Apple, the world's most successful tech company, has announced that it will scan every image on its millions of devices for possible child porn images, raising privacy concerns.
The silicon valley tech giant have taken to scanning every image taken on any of its devices in search of what it claims is child porn, treating every one of its billion customers as potential pedophiles. This is just the latest in a long line of tech authoritarianism, which not only takes it upon itself to police its customers, but treats everyone as if they are guilty until proven innocent.
And don't think that, if your images stay in a password protected folder on your phone that they will not be subject to the scan because every image, the moment it is captured, is automatically scanned, and if Apple believe the image to break the law then a manual operator will review it and, if deemed to illegal, reported to authorities.
Child protection groups have praised the move, claiming that it is 'long overdue'. "Apple’s expanded protection for children is a game-changer," John Clark, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said in a statement. "With so many people using Apple products, these new safety measures have lifesaving potential for children."
But it would seem, yet again, that, under the guise of 'protecting' a vulnerable group, Tech giants are treating everyone as if they are guilty. In a clever move Apple have implemented a method of seeing everything on your phone, under the guise of 'safety'. Speak out about it and you'll be labelled a pedophile yourself.
'After all, why would you disagree with a policy that is trying to protect children from sexual predators? What have you got to hide?' is the implied message here. Never mind that they're treating their customers as if they're all guilty with this policy, it also begs the question what the hell a tech company is doing policing anything? My phone has no more right to look at my private photos than my toaster has at my medical records.
The company also plans to scan users' encrypted messages for sexually explicit content claiming it's 'child safety' measure, which also alarmed privacy advocates.
Matthew Green, a top cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said the technology could be used by bad actors to send seemingly normal photos meant to trigger the system to innocent people or it could be used by corrupt governments for surveillance.
Users of Android products needn't feel smug as their devices already have similar technology already installed, they just didn't bother announcing they'd installed it. Tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others have for years been sharing digital fingerprints of known child sexual abuse images.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties advocacy organisation, said the announcement was a "shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company’s leadership in privacy and security." Apple however, only enact privacy software that excludes third parties from seeing your data, effectively excluding its competitors, whilst it sees every message, photo, file and video. Each of the tech giants do much the same thing, Android (Google), Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and so on all claim their privacy settings are for your benefit, they are not, they simply exclude their competitors seeing your data.
The assumption Apple are asking its customers to make is that there is some type of pedophilia epidemic, giving them the excuse to look at your photos and text 'just to check' that you're not secretly a nonce. We see this technique all the time; every law, rule, and dictat brought in these days seems to be to 'protect' us from something; from terrorists to viruses, they're always for the 'greater good'. Speak out about any of it and you're a terrorist supporting, granny killing, climate denying pedophile. Apple say that its messaging app will also identify and blur sexually explicit photos on children’s phones and can warn parents through a text message. It said that its software would "intervene" when users try to search for topics related to child sexual abuse.
Apple said the latest changes will roll out this year as part of updates to its operating software for iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches. Apple sold 194 million iPhones, 71 million iPads and 20 million Mac and MacBook units in 2020 alone and is valued at over $2 trillion currently, How many peados this actually catches remains to be seen, whilst how many children will it save from abuse, well, that will be none.
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