What leads you to believe that access to search these datasets is some sort of unregulated, unmonitored free-for-all for anyone allowed to wander into an intelligence agency building?
The scenarios you invented sound very far-fetched to me, if these did happen I very much doubt the perpetrator would be able to get away with it.
But being critical of pornography and considering it to be abuse isn't a view limited to right-wing Christians. For example, here's what Noam Chomsky has to say about it:
> Pornography is humiliation and degradation of women. It's a disgraceful activity. I don't want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. I mean, women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That's not what human beings are. I don't even see anything to discuss.
> Interviewer: But didn't performers choose to do the job and get paid?
> The fact that people agree to it and are paid, is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favour of sweatshops in China, where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day, and then the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but it doesn't make me in favour of it, so that argument we can't even talk about.
> As for the fact that it's some people's erotica, well you know that's their problem, doesn't mean I have to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of humiliation of women, they have a problem, but it's nothing I want to contribute to.
> Interviewer: How should we improve the production conditions of pornography?
> By eliminating degradation of women, that would improve it. Just like child abuse, you don't want to make it better child abuse, you want to stop child abuse.
> Suppose there's a starving child in the slums, and you say "well, I'll give you food if you'll let me abuse you." Suppose - well, there happen to be laws against child abuse, fortunately - but suppose someone were to give you an argument. Well, you know, after all a child's starving otherwise, so you're taking away their chance to get some food if you ban abuse. I mean, is that an argument?
> The answer to that is stop the conditions in which the child is starving, and the same is true here. Eliminate the conditions in which women can't get decent jobs, not permit abusive and destructive behaviour.
I'm writing from a UK perspective so there's no underlying constitutional issue here like there might be in the US. Bulk data collection is restricted by specific laws and this mandates regular operational oversight by an independent body, to ensure that both the collection and each individual use of the data is necessary and proportionate.
Some of this will include data of British citizens, but the thing is, we have a significant home-grown terrorism problem and serious organised criminal gang activity, happening within the country. If intelligence analysts need to look at, for example, which phone number contacted which other phone number on a specific date in the recent past, there's no other way to do this other than bulk collect all phone call metadata from the various telecom operators, and store it ready for searching.
The vast majority of that data will never be seen by human eyes, only indexed and searched by automated systems. All my phone calls and internet activity will be in there somewhere, I'm sure, but I don't consider that in itself to be government oppression. Only if it's used for oppressive purposes, would it become oppressive.
Isn't that because laws relating to physical harm already exist and are well-established? There's not really much legal regulation yet in terms of specific AI-driven harms. We're probably yet still to find out all the ways in which it can be abused.
Why is it not okay at all? That's what our intelligence agencies do with their bulk data collection capabilities, and they have an immense positive impact on society.
Exactly, this is one area where the political left, particularly in the US, are failing terribly on child safety.
I'm in the UK and we're doing better here though, the main left-wing party is backing away from the particular ideology that has enabled this. I was going to vote for them anyway as we desperately need our public services to be restored and welfare for those less fortunate in society to be improved, but I'm pleased they're moving towards a sensible, harm-reducing stance on this issue rather than assuming everything the gender activists say is reasonable.
Well, paedophiles hijacking leftist movements for their own ends is a known problem, it's happened before and it will happen again. One particularly infamous instance occurred in the UK back in the 1970s:
So if there are indeed some right-wing groups talking about this, maybe it's best not to brush off their claims without some scrutiny first. And I say this as someone who mostly agrees with the left on most things.
Anyway I don't think that any of this has much to do with Apple being asked to implement specific technical measures for detecting child abuse imagery.
Mass surveillance isn't necessarily bad. It depends how it's implemented. The solution you describe is basically how it works with the intelligence agencies, in that only a miniscule fraction of the data collected in bulk ever reaches human eyes. The rest ends up being discarded after the retention period.
In terms of outcomes, almost nobody is actually surveilled, as the overall effect is the same as no data having been collected on them in the first place.
That said, I am personally more comfortable with my country's intelligence agencies hoovering up all my online activity than I am with the likes of Apple. The former is much more accountable than the latter.
It sounds like an entirely unreasonable assumption to me. Advocating for child safety is something that transcends political differences, and generally unifies people across the political spectrum.
I mean, there aren't many people who want paedophiles to be able to amass huge collections of child abuse imagery from other paedophiles online. And pretty much every parent wants their child to be kept safe from predators both online and offline.
Might just be your personalized experience. I get music, comedy and old film clips recommended to me on YouTube. It's actually gotten really good at predicting what I might enjoy watching.
By contrast, Twitter is always showing me controversial tweets from people I don't follow. But then that's mostly why I use the site, to enjoy the arguments and drama.
The scenarios you invented sound very far-fetched to me, if these did happen I very much doubt the perpetrator would be able to get away with it.