An Apple spokesperson said the company had addressed privacy and security concerns in a document.
More than 90 policy and rights groups around the world will publish an open letter on Thursday urging Apple to abandon plans to scan children’s messages for nudity and adults’ phones for images of sexual abuse. children.
“While these capabilities are intended to protect children and reduce the distribution of child sexual abuse material, we are concerned that they will be used to censor protected speech, threaten the privacy and security of people around the world, and disastrous consequences for many.” children,” the groups wrote in the pre-sent letter to Reuters.
The largest single-company encryption campaign to date was organized by the US-based nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).
Some overseas signatories, in particular, are concerned about the impact of the changes in countries with different legal systems, including some that are already fighting heated battles over encryption and privacy.
“It’s so disappointing and disturbing that Apple is doing this because they’ve been a staunch ally defending encryption in the past,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, co-director of CDT’s Security & Surveillance Project.
An Apple spokesperson said the company had addressed the privacy and security concerns in a document Friday that sets out why the scanning software’s complex architecture should resist attempts to subvert it.
Among the signings were multiple groups in Brazil, where courts have repeatedly blocked Facebook’s WhatsApp for failing to decrypt messages in criminal investigations, and the Senate passed a law requiring traceability of messages, which somehow requires their content. are marked. A similar law was passed in India this year.
“Our main concern is the consequence of this mechanism, how it can be extended to other situations and other companies,” said Flavio Wagner, president of the independent Brazilian branch of the Internet Society, who signed the agreement. “This represents a serious weakening of the encryption.”
Other signatories were in India, Mexico, Germany, Argentina, Ghana and Tanzania.
Surprised by the earlier outcry following the announcement two weeks ago, Apple has offered a series of statements and documents arguing that the risks of false detections are low.
Apple said it would decline demands to extend the image detection system to photos of children marked by clearinghouses in multiple jurisdictions, though it has not said it would withdraw from a market rather than obey a court order.
While most of the objections so far have centered on device scanning, the coalition letter also criticizes a change to iMessage in family accounts, which would attempt to identify and blur nudity in children’s messages so they could only view it if parents are notified.
The signatories said the move could endanger children in bigoted families or those seeking educational materials. More broadly, they said the change will break end-to-end encryption for iMessage, which Apple has vigorously defended in other contexts.
“Once this backdoor feature is built in, governments can force Apple to extend the notification to other accounts and detect images that are objectionable for reasons other than sexually explicit,” the letter reads.
Other groups that have signed include the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, Privacy International and the Tor project.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
