Apple’s plans to screen photos for child abuse images spark praise and privacy concerns

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An Apple Inc. logo. Image courtesy of Apple.

Apple Inc. will implement a system to check photos for child abuse images country by country, depending on local laws, the company said this week.

Apple officials also said the company will implement a system that screens photos for such images before they are uploaded from iPhones in the US to its iCloud storage.

Child safety groups praised Apple for joining Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Google of Alphabet Inc. in taking these measures.

But Apple’s photo check on the iPhone itself has raised concerns that the company is probing users’ devices in ways that could be exploited by governments. Many other tech companies check photos after they are uploaded to servers.

In a media briefing on Friday, Apple said it would plan to expand the service under the laws of each country in which it operates.

The company said nuances in its system, such as security vouchers passed from iPhone to Apple servers that don’t contain useful data, will protect Apple from government pressure to identify material other than child abuse images.

We have owned personal computers for decades and there has never been a mandate to scan the private content of all desktops, laptops or phones globally for illegal content. That’s not how technology built in free countries works.

Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) August 6, 2021

Apple has a human review process that acts as an advocate for government abuse, he added. The company will not pass reports from its photo vetting system to law enforcement if the review does not find images of child abuse.

Regulators are increasingly demanding that tech companies do more to eliminate illegal content. In recent years, law enforcement and politicians have used the scourge of child abuse to condemn advanced cryptography, in the way they previously cited the need to curb terrorism.

Some resulting laws, including in Britain, could be used to force tech companies to act secretly against their users.

While Apple’s strategy may deflect government meddling by showing its initiative or complying with guidelines set in Europe, many security experts said the privacy champion was making a big mistake by showing his willingness to reach customers’ phones. .

It may have diverted the attention of US regulators on this topic, but it will attract regulators internationally to do the same with terrorist and extremist content, said Riana Pfefferkorn, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Politically influential copyright holders in Hollywood and elsewhere might even argue that their digital rights should be enforced in this way, he said.

Facebook’s WhatsApp, the largest fully encrypted messaging service in the world, is also under pressure from governments wanting to see what people are saying and fears it will now increase. WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart tweeted a barrage of criticism against Apple over the new architecture on Friday.

We have had personal computers for decades and there has never been a mandate to scan the private content of all desktops, laptops or phones globally for illegal content, he wrote. That’s not how technology built in free countries works.

Apple’s experts said they weren’t really getting into people’s phones because the data sent on its devices has to overcome more obstacles. For example, banned material is reported by control groups and identifiers are grouped in Apple operating systems around the world, making them more difficult to manipulate.

Some experts have said they have a reason to hope that Apple hadn’t really changed direction in a fundamental way.

As reported by Reuters last year, the company had been working to make end-to-end iCloud backups encrypted, meaning the company couldn’t deliver readable versions to law enforcement. He abandoned the project after the FBI objected.

Apple could pave the way to activate encryption later this year, using this week’s measures to avoid anticipated criticism of the change, said Alex Stamos, founder of the Stanford Observatory.

Apple declined to comment on future product plans.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Richard Chang)

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