Critics ask Apple in open letter to abandon controversial photo scanning plan

Privacy experts, academics, researchers, civil rights groups and consumers are asking Apple in an open letter to end plans to check photos on iOS devices for child abuse.

According to the authors of the letter In this way, Apple gets a back door and the company puts the privacy of all its customers at risk. It is especially feared that Apple will give in to pressure from certain regimes to use the software for other purposes.

Researcher Nadim Kobeissi points out in the letter that Apple’s Facetime does not work in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan because the laws in these countries do not allow encrypted audio calls. What if these countries ask Apple to scan messages for homosexuality or dissent from the monarchy?

The American civil rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation is also concerned. “Apple’s plans will make it possible to carry out such screenings. Authoritarian regimes will also be able to request that satire be detected.” The organization also denounces another problem. “The database that Apple will use is managed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. This organization is not controlled by anyone, despite the request of civil rights activists.”

Finally, the authors also ask questions about what definitions Apple uses to label the images as child abuse. “For one, some images are child abuse, for someone else it can be different.”

Yesterday it was announced that Apple will add a functionality to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 to check photos that American users put on iCloud for child abuse. This is done using hashes. In a technical document the company describes how the detection works. According to Apple, there is a one in a trillion chance of false positives per account.