Author Topic: Apple scans photos to check for child abuse  (Read 324 times)

Online javajolt

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 35125
  • Gender: Male
  • I Do Windows
    • windows10newsinfo.com
Apple scans photos to check for child abuse
« on: January 10, 2020, 01:11:41 PM »
Apple scans photos to check for child sexual abuse images, an executive has said, as tech companies come under pressure to do more to tackle the crime.

Jane Horvath, Apple’s chief privacy officer, said at a tech conference that the company uses screening technology to look for illegal images. The company says it disables accounts if Apple finds evidence of child exploitation material, although it does not specify how it discovers it.

Apple has often clashed with security forces and authorities, refusing to break into criminals’ phones and applying encryption to its messaging app in the name of protecting its users’ privacy.

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ms. Horvath said removing encryption was “not the way we’re solving these issues” but added: “We have started, we are, utilizing some technologies to help screen for child sexual abuse material.”

An Apple spokesman pointed to a disclaimer on the company’s website, saying: “Apple is dedicated to protecting children throughout our ecosystem wherever our products are used, and we continue to support innovation in this space.

“As part of this commitment, Apple uses image-matching technology to help find and report child exploitation. Much like spam filters in email, our systems use electronic signatures to find suspected child exploitation.

“Accounts with child exploitation content violate our terms and conditions of service, and any accounts we find with this material will be disabled.”

The company did not elaborate on how it checks for child abuse images, but many tech companies use a filtering system called PhotoDNA, in which images are checked against a database of previously identified images using a technology known as “hashing”. The technology is also used by Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Apple made a change to its privacy policy last year that said it may scan images for child abuse material.

Ms. Horvath defended Apple’s decision to encrypt iPhones in a way that makes it difficult for security services to unlock them after the FBI raised the prospect of another clash with the company by asking it to unlock an iPhone allegedly owned by a dead gunman who killed three people at a naval base in Florida last month.

“End to end encryption is critically important to the services we come to rely on…. health data, payment data. Phones are relatively small they get lost and stolen. We need to make sure that if you misplace that device you’re not [exposing that data],” she said.

Quote
Update January 9, 2020

This story originally said Apple screens photos when they are uploaded to iCloud, Apple's cloud storage service. Ms. Horvath and Apple's disclaimer did not mention iCloud, and the company has not specified how it screens material, saying this information could help criminals.

source