Apple has announced that it has delayed the release of controversial child safety features it plans to launch later this year.
The length of the delay is not clear, but the company was widely criticized in August for announcing its CSAM (Child Abuse) detection system. Automatically scanning iPhone photos Before uploading to iCloud.
One of the main fears of academics and security professionals is that the system could be changed to search for non-CSAM images that may be of interest to government officials.
In a statement issued Friday, he described the plans as “features designed to protect them from predators who hire and exploit them and restrict CSAM distribution.”
“Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have set aside more time in the coming months to gather resources and make improvements before releasing these critical child safety traits,” he said.
The first response to these fears was to force Apple to “add any non-governmental requests” to “CSAM images to the hash list” – citing a list of fingerprints used to identify partner content. That material itself.
In the past, we have faced requests to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade users’ privacy, and we strongly reject those requests. We will continue to reject them in the future.
The company added that it would use the hash provided by authorities in several countries to reduce the risk of an official attempting to exploit the system for surveillance purposes.
Apple’s ability to oppose government officials’ request was questioned by Professor Steven Murdock at London University College, the company’s refusalTo build a new function to unlock the iPhoneIt is “different” from adding hashish to an existing database.
“Let’s be clear, this technology is limited to identifying CSAM stored in iCloud and we will not accept any government request to expand it,” Apple said.
Professor Murdock cites a similar pattern in the UK, where ISPs have been forced to cover less serious offenses such as intellectual property violations after being able to use them to curb abuse.
The ISPs – including Sky News British Broadcasting Limits, the owner of Sky News – were defeated in court.
Judge Arnold said in his judgment: “The orders did not require ISPs to acquire new technology; they already have the technology they need. In fact, most ISPs are now more technically capable of enforcing such orders than they were three years ago. »