> I'm not seeing how a conviction can be made on the basis of a perceptual hash alone without the actual CSAM
This is a good point, but it's not just about people getting wrongly convicted, this system even introducing a remote possibility of having strangers view your personal files is disturbing. In the US, it violates the 4th amendment against unreasonable search, a company being the middleman doesn't change that. Privacy is a shield of the individual, here the presumption of innocence is deposed even before the trial. An extremely low false positive rate or the perceived harmlessness of the current government don't matter, the systems' existence is inherently wrong. It's an extension of the warrantless surveillance culture modern nations are already so good at.
This is a good point, but it's not just about people getting wrongly convicted, this system even introducing a remote possibility of having strangers view your personal files is disturbing. In the US, it violates the 4th amendment against unreasonable search, a company being the middleman doesn't change that. Privacy is a shield of the individual, here the presumption of innocence is deposed even before the trial. An extremely low false positive rate or the perceived harmlessness of the current government don't matter, the systems' existence is inherently wrong. It's an extension of the warrantless surveillance culture modern nations are already so good at.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
In a future with brain-computer interfaces, would you like such an algorithm to search your mind for illegal information too?
Is it still your device if it acts against you?