash check against? This isn't like having a central CSAM database that can be matched against. There are innumerable ways kids could bypass, and they will spread like wildfire. Really, this is just an effort to suck money from Google and Apple with monster penalties.