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August 19, 2021 10:00 am

'Apple's Device Surveillance Plan Is a Threat To User Privacy -- And Press Freedom'

The Freedom of the Press Foundation is calling Apple's plan to scan photos on user devices to detect known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) a "dangerous precedent" that "could be misused when Apple and its partners come under outside pressure from governments or other powerful actors." They join the EFF, whistleblower Edward Snowden, and many other privacy and human rights advocates in condemning the move. Advocacy Director Parker Higgins writes: Very broadly speaking, the privacy invasions come from situations where "false positives" are generated -- that is to say, an image or a device or a user is flagged even though there are no sexual abuse images present. These kinds of false positives could happen if the matching database has been tampered with or expanded to include images that do not depict child abuse, or if an adversary could trick Apple's algorithm into erroneously matching an existing image. (Apple, for its part, has said that an accidental false positive -- where an innocent image is flagged as child abuse material for no reason -- is extremely unlikely, which is probably true.) The false positive problem most directly touches on press freedom issues when considering that first category, with adversaries that can change the contents of the database that Apple devices are checking files against. An organization that could add leaked copies of its internal records, for example, could find devices that held that data -- including, potentially, whistleblowers and journalists who worked on a given story. This could also reveal the extent of a leak if it is not yet known. Governments that could include images critical of its policies or officials could find dissidents that are exchanging those files.[...]Journalists, in particular, have increasingly relied on the strong privacy protections that Apple has provided even when other large tech companies have not. Apple famously refused to redesign its software to open the phone of an alleged terrorist -- not because they wanted to shield the content on a criminal's phone, but because they worried about the precedent it would set for other people who rely on Apple's technology for protection. How is this situation any different? No backdoor for law enforcement will be safe enough to keep bad actors from continuing to push it open just a little bit further. The privacy risks from this system are too extreme to tolerate. Apple may have had noble intentions with this announced system, but good intentions are not enough to save a plan that is rotten at its core.

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