Apple on Thursday officially announced that it will implement a system to check photos on iPhones in the US for child sexual abuse material before they are uploaded to iCloud.
Apple on Thursday said it will implement a system that checks photos on iPhone devices in the United States before they are uploaded to its iCloud storage services to ensure the upload does not match known images of child sexual abuse. Detection of child abuse image uploads sufficient to guard against false positives will trigger a human review of and report of the user to law enforcement, Apple said. It said the system is designed to reduce false positives to one in one trillion. Apple’s new system seeks to address requests from law enforcement to help stem child sexual abuse while also respecting privacy and security practices that are a core tenet of the company’s brand. But some privacy advocates said the system could open the door to monitoring of political speech or other content on iPhone handsets. Most other major technology providers – including Alphabet’s Google, Facebook, and Microsoft – are already checking images against a database of known child sexual abuse imagery. “With so many people using Apple products, these new safety measures have lifesaving potential for children who are being enticed online and whose horrific images are being circulated in child sexual abuse material,” John Clark, chief executive of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said in a statement.
