Apple's Plans To Scan iPhones For Child Abuse Have Been Postponed.
Key Sentence:
- Apple has delayed plans to introduce detection technology to scan US consumer iPhones for child sexual abuse material.
- This was followed by widespread criticism from privacy groups and others concerned that device tracking was setting a dangerous precedent.
Apple said it had heard negative feedback and was reconsidering. There are concerns that authoritarian states could abuse the system. The so-called NeuralHash technology will scan images before they are uploaded to iCloud Photos. It will then compare it with known material about child sexual abuse in a database owned by the National Center for Missing also Exploited Children.
If a match is found, someone will review it manually and, if necessary, take steps to deactivate the user account and report it to law enforcement.
It should start at the end of the year.
In a statement, Apple said: "Last month we announced plans for features to help protect children from predators, who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, also to limit the distribution of adolescent sexual abuse material.
"Based on feedback from customers, stakeholders, researchers, also others, we decided to spend some extra time in the coming months gathering information and making improvements before introducing this important child safety feature." Personal data advocates have raised concerns that the technology could be extended and used by authoritarian governments to spy on citizens.
The Electronic Borders Foundation is one of the system's fiercest critics, collecting a petition signed by 25,000 subscribers opposing the move. Its CEO, Cindy Cohn. "The company should more than just listen and ignore its plans to incorporate backdoors into encryption altogether."
"The great coalition that has spoken will continue to demand that consumers' phones - both their messages and photos - are protected and that the company keeps its promise to provide real privacy to its users." Apple has historically been a proponent of data protection and end-to-end encryption.