More than 90 political and rights groups around the world have written a letter to Tim Cook, saying Apple must abandon its anti-child pornography initiative. The whole criticizes the analysis of photos and messages, believing that it is a monitoring software.
Groups want Apple to cancel tool to fight child pornography
“While these features are intended to protect children and reduce the spread of child pornography, we are concerned that they may be used to censor protected speech, threaten the privacy and security of people around the world and have disastrous consequences for many children ”, wrote the groups in the letter available at this address.
Two other points are highlighted:
- The analytics and alert function in the Messages app could give rise to alerts that threaten the safety and well-being of some young people, and LGBTQ + young people, whose parents are not understanding, are particularly at risk.
- Once the photo hash for combating child pornography becomes part of Apple’s products, the company will face enormous pressure, if not legal requirements, from governments around the world that will force it to comply. scan all kinds of images that governments deem objectionable
Signatories from all over the world
The signatories come from several countries in the world, but none of them comes from France. On the other hand, there are several European groups. Some groups are concerned about the impact of the changes in countries with different legal systems than the United States, some of which are already the scene of bitter encryption and privacy struggles.
Among the groups that have signed up are Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), ACLU, PEN America, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Access Now, Privacy International, Derechos Digitales, Global Voices, Global Partners Digital and groups of Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
“We support efforts to protect children and strongly oppose the proliferation of material relating to child sexual abuse. But the changes announced by Apple put children and other users at risk today and in the future. the future. We urge Apple to back down on these changes and reaffirm the company’s commitment to protecting its users with end-to-end encryption ”, concludes the letter.
As a reminder, Apple will set up its tool for combating child pornography with iOS 15. This will first be the case in the United States. The other countries will follow later. The analysis will be done directly on the iPhone.
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