Apple continued to defend its new system that will scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, on Monday amidcontroversyover whether the system invades Apple users' privacy and could be used by governments to surveil citizens.
Last week, Apple announced that it has started testing a system that uses advanced cryptography to determine when users upload photos containing child pornography to the cloud storage service. It said it can do this without learning the content of a user's photos that are stored on its servers.
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Apple reiterated on Monday that its system is more private than that used by companies such as Google and Microsoft, because its system uses both the servers and the software that will be installed on people's iPhones via an iOS update.
Privacy advocates and technology commentators are concerned that Apple's new system could be expanded to certain countries through new laws to monitor other types of images, such as photos with political content.
Apple reported in a document posted on its website on Sunday that governments cannot force it to add images without CSAM - the file that corresponds to known child sexual abuse images - that Apple will distribute to iPhone to activate the system.
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«Apple will reject any such demand. Apple's CSAM detection capability is built only to detect known CSAM images that are stored in iCloud Photos and have been identified by experts at NCMEC and other child safety groups », Apple said in the document. «We have faced requests to build and develop changes authorized by the government that degrade user privacy in the past and we have consistently rejected these demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future ».
Continue: «Let’s be clear, this technology is limited to detecting CSAM that is stored in iCloud and we will not accept any government request to expand it».
Some cryptographers worry about what could happen if a country like China passes a law that requires the system to also include politically sensitive images. Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that the company follows the laws in every country where it does business.
Companies in the USA are required to report CSAM to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and face fines of up to 300,000 $ when they discover illegal images and do not report them.
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Apple & reputation as a company – defender of security
Apple's reputation for defending privacy has been cultivated for years through its actions and marketing. In 2016, Apple faced the FBI in court to protect the integrity of the device's encryption systems in the investigation of a murderer.
The controversy over Apple's new system, and whether it monitors users, threatens the company's public reputation for building secure and private devices, which the company used to enter new markets in personal finance and healthcare.
Critics worry that the system will operate partially on iPhone, instead of scanning only photos that have been uploaded to the company's servers. Apple's competitors typically scan only photos that are stored on their servers.
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«It is truly disappointing that Apple got so caught up in its unique vision for privacy protection that it ended up betraying the core of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours», wrote journalist Ben Thompson in a briefing on Monday.
Apple continues to champion its systems as a genuine improvement that protects children and will reduce the amount of CSAM while also preserving the iPhone user's privacy.
Apple said that its system is significantly stronger and more private than previous systems with every privacy metric the company monitors, and that it broke away from its path to create a better system for detecting these illegal images.
In contrast to current systems, which operate in the cloud and cannot be inspected by security researchers, Apple's system can be examined through its distribution on iOS.
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Apple said on Monday that its system does not scan private photo libraries that have not been uploaded to iCloud.
Apple also confirmed that it will process photos that have already been uploaded to iCloud. The changes will be released via an iPhone update later this year, after which users will be notified that Apple has begun checking the photos stored in iCloud with a list of fingerprints that correspond to the known CSAM.
