Apple is reportedly preparing to launch a customer-side tool that scans iPhones with the aim of identifying matters related to child sexual abuse (CSAM) on Apple Users' smartphones. In this move, Apple will target strategic identifiers that mark CSAM. It also hashes these identifiers to run the servers for iPhone photos of users in iCloud.
This search will produce results based on the number of matches found on an Apple phone. And if it sees many matches, its result will immediately return to Apple's servers. Matthew Green, a cryptography and cybersecurity expert and associate secretary of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, announced the new feature, which is coming soon.
Describing it in a series of tweets, Green said, "First of all, this feature will be used for customer side scanning for photos stored in the cloud. In the end, it will be an important tool in adding surveillance to encrypted news organizations. He noted that law enforcement's key Ask rules around the world have the ability to add such a scanning system to E2E (end-to-end encrypted) messaging systems to prevent misadventure.
To put it simply, apple's supposed technology to reduce child abuse can monitor unencrypted photos such as User Uploads in iCloud. With significant events such as the San Bernardino incident, Apple was a supporter of user privacy. But according to the announcement of this new feature, which has just been announced, the privacy aspect of its customer is in question.
Also read: WhatsApp launches a new facility called 'View Once' that can only watch photos and videos once.
This feature will help you see identifiers for a particular type of content, up to end-to-end encrypted media. This could have serious implications for freedom of speech in encrypted conversation apps. It is also feared that users with malicious motives can use such technologies to target selected persons.
For now, however, it cannot be said that such a move by Apple would be disastrous towards privacy and security. However, privacy and defense advocates have already said that while Apple's initial intentions are noble, such a move would not be in the interests of all people.
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