Key Sentence:
- Apple said the news about automatic child sexual abuse detection “Scanning Of Your iPhone” tools on iPhones and iPads was “quite confusing.”
On August 5, the company launched new image recognition software to alert Apple. When known illegal “Scanning Of Your iPhone” images are uploaded to its iCloud repository. However, privacy groups have criticized the news, with some saying Apple has developed a security gateway in its software.
The company said its message was essentially misunderstood. We wanted this to be a little bit clearer for everyone,” Apple’s chief software officer Craig Federici told the Wall Street Journal. Introducing two functions simultaneously is “a recipe for this kind of confusion,” he said.
What new tools are there?
Apple has published two new tools to help protect children. You will initially settle in the US. The first tool can identify child sexual abuse material (CSAM) when a user uploads a photo to the iCloud repository. The US National Center for Missing, including Exploited Children (NCMEC), maintains a known illegal child abuse image. It stores it as a hash – a digital “fingerprint” of unlawful material.
Cloud service providers like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are already checking images for these hashes to ensure people aren’t sharing the CSAM. Apple decided to perform a similar process but said it would match the user’s iPhone or iPad image before uploading to iCloud. Mr. Federighi said iPhone wouldn’t search for things like pictures of your kids in the bathroom or pornography.
The system could only match “exact footprints” from specific known child sexual abuse “Scanning Of Your iPhone” images. If users try to upload photos that match a child abuse fingerprint, their account will be tagged in Apple to view a specific image. Mr. Federighi said users would need to upload about 30 matching images before this feature could be enabled.
Message filtering
In addition to the iCloud tool, Apple has announced parental controls that users can enable on their children’s accounts. When enabled, the system reviews photos sent by or to children via Apple’s iMessage app. When the machine learning system determines that a picture contains nudity, it hides the image and warns the child.
Parents can also take an alert if their child wants to see the photo.
Secrecy groups share concerns that the technology could be extended and used by authoritarian governments to spy on their citizens. WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart called Apple’s move “deeply worrying,” while US informant Edward Snowden called the iPhone a “spy phone.” Mr. Federighi said the “sound byte” that went up after the announcement was that Apple was looking to the iPhone for pictures.
“That didn’t happen,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “We feel very positive and strong about what we are doing, and we can see that it has been widely misunderstood.” The tool is scheduled to be added to new versions of iOS and iPadOS later this year.