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 Apple's plans to implement new features on its platforms to prevent Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) have sparked a lot of debate.

The startup is attempting to pioneer a solution to a problem that has bedeviled law enforcement officials and technology corporations alike in recent years: the large-scale, ongoing dilemma of CSAM proliferation on key internet platforms. As recently as 2018, internet companies confirmed the presence of up to 45 million photographs and videos that might be considered child sex abuse material—a staggering figure.

While the crisis is real, opponents worry that Apple's new features—which include algorithmic scanning of users' devices and messages—are a breach of privacy and, more worryingly, might be repurposed to search for material other than CSAM in the future. This move could lead to new forms of pervasive surveillance as well as a potential workaround for encrypted communications, which is one of privacy's last, best hopes.

We need take a quick look at the specifics of the proposed modifications to appreciate these concerns. To begin, the business will release a new tool that will scan images uploaded to iCloud from Apple devices for evidence of child sex abuse content. According to an Apple technical paper, the new functionality assesses whether photographs on a user's iPhone match known "hashes," or unique digital fingerprints, of CSAM using a "neural matching function" called NeuralHash. This is accomplished by comparing photographs uploaded with iCloud to a vast database of CSAM imagery compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). If a sufficient number of photographs are found, they are reported for inspection by human operators, who then notify NCMEC (who then presumably tip off the FBI).

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Some people have voiced anxiety that their phones may include photos of their own children in the bathtub, running nude through a sprinkler, or anything similar. You don't have to worry about that, according to Apple. The company has stated that it does not “learn anything about photographs that do not match [those in] the known CSAM database”—in other words, it isn't just rummaging through your photo albums and looking at whatever it likes.

In the meanwhile, Apple will release a new iMessage feature that will “warn youngsters and their parents when [a child] receives or sends sexually inappropriate photos.” The function is designed to warn minors when they are going to share or receive a picture that has been considered sexually explicit by the company's algorithm. The youngster receives a notification informing them that they are about to view a sexual image and assuring them that it is perfectly fine not to view the image (the incoming image remains blurred until the user consents to viewing it). If a child under the age of 13 ignores the warning and sends or receives the image, a notification will be issued to the child's parent informing them of the event.

To say the least, civil liberties advocates have reacted negatively to the revelation of both of these changes, which will begin later this year with the introduction of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Although the issues vary, critics are concerned that the deployment of such powerful new technology would pose a number of privacy risks.

Concerns about the iMessage update revolve around how encryption works, the security it is meant to give, and what the software does to effectively undermine that security. Before it is sent, encryption scrambles the contents of a user's communication into unreadable cryptographic signatures, effectively nullifying the point of intercepting the message because it is unreadable. However, because of the way Apple's new feature is set up, messages sent to children's accounts will be screened for sexually explicit content before being encrypted. Again, this doesn't mean Apple has unrestricted access to a child's text messages; it's simply looking for images that its algorithm deems to be improper.

However, the precedent set by such a change could be concerning. The Center for Democracy and Technology took aim at the iMessage update in a statement released Thursday, calling it an erosion of Apple's end-to-end encryption: The Center stated, "The mechanism that will enable Apple to scan images in iMessages is not an alternative to a backdoor—it is a backdoor," “Client-side scanning on one ‘end’ of the communication breaks the security of the transmission, and informing a third-party (the parent) about the content of the communication undermines its privacy.”

Similarly, the idea to examine iCloud uploads has enraged privacy groups. Jennifer Granick, the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project's surveillance and cybersecurity counsel, told Gizmodo via email that she is concerned about the photo scans' potential consequences: “However altruistic its motives, Apple has built an infrastructure that could be subverted for widespread surveillance of the conversations and information we keep on our phones,” she said. “The CSAM scanning capability could be repurposed for censorship or for identification and reporting of content that is not illegal depending on what hashes the company decides to, or is forced to, include in the matching database. For this and other reasons, it is also susceptible to abuse by autocrats abroad, by overzealous government officials at home, or even by the company itself.”

Even Edward Snowden chimed in:

🚨🚨 Apple says to "protect children," they're updating every iPhone to continuously compare your photos and cloud storage against a secret blacklist. If it finds a hit, they call the cops.

iOS will also tell your parents if you view a nude in iMessage.https://t.co/VZCTsrVnnc

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 6, 2021

The issue here isn't so much Apple's objective to combat CSAM as it is the methods it's utilizing to do so, which opponents fear may lead to a slippery slope. The privacy-focused Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in an article published Thursday that scanning capabilities similar to Apple's tools could eventually be repurposed to make its algorithms hunt for other types of images or text—basically, a workaround for encrypted communications, one designed to police private interactions and personal content. The EFF claims that: 

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.

 

Concerns about the features' implementation in other nations are especially valid, with some critics warning that Apple's tools may be abused and corrupted by corrupt foreign governments. Apple confirmed to MacRumors on Friday that it aims to expand the features on a country-by-country basis in response to these concerns. When it comes to distribution in a specific country, the company will conduct a legal analysis first, according to the outlet.

India McKinney, EFF's director of federal affairs, noted another issue in a phone interview with Gizmodo on Friday: because both technologies are unauditable, it's hard to independently verify that they're working as they should.

“There is no way for outside groups like ours or anybody else—researchers—to look under the hood to see how well it’s working, is it accurate, is this doing what its supposed to be doing, how many false-positives are there,” she said. “Once they roll this system out and start pushing it onto the phones, who’s to say they’re not going to respond to government pressure to start including other things—terrorism content, memes that depict political leaders in unflattering

ways, all sorts of other stuff.” Relevantly, in its article on Thursday, EFF
noted that one of the technologies “originally built to scan and hash child
sexual abuse imagery” was recently retooled to create a database run by the
Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)—the likes of which now helps
online platforms to search for and moderate/ban “terrorist” content, centered
around violence and extremism.

A group of privacy campaigners and security professionals have sent an open letter to Apple, requesting that the corporation reconsider its new features in light of these concerns. The letter has over 5,000 signatories as of Sunday.

However, it’s unclear whether any of this will have an impact on the tech giant’s plans. In an internal company memo leaked Friday, Apple’s software VP Sebastien Marineau-Mes acknowledged that “some people have misunderstandings and more than a few are worried about the implications” of the new rollout, but that the company will “continue to explain and detail the features so people understand what we’ve built.” Meanwhile, NMCEC sent a letter to Apple staff internally in which they referred to the program’s critics as “the screeching voices of the minority” and championed Apple for its efforts.